Re: Configuring virtual servers without DNS

[Warren Michelsen <Warren@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 9:54 AM -0800 11/22/00, Technical Support wrote:
>
>>But I still think it's a silly system that requires me to wait for the DNS to 
>>start pointing at my server before I can set up a virtual host!
>
>The system is a little more practical for new virtual hosts, but it still 
>makes sense.  In my experience, many DNS error go undetected for users until 
>they see the big 'DNS failed', 'DNS mismatch'. or the wrong IP address 
>initialized. 

So you're saying that, in your experience, people configure a virtual host and 
then don't hit it with a browser to see if it's working?!? That's the only way 
I can imagine such an error going undetected.

>>
>>Is there nobody at Tenon who knows why WT needs to check DNS against virtual 
>>host setups?
>
>It simply needs to know what IP address to initialize if it is supposed to add 
>a new one.  Back in  the day, WebTen was the only server that could do this.  
>It is still a lot easier than going into a UNIX or OT file to add IP 
>addresses.  Also, this is one of the few check a normal user has that they 
>have set everything up (including DNS) correctly.  days of downtime are 
>inevitable if somebody makes a switch such as yours too fast with out making 
>sure (or WebTen making sure) the DNS is correct.

Eric, I had weeks of down time because I COULD NOT just go in and enter a 
correct IP address.

>
>>>I recently blundered and configured a virtual host with DNS configured so as 
>>>to point this host to the OT stack on my dual-stack setup. I caught my 
>>>mistake and corrected the DNS within minutes but it took weeks to get my 
>>>WebTen back to normal.
>
>This is exactly the reason that WebTen acts as it does.  without the error in 
>WebTen I wonder if you would have caught the mistake so soon. 

It WAS NOT the WebTen error that alerted me to the problem. It was that my 
headless, co-located Mac became unreachable via TB2 as soon as WebTen started. 
(Recall that I had incorrectly configured my DNS to the OT stack side of the 
Mac. As soon as WT initialized, it rendered my Mac unreachable via TB2 over 
TCP/IP. I had to log in via TB2 between the time the Mac restarted and the time 
WebTen started to have any chance of controlling my WT machine.

>Deleting the problematic virtual host via the admin would have fixed the 
>problems you were having.

Impossible. Every time WT started, I lost control of the Mac via TB2.

I managed to stop WT from starting but simply editing my httd.conf file to 
correct the address did not fix the problem. My rclocal file and possibly 
others were affected.

Obviously, Tenon feels they are doing us a favor by looking up the IP address 
of a virtual host instead of simply letting us enter an address. I do not feel 
well-served by this "feature."

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