Friday, September 16, 2005

Fun with domain registrar namesecure

My company's domain names stopped resolving during the middle of the day. I tested my registrar/dns provider's servers, and found that they weren't answering any queries about my domain name, or even other domains names. Here follows my attempts to resolve the issue:


Date: 9/16/2005 2:00PM EST (ish)
My original problem report via the namesecure website:

on 9/16/2005, at 2:00pm EST, I noticed an outage with our domain names that are being served by dns(1,2).namesecure.com

Please fix this asap!

dig @64.62.166.88 www.mydomain.net

; <<>> DiG 9.2.5 <<>> @64.62.166.88 www.mydomain.net
; (1 server found)
;; global options: printcmd
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached

However, the nameserver isn't completely unresponsive:

# dig @64.62.166.88 www.namesecure.com

; <<>> DiG 9.2.5 <<>> @64.62.166.88 www.namesecure.com
; (1 server found)
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 4989
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 2

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.namesecure.com. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.namesecure.com. 86400 IN CNAME namesecure.com.
namesecure.com. 86400 IN A 64.62.166.106

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
namesecure.com. 86400 IN NS dns1.namesecure.com.
namesecure.com. 86400 IN NS dns2.namesecure.com.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
dns1.namesecure.com. 86400 IN A 64.62.166.88
dns2.namesecure.com. 86400 IN A 206.169.98.34

;; Query time: 164 msec
;; SERVER: 64.62.166.88#53(64.62.166.88)
;; WHEN: Fri Sep 16 14:06:55 2005
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 136


Date: 9/16/2005 2:30PM EST (ish)
About 30 minutes later the problem went away and my domain names started resolving again

Date: 9/19/2005 3:45PM EST
Namesecure's reply

Dear Trevor Harrison,

Thank you for contacting NameSecure Support. We are focused on delivering quality customer service and to addressing the issues you are having.

The website for mydomain.net is resolving. We apologize for any inconvenience you have experienced.

We hope this information has been helpful. For inquiries regarding this matter, please reply to this e-mail address (support@namesecure.com) and reference Service Request # XXXXXXXXXXX. For all other issues, please contact us via our online form at http://www.namesecure.com/support.

Sincerely,

Brent S.

The NameSecure Team


Date: 9/20/2005 9:23AM EST
Ok, here's my reply:

Yes, it is resolving now, but for at least 30 minutes it wasn't resolving on either dns1 or dns2 of your nameservers. (nothing was resolving on your nameservers except for namesecure.com itself) That's BOTH of your nameservers, effectively down at the same time. That's unacceptable. Please give me a reason for this lapse.

-Trevor


Date: 9/22/2005 11:28AM EST
Namesecure's reply

Dear Trevor Harrison,

Thank you for contacting NameSecure Support. We are focused on delivering quality customer service and to handling requests quickly and efficiently.

Your issue has been escalated to the technical service delivery team.

As soon as we have resolved your issue(s) we will notify you via e-mail. Issues are typically resolved within 2 to 3 business days.

We hope this information has been helpful. For inquiries regarding this matter, please reply to this e-mail address (support@namesecure.com) and reference Service Request # YYYYYYYYY. For all other issues, please contact us via our online form at http://www.namesecure.com/support.

Sincerely,

Jeffrey M.

NameSecure Support
support@namesecure.com
www.namesecure.com


Finally! Moving up the feeding chain to someone who knows what they are doing.


Date: 9/27/2005 2:41PM EST
Namesecure's followup

Dear Trevor Harrison,

I am aware of no issues with the servers that would have caused your website to be unavailable. Please specify the date and time and I will escalate the issue to one of our hosting administrators and have it investigated.

If you have additional questions please contact us at www.namesecure.com/support between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. EST Monday-Friday.

Thank you for choosing NameSecure!

Sincerely,

Christine001
The NameSecure Team


Date: 9/27/2005 2:54PM EST
Really? Sarcasm fails me.

My reply:

I specified the date and time in the original report. Do you need it again?
I've attached a copy of my original report to this message. [1]

Also, I would like to be put in touch with your supervisor to discuss the quality of the responses I receive.

