Sunday
Mar062011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Commenting
Mar 6, 2011 Blogs I may have a fix for the commenting problem. It's DNS related so may take 24-48 hours to take effect.
Fingers crossed.
Update on Mar 6, 2011 by
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill
Yes, I'm pretty sure it's DNS-related. I'm transferring to a new host, so with a bit of luck this will fix it.
Reader Comments (33)
[BH – this failed, first try. That’s to say, first try on a freshly rebooted system. Rebooting router; trying again…]
Sorry - bedtime story intervened. No arguing with that.
Lockouts continued, so - full cookie purge; hard reset; router re-boot and here I am again.
What you say about DNS is resonant. I am ashamed to admit it, but somehow or other amid the endless shifting between machines and browsers, I'd ended up with the old BH.squarespace domain in favourites.
Now I am pointed at BH.net and all traces of BH.squarespace cookies etc are gone, let's see what happens.
Here goes...
It worked
Further test (sorry)
My #3 test failed in the usual way. Rebooting router....
Try again
Oh, I'm being soft-headed tonight. Now logged in.
Let's see if that makes a difference.
Nope, locked out again. Never mind. Let's see if the DNS fix works. Thanks for engaging on this; much appreciated.
What OS are people using? DNS isn't usually a router function and if you're on broadband, resetting too often can sometimes cause problems.
There can be a bit of a gotcha with Vista though, don't know about Win7. By default it'll cache DNS lookups on your machine, including bad entries. Symptom is often trying a site, it times out after a while, then next visit is an almost instant error because it's using the cached entry rather than DNS. That can take a while to flush from the cache, or you can do it manually.
For Vista, click on Start | Accessories and the [b]right click[/b] on Command Prompt to run it as administrator. Then type
ipconfig /flushdns
and it should show
Windows IP Configuration
Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache.
then try again. This sometimes happens if the website's using some kind of load balancing/sharing and has a bad machine or incorrect DNS entry. Based on what Don Pablo said a while back, guessing that's to do with their captcha config or server.
Since you mention that it is DNS related I thought I would point out that I get a Squarespace error page if I try to access this site at http://bishop-hill.net. Ideally there should be an immediate redirect to http://www.bishop-hill.net.
This suggests to me that perhaps your host doesn't give you full DNS control. See step 4 of this Squarespace help page:
http://help.squarespace.com/customer/portal/articles/10979-domain-mapping-general-instructions
Does 1and1 give you the ability to change your CNAME? If they don't offer you full control over DNS then it may be worth considering transferring the domain to a different registrar. GoDaddy has its knockers but they do offer total control over DNS settings.
Atomic Hairdryer
Vista :-(
I have no idea what the problem is. Rebooting the router (and yes, I appreciate your caveat re broadband) is the only thing that works, albeit briefly.
I didn't know that Vista was caching DNS lookups and will try to flush as you suggest at the next fail.
Thanks very much for this.
While the DNS thing might do something, that is an addressing problem. I am seeing timeouts. I have seen enough reports from everyone else to know that it really doesn't matter what OS or browser you use. I have also noticed something else and that is it is worse on weekends, and during peak browsing times at night in Europe (I keep track of the time in several parts of the world with clocks on my desktop.
And as I noted several times before, it is ONLY with the Captcha handling that I get timed out. And my fix is to go away for about 1/2 hour and try again.
While I am merely guessing on what I note above, it is the little monks getting all flustered waiting for a queue of people to type in those silly letters.
If you don't believe me, turn the captcha off for a couple days and see if BBD calms down.
In the interim, BBD, if you would, write down the time and date you have a problem in a log. And instead of rebooting everything in sight, try having a cuppa and merely reboot your system after 1/2 hour. That works for me. You do have to do both, or so it appears. The wait is really important as it usually takes that long, although the rebooting may be unneeded.
