This post is a request for any assistance I can get.

It’s about a mistake or an oversight when setting up a Windows 2003 server running Active Directory (AD) and DNS. So if you know nothing about these things then please feel free to check out one of my other more regular posts – such as this one.

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OK, on with the issue.

Please bear in mind that this used to work using a workaround despite the oversight. It stopped working when due to reasons beyond their control our hoster had to put us on another server and hence a different IP, but more on that in a moment. (more…)

This was kinda cool – in a very geeky way I guess.

Tonight in work I had an issue which was eventually narrowed down to being a fault with DNS. Now, I’m fairly good with DNS stuff but the answer to this one had me stumped so the original change engineer was contacted. After a run down of the problem and what I thought the issue was he’d soon found the problem – a typo in an A record, well more accurately a mis-spelling but the end result was the same.

Anyway, he quickly changed it and somewhere in the ensuing conversation uttered the words “watching it propagate” … well I know that DNS needs to propagate but didn’t realise you could watch it almost in real time. So of course I asked … and he pointed me at DNSWatch.info where you can pump in the IP or do

main name that you’ve just changed and by refreshing the browser window you can literally watch it reach the various root nameservers.

As I say cool geeky and perhaps just a touch sad!