[SOLVED] Site Only Reachable Via IP Address

[kongondo]

Hi all,

I have a site that suddenly is no longer reachable via its domain name. It can only be reached via its IP Address! The message the browser displays if you try to access the site is:

server IP address could not be found.

Funny thing is that its subdomains and other domains on the same server work just fine, reachable via their domain names.

I have Googled and tried a few suggestions such as confirming the site is not getting blocked by my local network, to no avail. 

The site sits on a VPN server (Linode) but the domain names and dns are with Namecheap. The only recent change is Linode upgraded the VPN, to offer more storage. Sometimes back, I cannot remember how long, I upgraded the server to PHP 7.2 (I know, I need to upgrade again), but I didn't experience any issues.

Any ideas where to look, what to try please?

Thanks.

 

 

[teppo]

Most likely a silly question, but are you certain that the DNS records point to the correct address? Linode didn't change anything regarding these when they upgraded the server?

If you check the records for this site manually (host -t A www.yourdomain.com, or nslookup -type=A www.yourdomain.com if you're on Windows), are they correct?

Also: if you try the domain with a service like https://isitup.org/, does it work there? Just trying to figure out if it's an issue with your environment, or a more widespread thing ?

[kongondo]

@teppo, thanks for chiming in.

42 minutes ago, teppo said:

if you try the domain with a service like https://isitup.org/, does it work there?

I forgot to mention that I had already tried this as well as https://www.whatsmydns.net/. It doesn't work in these places.

55 minutes ago, teppo said:

are you certain that the DNS records point to the correct address?

As far as I can tell yes. I've also checked reverse DNS Lookup and it points back to my domain name.

56 minutes ago, teppo said:

Linode didn't change anything regarding these when they upgraded the server?

I don't think so. Besides, they don't manage the domain for me. That's done by namecheap. Only thing Linode have are the value (hostname) of the reverse DNS.

1 hour ago, teppo said:

If you check the records for this site manually (host -t A www.yourdomain.com, or nslookup -type=A www.yourdomain.com if you're on Windows), are they correct?

I'll try and report back.

Thanks.

[kongondo]

1 hour ago, teppo said:

If you check the records for this site manually (host -t A www.yourdomain.com, or nslookup -type=A www.yourdomain.com if you're on Windows), are they correct?

Just tried. These cannot find the domain. They do find the sub-domains though.

I'm chatting with namecheap. Let's see what they have to say.

[teppo]

27 minutes ago, kongondo said:

Just tried. These cannot find the domain. They do find the sub-domains though.

I'm chatting with namecheap. Let's see what they have to say.

Hope they can help. If I got this right and the name server doesn't know the domain, this definitely sounds like a DNS issue. Though I may have misunderstood what you meant here.

Just for the record what I meant by "Linode changing something" was just whether they might've changed the IP of the server, or something along those lines. Though if your other domains point to the same domain and have identical DNS records, that'd be an unlikely scenario.

Anyway, this is very much just guesswork. If you don't get answers from namecheap but can share the domain name with us (or via PM), I could also take a look. Sometimes two pairs of eyes see more than one, etc. ?

[kongondo]

6 minutes ago, teppo said:

Hope they can help.

Indeed they have! They say it was a one-time glitch in their system that caused the domain not to point to the IP address (or something along those lines). Just waiting for the propagation to finish globally but I can already see the site is working here.

Thanks for your help as always @teppo. I'll mark this as solved.

[teppo]

Awesome!

... well, not awesome that the DNS was messed up, but you know, awesome that they got it solved — eventually ?

[kongondo]

1 minute ago, teppo said:

but you know, awesome that they got it solved — eventually

I was impressed by their response time actually. I thought I'd have to wait a while but they managed to resolve it via a live chat (took about 30 minutes).