BBD
While Vista may have been doing something new and wonderful with DNS caches, everybody caches DNS look ups. I am using Win 7, and I will often sit on line for an hour entering my words of wisdom with everything working just fine and then, all of a sudden, ZAP. You would expect DNS caching to prevent wandering off to ga-ga land, wouldn't you?
I still say it is a queueing problem with the little monks. See that sort of stuff too many times before. I could be wrong, but the test is to turn the little bastards off for a couple days and see what happens at high load times like right now.
Don P
This is all somewhat above my pay grade. The system is telling me my domain isn't mapped correctly, however.
Re Don Pablo..
This is Microsoft remember. It did have a bad habit of caching bad responses, which is not RFC compliant, once cached, it'd stay till flushed or expired. That usually happened with 404-not found errors, so may not be the cause if it's a correct reset message from a server/load balancer. As you say, that may be Squarespace's captcha server struggling under load and not failing gracefully.
Don Pablo
Agreed re universality of problem (affects various browsers; OSs). So it looks like a server-side problem, and queuing may be it. Which is why re-booting the router gets you back in (change dynamic IP), until the same queue/message cache overflow server problem recurs.
We shall see.
Atomic
Cleared the Vista DNS cache as you suggest, but the problem recurred. Restarted browser, same again.
Don’t worry about it now. Looks like Squarespace is engaged. With luck, it’s the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end ;-)
"new host"
Means it is Squarespace no more?
I tend to agree with you BBD. I really don't care if I guessed right or not, and that is all I was doing, but turning off the little monks will test my theory, if the DNS fixes don't work.
My guess is that you have to wait for the monk server to either clear its queue (why I waited 1/2 hour) or my flushing the connection -- by turning off the system or you rebooting the router. I have a DSL modem/router/firewall which I never touch as it takes a long time to reboot. I have had it for 5 years and never had the BH type problems before. And I only see it when trying to communicate with the little monks.
One thought I have about your rebooting the router is you may be forcing you IP address to be changed. Most connections are static nowadays, but rebooting my router will change it, I have noticed.
Hopefully. Square peg in a round hole will get their act together as I am sure it is their problem, somewhere. I doubt BH can do anything else but move and that would be very painful.
What really is needed is to get a packet analyzer software package and catch the stream of packets that leads up to the problem. I don't have that code any more, nor had any for about 7 years when I got out of fixing computers.
Either that or we can get bell, book and candle hand hold an exorcism :)
@Shub
I think the Bish means he is changing his domain registrar. Domain registrars are often web hosts and vice versa - confusion over terms is common place.
Would be quite a big task to move away from Squarespace. The Bish should consider it though - a move to wordpress.com (hosted version of Wordpress blogging software) might be a better option in the long term.
Test
Don Pablo --
A packet capture program which I use at work is Wireshark -- visit wireshark.org. But I don't know if BBD wants to get that detailed.
Will --
Was the last line of your 9:20 post funny accidentally or on purpose? "GoDaddy has its knockers" indeed.
Test 03.21 GMT. All seems fine!
The only problems I've had is I get a timeout when I preview many times and/or wrongly enter the captcha (those little letters you need to type before posting a comment). A return to work/study/family/life for 15 mins or so, or a tea break, usually solves the problem. No other technical solution for the problem, I'm afraid.
A move to a different host is an interesting proposition. I hope little will change from the look and the presentation of the BH that we're now used to. Change always scares the hell out of hoi polloi.
@Don Pablo
Sir, you have mentioned this "Little Monks" theory of yours unchallenged many times. Do you actually have any scientific evidence for the "Little Monks" theory? Or is this another balderdash shite like a postman predicting the coming of a severe winter because he just happened to be delivering mail in areas where insects and gnomes act in queer ways. Your answer to the problem is illusory and occult. Please do not make a laughing stock out of BH site ever again.
I've had the same problem with Chrome on Win 7 and Chrome and Firefox on Linux (ubuntu).
No rebooting, it just seems to come and go....
The problem I reported (Unthreaded Feb 8, 2011 at 2:07 PM) that caused IE to grind to a standstill seems now to have disappeared, too. Thanks for getting it fixed.