-Trevor
[1] I've learned to keep copies of my original report since your system doesn't have any method to review the history.


Date: 10/3/2005 1:21PM EST
Namesecure's followup

Dear Trevor Harrison,

Thank you for contacting NameSecure Support. We are focused on delivering quality customer service and to handling requests quickly and efficiently.

Your issue has been escalated to the technical service delivery team.

As soon as we have resolved your issue(s) we will notify you via e-mail. Issues are typically resolved within 2 to 3 business days.

We hope this information has been helpful. For inquiries regarding this matter, please reply to this e-mail address (support@namesecure.com) and reference Service Request # ZZZZZZZZZZZ. For all other issues, please contact us via our online form at http://www.namesecure.com/support.

Sincerely,

Jarvis S.

NameSecure Support
support@namesecure.com
www.namesecure.com


Date: 10/4/2005 12:06PM EST
Namesecure's followup

Dear Trevor Harrison,

The website for mydomain.net appears to be resolving correctly at this time.

If you have additional questions please contact us at www.namesecure.com/support between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. EST Monday-Friday.

Thank you for choosing NameSecure!

Sincerely,

Christine
The NameSecure Team


Date: 10/4/2005 3:39PM EST
My reply

Are you joking? Or are you some robot who's only response is "the website for ${domainame} appears to be resolving at this time"?

Please answer all of my issues. Not just the ones that you can brush off by deliberately misunderstanding the question.

-Trevor


Date: 10/7/2005 11:11AM EST
Namesecure's reply

Dear Trevor Harrison,

We are truly sorry but we are not aware of any downtime in the past few weeks, but it is possible the servers where taken off line for a brief period of time for maintenance, it is possible that there where other servers down in the network, there are many possibilities and we can pinpoint the issue if it is already corrected by the time we process your request.

If you have additional questions please contact us at www.namesecure.com/support between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. EST Monday-Friday.

Thank you for choosing NameSecure!

Sincerely,

Christine001
The NameSecure Team


Date: 10/7/2005 11:44AM EST
My reply

Other than the fact that your reply doesn't really parse well (did you have a typo or forget a 'not' or "can't" in there somewhere?), I think I understand what you are saying about your service: customer outages of less than 2-3 business days (your standard response on your turn around time) aren't important enough to be discussed because the problem has already been fixed by the time you get around to the problem report.

However, I'm getting frustrated with you ignoring parts of my email that aren't convient. You still haven't giving me any contact info for your supervisor, or at least told me to go jump in a lake.

Just for the comedy of our conversation over the last few weeks regarding this issue, I've turned it into a thread on a webpage that you can browse:

http://www.harrison.org/~trevor/namesecurefun.html

-Trevor


Date: 10/18/2005 1:23PM EST
Namesecure's reply

Dear Trevor Harrison,

The issue with the down time could not be pinpointed it may or may not have been something within our system or within a system outside of our control, meaning backbone providers, rootzones updates, etc. For this reason there is a disclaimer of warranties which can be found in our service agreement located at http://www.namesecure.com/en_US/index.jhtml?cat=agreementi&subCat=null.

If you have additional questions please contact us at www.namesecure.com/support between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. EST Monday-Friday.

Thank you for choosing NameSecure!

Sincerely,
Christine001
The NameSecure Team

Thursday, June 02, 2005

Interesting / funny conversation about flash comm server's javascript engine

Here is a conversation I had with "daz lee" about an interesting mod he made to the javascript engine of the Macromedia Flash Comm Server. [added to this blog 6/22/07].

From: "daz lee" dazlee4@hotmail.com
To: flashcomm@chattyfig.figleaf.com
Date: Mon, 30 May 2005 16:45:26 +0100
Subject: [FlashComm] FC File System

Hey there guys, I spent most of yesterday as an experiment playing with flashcom files, and I've built a replacement js32.dll which adds a windows file system to flashcom.

two new objects are available with this FileSystem and Directory, you will find it and some information here.

fczone.com/SSAS_Extra

FileSystem.ReadAll, FileSystem.Write, FileSystem.Append, FileSystem.Remove, FileSystem.Rename

Directory.Exists, Directory.Create, Directory.Remove, Directory.Rename, Directory.List

Check it out, the download links are at the top in stage 3 of the install instructions.

