Slashdot Log In
Microsoft Hotmail/Passport Service Interrupted:UPDATED
Posted by
Hemos
on Sat Dec 25, 1999 10:07 AM
from the how-canyou-live-without-mail dept.
from the how-canyou-live-without-mail dept.
Oryx Gazella writes "Unable to access Hotmail this Christmas morning? This would be why!
You may have received an error like "unable to locate host", or "no such domain" after your browser was directed from www.hotmail.com to lc2.law5.hotmail.passport.com. There are no NS records for the domain passport.com in any of the root name servers. Hotmail (www.hotmail.com) uses the Passport Service (www.passport.com) which allows users of the Microsoft Messenger Service to login using their "Passport" and to add other Passport members to their contact list. The new MSN Messenger Service 2.0 is integrated with MSN Hotmail and Microsoft Outlook Express for real-time email notification, and retrieval.
" Not being a Hotmail or regular Windows user for that matter, I cannot verify this - but I've gotten several e-mails from people this morning wondering about it.Update: 12/26 01:39 by H :Click below to read the quite humourous conclusion to this story.
Effugas writes "Oh, this is just beautiful. Linux user Michael D. Chaney of Doublewide.Net, upon reading of Microsoft's Christmas loss of the passport.com domain, took it upon himself to donate $35.00 for the world's largest software company to restore service for its customers. I've heard about Linux empowering its users to truly prevent downtime, but this is ridiculous ;-) I'm still laughing--Merry Christmas, Microsoft, from the Linux community to you! "
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Microsoft Hotmail/Passport Service Interrupted
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 272 comments
(Spill at 50!) | Index Only
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
A good example of distributed support (Score:3)
ms often claims that "there isn't any one source for suport" in Linux. This is a good thing, and it is related to the passport.com outage. here's why.
When passport.com went out early on the morning of the 25th, a loose band of Linux users from around the world (using /. as there hub) set to work on the problem early Christmas morning. Never thinking about themselves, never considering that it was a holiday, all they knew was that it was a network, and it needed fixing.
These selfless acts of working a problem through to a solution is not only common in the Linux comunity, it's standard.
At first, many people thought it was a problem with Hotmail (as the original story stated [slashdot.org]), but it didn't take long to find out that it was something else.
While many people suspected a problem in DNS, the first sign of what the problem might be, came from an anonymous user at 9:30 AM confirming earlier thoughts that it may be a NSI related DNS problem.
*** ns.cw.net can't find passport.com:
Non-existent host/domain
> www.passport.com
Server: ns.cw.net
Address: 204.70.128.1
Other users expressed thoughts that the domain was shut off by non-payment (Hydrophobe on 09:44 AM -- Saturday December 25 1999 CST) but didn't give details.
Still, many thought perhaps faulty DNS caching may play a roll. After all, ait would be rare for a domain like passport.com (who controls purchases at nearly 30 domains around the internet) would be out.
Then at 09:53 AM -- Saturday December 25 1999 CST /. user zyklone@hotmail.com hit paydirt when he looked up passport.com at: https://payments.networksolutions.com/
Also, /. user vovin posted a few nslookeps to confirm that the DNS was indeed where the problem was.
Less than an hour later: by Trailer Trash (mdchaney@michaelchaney.com) on 10:58 AM -- Saturday December 25 1999 CST (#90)
(User Info) http://www.doublewide.net/
Hey, I paid it for them. Merry Christmas, Microsoft.- ------------------------------
---- Your transaction was successful. Payment has been posted for the domain.
-------------------------------------------------
Details of your transaction are given below. You may print this page for future reference.
Card Type: MASTERCARD Card Number: [SNIP]
and boom, the domain was back up and running.
distributed support in action
This is also an axample of why monopolies are bad things. ms, to fat lazy to care about it's customers, left all the passport.com users disapointed just when they needed the service the most, in the heart of the holiday buying season.
And all of this could have been prevented by a simple $35,00 payment.
_________________________
Decent webmail? (Score:3)
Does anyone have any opinions as to which webmail (Lycos, Yahoo, Netscape, Hotmail, OperaMail, etc.) is the best. By best I mean:
1. Reliable! 99.99% uptime!
2. Quick access.
3. Everything else (sub-folders, filters, etc.)
-chill
Proposed fix (Score:3)
cat >>/etc/named.conf <<'EOF'
zone "passport.com" {
type forward;
forwarders 207.46.138.10;
};
EOF
Assuming, of course, that you are running your own BIND (which IMHO, is nearly always a good idea). Otherwise, add the required entries to your /etc/hosts file.
Not running Unix? Too bad, isn't it...
Re:First for /. ? (Score:3)
Congradulations. You get it. You understand the "bazaar" form of open source software development.
To answer your question I would say that no, this isn't the first time that a solution was ferited out here on slashdot(/.)
Perhaps this particular solution was solved a little faster than others(it was easy:), but everyday people pose questions and get results.
The realtime moderation system here on /. allows the truly insightful and informative responses to instantly be subjected to peer review around the world, and float to the top. Where else can an engineer judge there thoughts and ideas so quickly?
