I updated the nameservers on my domain about 35 hours ago now, to point to Linode.

Normally when the update propagates to you though, that's you done.

But this time, it keeps swapping back and forth between the new site and the old (Even at times I can get one version in one browser, and the other in another browser)

Has anyone seen behavior like this before?

The domains in question are http://fangathering.com/ and http://forum.fangathering.com/

If it loads the old site for you, you'll see a big "Important:" info message at the top of the page.

In particular, I wondered if my firewall settings have anything to do with this. I've blocked everything bar port 80 and my SSH port. I know port 53 is for DNS, but it seemed like that is only for the nameservers themselves? Or should I be unlocking this?

Thanks for your help!

I dunno... But it's worth noting that, the root DNS servers' TTL for NS records is 48 hours, so you still have some time to wait.

FWIW, the nameserver change has hit the root DNS servers, and the A record change for fangathering.com and forum.fangathering.com has hit 98% of the nameservers RevIP.info tests.

Also, when changing which nameservers you use, you should give them all the same data for at least a couple days before shutting down the old ones, to avoid problems like this.

And when changing the *values* of your DNS records, you should drop the TTL to 5 minutes, wait $old_ttl seconds, then make the change and increase the TTL again. That way there will only be a few minutes of downtime. (You can also make the old web server show the same data as the new one, perhaps with a proxy, to avoid even that.)

Thanks for the reply! RevIP.info looks like a really handy resource, bookmarked it now.

It kind of worries me though. The chance of me being in that last 2% could be what's causing all this, but the bouncing back and forth between old and new is just bizarre!

I hope it is just that I need to give it more time like you said

And thanks, I'll definitely remember your shorter TTL trick for the next time!

Sorry for the doublepost, but just using another tool on the site mnordhoff mentioned gave these 2 errors:

Your nameservers returned a different set of NS records from each other.

The following nameservers failed to respond:
ns5.linode.com

It lists the nameservers as the correct ones (ns1.linode.com etc.). If they're giving different records does that make it likely that the latest zone file just hasn't updated in all of the servers yet?

And if it can't get a response from ns5, is there a chance it would revert back to a previously cached IP? (Might explain why loading the page takes me to the previous host again now)


Sorry for all the questions, just trying to get my head around what's going on!

ns5 has been having some issues today, though they should have been fixed a few hours ago.

Anyway, you didn't include ns5 among your nameservers at your registrar, so it's...probably not a problem. ;D

lol - True, it's only the Linode zones file that mentions ns5