Hope someone finds a use for it

From: "daz lee" dazlee4@hotmail.com
To: "FlashComm Mailing List" flashcomm@chattyfig.figleaf.com
Date: Mon, 30 May 2005 16:48:48 +0100
Subject: Re: [FlashComm] FC File System

oops just a note: use at own risk lol

should be ok, ive had no problems although I haven't been looking for them lol.

From: Trevor Harrison my-work-address
To: FlashComm Mailing List flashcomm@chattyfig.figleaf.com
Date: Tue, 31 May 2005 14:30:12 -0400
Subject: Re: [FlashComm] FC File System

daz lee wrote:

Hey there guys, I spent most of yesterday as an experiment playing with flashcom files, and I've built a replacement js32.dll which adds a windows file system to flashcom.

Need some help installing your .dll.

I renamed the orig .dll, and put your .dll in my "C:\Program Files\Macromedia\Flash Communication Server MX" dir (where the old one was), but when I start flashcom (from the cmd line instead of as a service), I get an error dlg saying:

"The procedure entry point JS_SetContextThread could not be located in the dynamic link library js32.dll"

Did I do something wrong?

I'm pretty sure on update2 of fcs. The flashcom.exe is dated 4/28/2004.

-Trevor

From: "daz lee" dazlee4@hotmail.com
To: "FlashComm Mailing List" flashcomm@chattyfig.figleaf.com
Date: Tue, 31 May 2005 19:31:14 +0100
Subject: Re: [FlashComm] FC File System

hym, has anyone else had a problem installing my dll?

im not sure really

From: "daz lee" dazlee4@hotmail.com
To: "FlashComm Mailing List" flashcomm@chattyfig.figleaf.com
Date: Tue, 31 May 2005 19:35:55 +0100
Subject: Re: [FlashComm] FC File System

the method, JS_SetContextThread is there for me, prehaps you got a bad download, maybe try again?

what os are you on? what flashcom are you using?....

daz
From: Trevor Harrison my-work-address
To: FlashComm Mailing List flashcomm@chattyfig.figleaf.com
Date: Tue, 31 May 2005 15:01:11 -0400
Subject: Re: [FlashComm] FC File System

daz lee wrote:

the method, JS_SetContextThread is there for me, prehaps you got a bad download, maybe try again?

Tried downloading the zip again. Got the same .dll again (js32.dll's md5 7235C05D85A3010ACE86B90AB0624D05) Looking at the strings in the .dll, there is no instance of that string (js_setcontextthread).

what os are you on? what flashcom are you using?....

XP Home. FCS 1.5 update 2.

-Trevor

From: "daz lee" dazlee4@hotmail.com
To: "FlashComm Mailing List" flashcomm@chattyfig.figleaf.com
Date: Tue, 31 May 2005 20:06:35 +0100
Subject: Re: [FlashComm] FC File System

that's really strange, I downloaded both the zip and the rar to my pc and looked at them, the method is there and all works fine, how the hell can this be???? lol

What's different about me, er, I have .net framework 2.0 but that should not effect this it was built in vc6. I have xp sp 2, fcs 1.5 with sp. Very strange indeed. Maybe you should try and downloading visual c 6, spidermonkey api and my jsapi.c and then compile it and see if that works. I am not at all sure how to over come this, its hard when you cant actually work with the error. Ill keep looking into it.

From: Trevor Harrison my-work-address
To: FlashComm Mailing List flashcomm@chattyfig.figleaf.com
Date: Tue, 31 May 2005 15:11:36 -0400
Subject: Re: [FlashComm] FC File System

daz lee wrote:

that's really strange, I downloaded both the zip and the rar to my pc and looked at them, the method is there and all works fine, how the hell can this be???? lol

When you say the method is there... you mean the name of the method? ie. the JS_SetContextThread? What is the offset in the file? I'll use a hex editor on my side and go to that offset. Also, is the md5 of your .dll the same as mine?