His Bishop also moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform...
sHx
Sorry you took offense at my allusion, which seems appropriate for a site called "Bishop Hill." The little monks are the captcha server -- which I thought an appropriate play on "Caputian" . It has a problem and is part of the infrastructure that BH's ISP supplies and has nothing to do with either the Bishop or the site itself.
I spent 10 years at SGI as a technical support engineer in high speed networking, ranging from FDDI, ATM, broadband, digital telephony and such. Because I got out of that 10 years ago and retired, I cannot say that I am current in networking and indeed I am sure both BBD and certainly Atomic Hairdryer and it would appear HaroldW are all much more current than I on networking details.
However, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and even if I haven't looked at a duck for 10 years, it does not mean that I can't spot a duck. The problem is related to the captcha server. Whether it is due to DNS, which I doubt, but is possible, or just simply overloaded, which is my thesis, remains to be seen.
Remember that every time I had the problem: 1)the URL banner was pointing to the confirmation server, 2) it occurred during high use times, and 3) it took some time to clear itself. And do you ever remember having the problem before the little monks were put to work full time a month or so ago? And finally, I personally have not had this problem ANY WHERE else on the internet for many years.
I rest my case.
If you have a better idea what it is, let's hear it. I am with BBD that the problem is a total pain in the arse and needs to get fixed. I really don't care how it gets fix, or who figures out the problem. So far all I have seen were attempts by the ISP to shift the blame to other things like OS's, browsers, and DNS servers, instead of looking at their problem, which I doubt they want to.
Turn off the captcha server for a week and let's see what happens. That will be the test of my theory. I realize that it is in place because of spamming, but we can live with it off for a while if it helps focus on the actual problem -- and then maybe it will be fixed.
I’d just like to add for what its worth that I've not had any problems before or after the captcha feature appeared. But I am only a part time parishioner perhaps I’ve been lucky and pop in at low use times.
@HaroldW
Accidentally funny. Did you just find my turn of phrase amusing or were you alluding to GoDaddy's use of large chested women to promote its brand?
@BH
I'm a bit confused as to what you've actually done. I see from a whois lookup that you made a change to your domain registration yesterday. Only thing I can think of is that you altered the nameservers for the domain. Did Squarespace move you to a different server as well perhaps?
Anyway, there is still the issue of a Squarespace 'claim this domain' page when I visit http://bishop-hill.net which would indicate that your domain-mapping is still faulty.
Another note: bishop-hill.com is available - it's a bit nicer than .net in my opinion, but maybe it's too late to change now. bishophill.co.uk and bishop-hill.co.uk are also available...
Martyn
My strong impression is that the problem is triggered by the frequency at which you post comments. It seems to get me on about every fourth one when it's bad.
BBD
My strong impression is that the problem is triggered by the frequency at which you post comments. It seems to get me on about every fourth one when it's bad.
I agree. But it is always in http://bishophill.squarespace.com/process/CreateJournalEntryComment?
And for me, when I try to get the monks to read my q's and p's.
And the message is
Since I was able to post a few minutes earlier with the same connection, there is no way it is due to the last two suggestions, leaving the first. And DNS did NOT go wrong as I was connected.
I think there is a clear message here, and it is The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy
And I didn't need an Irish postman to explain it.
Will --
The latter. That is, I thought you were making such an allusion.
@HaroldW - If only I were that witty! I'm UK based so I don't see their ads, although I gather they like to put some big ones on show during the SuperBowl.
BH
I don't want to be too hasty, but so far, so good...
Fingers crossed.
BBD
Strangely enough, the transfer to the new domain host hasn't happened yet...I'm bemused.
BH
I have found the 'connection reset' problem comes and goes. Sometimes everything's fine for days at a time, then it all turns rat poo.
So, no idea either. Although my guess is that it has something to do with SquareSpace. I find it odd that they have not provided you with a coherent explanation for the problem so far.