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GoDaddy Bobbles DST Changeover?
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Mar 11, 2007 02:18 PM
from the time-for-a-change dept.
from the time-for-a-change dept.
Several readers alerted us to this piece in PC World reporting on concerns that GoDaddy might not be ready for the DST changeover. Some readers, and others, claimed that GoDaddy's servers are not reachable now and are not serving email or web sites; but others see no evidence of this. The article recounts the rather flip response one GoDaddy customer got from their tech support: "As Daylight Savings [sic] does not apply to our servers, since we are on Arizona Time and our time zone does not change, our servers wouldn't update." When IDG News Service contacted GoDaddy they got an altogether more sensible reply.
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Timezones (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.alioth.net/ | Last Journal: Friday November 09, @03:53PM)
All my internet servers just use UTC. NTP synchronized, naturally.
Re:Timezones (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.wunsch.org/)
Re:Timezones & embedded firmware (Score:4, Interesting)
Whether it's done in UTC or local time zones, having local decisions made based on the local time can be problematic when hardware, firmware, and software manufactures don't provide updates.
The DST has changed. I am now taking inventory of hardware that didn't properly make the change. I don't count things like the digital clock in my car, because it doesn't support DST in any way.
Items that have failed and support DST and still failed include my wall Atomic Clocks, and my Linksys Router with the latest (Feb 2007) firmware updated. The manufactures website on both of these items makes absolutely no mention of the DST change as if nothing happened.
I have work-arounds for both failures. It involves turning off the broken DST and changing the time zone one zone to the East. The Linksys router is a non-issue for most folks, but I use the clock for access restrictions, otherwise the school age kid requires lots of prodding to get offline and go to bed. Having his access shutdown eliminates lots of nagging.
Why can't Linksys even admit the issue and state on the website the latest firmware update did not address the issue? I should not have to check to see if the software is working properly. I think I will submit a bug report and see what happens.
if there is a possibility for a screwup ... (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://sarathmenon.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday December 10 2006, @08:21AM)
1. DNS TTLs being incorrect.
2. Your mail showing incorrect time
3. Web server logs (who analyzes these anyway) showing an incorrect time.
How can any or all of these bring down a site. WTF?
Re:if there is a possibility for a screwup ... (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://libtom.org/)
Tom
Re:if there is a possibility for a screwup ... (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.wrongplanet.net/ | Last Journal: Monday June 07 2004, @09:22AM)
and what is the more sensible reply? (Score:1)
DST? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://matt.truch.net/ | Last Journal: Wednesday August 29 2001, @07:19PM)
Sure, it happened around the day of the change. Sure, they were pretty flip about responding to peoples' questions about their DST change readyness. But is it fair to jump to the conclusion that it [the outage] is because of the new DST rules? It could be that they are incompetent in other ways.
hmm (Score:1)
(http://freedomsforums.com/)
I wonder if they have done a risk analysis on bad pr and customer support.
Payback for running MS (Score:1, Insightful)
IntellAdmin blew it with their DST fix (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.animats.com)
Remember IntellAdmin [intelliadmin.com], offering a free DST patch for Windows 2000? Well, it doesn't work. I installed it on a Win2K system, and the time didn't change to DST. I contacted Intelladmin, and got "workaround instructions" (open clock, change to another time zone, change back, then reset the clock to the correct time.). It only changes to DST the next time you manually set the clock.
So if you deployed this "patch" on your Win2K machines in a corporate environment, the time is going to be wrong when everybody shows up on Monday.
Admitting it now (Score:2, Insightful)
I can confirm that they were down, but it looks like they might be coming back up. Some of my hosts are responding now.
For a bit, the GoDaddy support site mentions "technical difficulty". Godaddy.com [godaddy.com]
The Internet Storm Center has notes, too: SANS Internet Storm Center [sans.org]
Interesting (Score:1)
(http://www.patmcdermott.com/)
What about Yahoo? (Score:1)
Sloppy designs (Score:1)
This is an ancient problem, and the industry is learning it the hard way again. Things like time zones are in flux all the time, this state does, this state does not --. It is why UNIX has zic. You just edit the file and use zic to update the files.
Where the problem comes in is that we design applications to use local times on a GMT/network time system. Internet apps should almost never use local time and rely on unchanging GMT0.
I have started putting all new systems in with GMT0 as the system default. It prevents system apps and this Java (yes too, Java needs a patch) to get messed up. If a user wants it to be CST or MST, I set it in their profile.
still down as of 15:30 EDT (Score:1)
My Linux update (Score:4, Informative)
time, if anyone is interested. Some of the information I found on
thar Intraweb was, well, sloppy, and it took some trial-and-error.