Just as an example, the current top story [slashdot.org] on /. talks about game software, and a persons ability to cheat at that game if the source code is open sourced. Someone, somewhere has worked through this problem before, and in less than an hour, there have been 4 (Score:5) responses to the story(including the actual guy writing the software being debated.)(see here:1 [slashdot.org] 2 [slashdot.org] 3 [slashdot.org] 4 [slashdot.org]).
This kind of peer review and moderations without censorship allows the best ideas to flurrish, and all the other ideas to keep flowing.
_________________________
Re:"Linux user pays past-due Microsoft bill" (Score:4)
Possible publicity stunt? (Score:3)
Microsoft purposefully takes down Hotmail, and then blames in on the crappyness of FreeBSD? Then slam FreeBSD big time and replace it with a Windows NT solution they just happen to have waiting in the wings.
Ooooooohhh. Conspiracy I say. What do they have to lose if they do this? They get to slam FreeBSD and promote Windows NT all at the same time. And its fairly clear that most people don't really care if Hotmail goes down for a little bit anyways, nor care if its secure. (I'm thinking about the security problem they had a while back.)
I just thought I'd share that nice juicy rumour I heard from my friend who works over at Hotmail and is involved in the decission making process. (He will of course go unamed and I will not provide anything to back up my claims.)
But remember: don't blame things on stupidity and incompetence when you can blame things on conspiracy. Or is it the other way around? :)
Oh, and I'm not dissing FreeBSD. I like it. So blah.
Re:NSI (Score:3)
I did a check on https://payments.networksolutions.com/
and they actually have an unpaid invoice.
Domain Name passport.com
Invoice Number 11395965
Amount Due $35.00
Billing Contact Information
Gudmundson , Carolyn
Phone: +1 (425) 882-xxx Fax: +1 (425) 936-7xxx
Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond , WA 98052
UNITED STATES US
Hotmail isn't really down... (Score:4)
Hotmail really isn't down, it's only that the domain name returns a bad address. If you really need to log in, save the following as an HTML file on your computer and open it with a browser. Should work with any javascript-enabled browser. Tested with Netscape, IE, and Opera. Needless to say, that this is very insecure, and you shouldn't leave this file lying around.
---cut here---
<html>
<head>
<noscript>
<meta http-equiv=Refresh content="0; url=http://www.hotmail.com">
</noscript>
</head>
<body onload="document.pform.submit(); ">
<form name="pform" action="http://www.hotmail.com/cgi-bin/dologin" method="POST">
<input type="hidden" name="login" value="[yourlogin]">
<input type="hidden" name="passwd" value="[yourpass]">
<input type="hidden" name="rru" value="/cgi-bin/folders">
<input type="hidden" name="js" value="yes">
</form>
</body>
</html>
---cut here---
--
Hotmail still down.... (Score:4)
Re:It works for me... (Score:4)
*EVERYTHING WILL BE DOWN*
THE APOCALYPSE IS NEAR.
Re:"Linux user pays past-due Microsoft bill" (Score:4)
If you've indeed payed the bill, I beg you, please get a hold of someone in the media. This could be such a fantastic headline. and be sure to refer to yourself as a linux user. please please. If you really payed it. use the publicity.
_________________________
MyRealBox.com (Score:3)
Re:Hotmail still down.... (Score:5)
----
Your transaction was successful. Payment has been posted for the domain.
-----------------------------------------------
Details of your transaction are given below. You may print this page for future reference.
Card Type: MASTERCARD
Card Number: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Amount Charged (USD): 35.00
Approval Code: A 00 074598 MCCJ5QTM5 12250001 Y Y
-----------------------------------------------
List of Domains
Count Domain Name Invoice Number Amount Due
1 passport.com 11395965 35.00
-----------------------------------------------
Thank you for using the On-Line Payment System. If you wish to pay for another domain, click on the Start button. If you have completed your transactions, click on Quit to exit the system and visit the Network Solutions Home Page.
Webmail... the future of mail ? :/ (Score:3)
Five years ago, when I began using the Internet, only pop3 mail was available. These pop3 accounts were quite costy, but they worked. My university "gave" me my first pop3 mail for free, though.
Then, several companies began to give pop3 accounts for free, in exchange of some data for their files. They were slightly slower than those costy accounts (the bandwith was very weak), but, hey... that was free.
Then came Hotmail & Co. Banners, ads, mail stored only on the servers, poor functionality (filters, and all 'advanced' functions of any pop3 mail client are missing). But above all, a phenomenal waste of bandwith due to the ads, the fact that everytime you want to consult a mail or your address book, the data must be reloaded, etc. I hate wasting bandwith. I hate when my mother checks her webmail on my computer !
With pop3 mail, sending a mail takes 3 or 4 KB for the entire process. How many KB does it take with webmail ?
Now, it's more or less impossible to find free pop3 accounts. Even Internet access provider begin to give webmail instead of real mail to their customers. Does it mean that, in a few years, every mail account will be a webmail account ?
P.S. : I can't understand why so many people believe that webmail is easier to use than pop3/imap mail. When traveling, it's so easy to use a simple telnet (every dumb Win95+ machine has a telnet client which works well with pine) or, even easier, a web gateway like Endymion MailMan [endymion.com]. Same layout than hotmail, without the ads !
Stéphane