What's different about me, er, I have .net framework 2.0 but that should not effect this it was built in vc6. I have xp sp 2, fcs 1.5 with sp. Very strange indeed. Maybe you should try and downloading visual c 6, spidermonkey api and my jsapi.c and then compile it and see if that works. I am not at all sure how to over come this, its hard when you cant actually work with the error. Ill keep looking into it.

Well, from looking at your jsapi.c, the JS_SetContextThread function is surrounded by a #ifdef JS_THREADSAFE block. That means that function won't be there if you don't define JS_THREADSAFE while compiling/building.

-Trevor

From: "daz lee" dazlee4@hotmail.com
To: "FlashComm Mailing List" flashcomm@chattyfig.figleaf.com
Date: Tue, 31 May 2005 20:14:34 +0100
Subject: Re: [FlashComm] FC File System

look at my c file its at fczone.com/getFile?id=jsapi.c

daz and whatever file you have I have because I tried the download's.

From: Trevor Harrison my-work-address
To: FlashComm Mailing List flashcomm@chattyfig.figleaf.com
Date: Tue, 31 May 2005 15:41:46 -0400
Subject: Re: [FlashComm] FC File System

daz lee wrote:

look at my c file its at fczone.com/getFile?id=jsapi.c

Yes. Thats the file I was talking about with the #ifdef JS_THREADSAFE.

daz and whatever file you have I have because I tried the download's.

Sigh. You still haven't said if you can actually see the string "JS_SetContextThead" in the .dll. Nor have you confirmed the md5.

-Trevor

From: "daz lee" dazlee4@hotmail.com
To: "FlashComm Mailing List" flashcomm@chattyfig.figleaf.com
Date: Wed, 1 Jun 2005 19:46:42 +0100
Subject: Re: [FlashComm] FC File System

sorry I cannot be anymore help. all I know is that it works on my machines and my fcs friends, go figure. Maybe srinivas could shed some light lol.

daz


----- Original Message -----
From: Frédéric v. Bochmann
To: 'FlashComm Mailing List'
Sent: Wednesday, June 01, 2005 6:06 PM
Subject: RE: [FlashComm] FC File System

Interesting thread
From: Trevor Harrison my-work-address
To: FlashComm Mailing List flashcomm@chattyfig.figleaf.com
Date: Wed, 01 Jun 2005 16:55:20 -0400
Subject: Re: [FlashComm] FC File System

daz lee wrote:

sorry I cannot be anymore help. all I know is that it works on my machines and my fcs friends, go figure. Maybe srinivas could shed some light lol.

daz,
just an fyi: you creep me out. I'm kinda glad your .dll didn't work on my machine.... otherwise I might have used it on my production site, and I'm starting to think that trusting binaries from you isn't a good idea.

However, thanks for the pointer to the spider monkey stuff.

-Trevor

From: "daz lee" dazlee4@hotmail.com
To: "FlashComm Mailing List" flashcomm@chattyfig.figleaf.com
Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2005 17:01:18 +0100
Subject: Re: [FlashComm] FC File System

lol wtf, how do I creep you out lol. Gee lol it was just an experiment I didn't want to dwell on it for that long.

Last time I try and help you ! lol

...although maybe you wont have a choice... insider joke.

From: Trevor Harrison my-work-address
To: FlashComm Mailing List flashcomm@chattyfig.figleaf.com
Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2005 14:49:38 -0400
Subject: Re: [FlashComm] FC File System

daz lee wrote:

lol(1) wtf, how do I creep you out lol(2). Gee lol(3) it was just an experiment I didn't want to dwell on it for that long.

Last time I try and help you ! lol(4)

...although maybe you wont have a choice... insider joke.

4 'lol's in 3 sentences, thats how.

-Trevor

From: "daz lee" dazlee4@hotmail.com
To: "FlashComm Mailing List" flashcomm@chattyfig.figleaf.com
Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2005 19:52:01 +0100
Subject: Re: [FlashComm] FC File System

fuck you, (sorry if this offends anyone, except trevor)