The following was exactly what I typed, and it "took" correctly
this morning, with a nice 1-hour gap in the Apache log at 2am. I
don't know if this is the best way, but it worked.
su -
# root password, of course
ls -l
# (mine said:
# in case we have to reverse the procedure below)
mkdir
cd
wget ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzdata2007c.tar.gz
tar -xzf tzdata2007c.tar.gz
zic -d zoneinfo northamerica
cd
mv zoneinfo zoneinfo.old
mv
ln -sf
zdump -v
# (should include Mar 11 in listing)
Re:My Linux update (Score:5, Funny)
my (Score:1)
I have confirmed this with my websites (Score:1)
(http://www.2cups.com/)
The core problem looks like a name resolution issue, however with their apparently lax attitude towards patching, who knows what other problems might be going on.
--Colin
Their DNS Was Down (Score:2)
(http://node777.net)
Go Microsoft... (Score:1)
Bobbles? (Score:2)
Uhh.. Whats not "sensible" about that answer? (Score:2, Informative)
I'm a Unix admin for one of the largest ISPs in the state. We're an AIX house.
I can't speak for our Windows bretheren, but our AIX boxes required absolutely no patching. Our servers calibrate against a UTC source, and the patch IBM offers only affects the optional right-hand portion of $TZ in
GoDaddy's response is entirely sensible.
The only thing not "sensible" here is that you have a bunch of clowns in Congress making decisions with ramifications far beyond their ability to even wrap their brain around.
By the way, our trains run just fine without DST.
Trying not to be outdone by Jet Blue? (Score:1)
My service was interrupted. (Score:1)
-d
Aint no supposdly bout it (Score:1)
(http://garbageburrito.com/)
Back up (Score:1)
Did anyone else read the title wrong? (Score:4, Funny)
(http://homepage.mac.com/fahrenba)
So, what *is* the problem? (Score:2)
Mail problems today (Score:1)
If they use Linux/Unix, they're probably correct (Score:1)
Except for perhaps their email messages or logs having the wrong date, it shouldn't cause any real problems. Any software that cares about times would be using *internal* times (e.g. time_t in C) which doesn't change with DST anyway. If software uses *external* time, it likely broken with any DST change, no matter when it happens. DST changes only change the external representation of the internal value of the clock, not the actual value of the clock. Geez, changing the clock for DST would be stupid.
Anyone else having issues with Yahoo mail? (Score:2)
OT: Anyone notice time.gov off this morning (Score:2)
(http://www.underreported.com/)
What's more, the local TV station's website was two hours off, so that really convinced me that time.gov was correct at the time :-)
Did anyone else notice that time.gov was off this morning?
DNS was down (Score:1)
(http://plan-b-for-openoffice.org/)
park27.secureserver.net and park28.secureserver.net where reachable per ping, but did not respond to DNS requests.
Interestingly the two servers have both the same 4 IP addresses. Looks like a round robin load balancing between four servers (hopefully).
It appears back on line at this time.
K
OFFICIAL GoDaddy.com response (Score:2, Informative)
Our Internet Security and Network teams immediately invoked counter-measures to respond to these large scale, sophisticated attacks.
After 4-5 hours of intermittent disruptions of various services this morning, including shared hosting and email, the attack was contained.
Our Internet Security and Network teams will continue to analyze and assess the nature of today's attacks and their characteristics to identify additional defense mechanisms that can be used in the ongoing efforts of Internet Security.
Go Daddy has made and will be continuing to make significant investments in our information security infrastructure to protect from these shifting types of attacks.
This in no way related to the switch to Daylight Savings Time, as some have speculated. With regard to DST, Go Daddy has been engaged in preparation and patching and worked closely with our vendors for some time leading up to the DST change. leading up to the DST change.
Neil Warner
Chief Information Security Officer
The Go Daddy Group, Inc.
Another reason to leave GoDaddy! (Score:1)
(http://www.mindslayer.net/)
Glad I use GKG.NET [gkg.net]. They didn't go down at all. I even called them on Friday and asked if they were up to date with their DST fixes, and they assured me they were.
Anyone have a guess on how many sites went black? (Score:1)
(http://thepinetree.net/)
GoDaddy is hardly alone... (Score:2)
(http://www.cheapcheap.biz/)
I've talked to several people this morning whose web sites were down for a few hours over the weekend -- and their DNS and hosting are managed by companies other than GoDaddy. They're mostly smaller regional ISPs rather than national names, but still. A few national donation systems for nonprofits were unresponsive or very sluggish yesterday morning, as well.
At my organization, we applied all of Microsoft's patches to our servers and we STILL have DST issues... our I.T. guys worked all day yesterday to minimize the damage, but there are still a lot of incorrectly-scheduled meetings in our Exchange calendar. That's ridiculous. ("No," they replied, "it's Microsofticulous.")
more godaddy info... (Score:1)
(http://www.idiotproofwebsite.com/)