sup/tg/

[#] 4chon's down again, oshi

09:06pm UTC - 8/08/2008

Ffff, okay, so, it looks like 4chan's down again. This time their DNS servers appear to be nonresponsive to queries, and blah blah jargon jargon flux capacitor inverse polarity discharge the ionic tacyon pulse you stopped reading at "DNS."

So, here's how you fix it, courtesy of Adslahnit's copypasta:

Go to C:/Windows/system32/drivers/etc, open up the file called "hosts" with Notepad, and Ctrl+V the following into that file:

74.125.47.121 status.4chan.org
206.220.140.2 ns1.4chan.org
216.213.88.50 ns3.4chan.org
207.126.64.165 ns2.4chan.org
207.126.64.166 4chan.org
207.126.64.166 www.4chan.org
207.126.64.167 content.4chan.org
207.126.64.168 orz.4chan.org
207.126.64.169 tmp.4chan.org
207.126.64.171 rs.4chan.org
207.126.64.172 static.4chan.org
207.126.64.176 zip.4chan.org
207.126.64.177 bin.4chan.org
207.126.64.178 dis.4chan.org
207.126.64.181 img.4chan.org
207.126.64.182 dat.4chan.org
207.126.64.186 cgi.4chan.org
207.126.64.187 nov.4chan.org

Save the hosts file, clear your browser's cache, and then try refreshing 4chan again.

It won't hurt anything if you forget to take these out once 4chan's back up, although it'll mess things up if 4chan changes IPs and these are still in there.

Update: Oh, you want details, do you? Fine then. Below is a DNS trace of what happens when someone tries to visit 4chan. The first portion shows the root servers, the second portion shows the .org servers, the third portion shows the nameservers for 4chan, and the fourth... times out.

~$ dig 4chan.org +trace

; <<>> DiG 9.3.1 <<>> 4chan.org +trace
;; global options:  printcmd
.                       311275  IN      NS      J.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.                       311275  IN      NS      K.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.                       311275  IN      NS      A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.                       311275  IN      NS      I.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.                       311275  IN      NS      M.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.                       311275  IN      NS      B.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.                       311275  IN      NS      C.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.                       311275  IN      NS      D.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.                       311275  IN      NS      F.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.                       311275  IN      NS      H.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.                       311275  IN      NS      L.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.                       311275  IN      NS      E.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.                       311275  IN      NS      G.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
;; Received 488 bytes from 216.177.15.102#53(216.177.15.102) in 1 ms

org.                    172800  IN      NS      C0.ORG.AFILIAS-NST.INFO.
org.                    172800  IN      NS      D0.ORG.AFILIAS-NST.org.
org.                    172800  IN      NS      TLD1.ULTRADNS.NET.
org.                    172800  IN      NS      TLD2.ULTRADNS.NET.
org.                    172800  IN      NS      A0.ORG.AFILIAS-NST.INFO.
org.                    172800  IN      NS      B0.ORG.AFILIAS-NST.org.
;; Received 417 bytes from 192.36.148.17#53(I.ROOT-SERVERS.NET) in 97 ms

4chan.org.              86400   IN      NS      ns2.4chan.org.
4chan.org.              86400   IN      NS      ns1.4chan.org.
;; Received 95 bytes from 204.74.113.1#53(TLD2.ULTRADNS.NET) in 20 ms

;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached

See that last bit? When you try to ask 4chan where it is, it hurpderps the fuck out and doesn't answer. The website is there, everything's working just fine, but you just don't know where it is. DNS is like the phone book of the internet, and someone scrubbed out all the numbers for 4chan.

The HOSTS file is a kind of override for DNS. Any entries you put into the HOSTS file will be used instead of actually going out and asking the DNS servers for information. For example, if you look in your HOSTS file, you'll see a single entry for localhost set to 127.0.0.1, which is your computer's loopback address. A useful way to stop certain kinds of phone-home DRM validations is setting their destination to 127.0.0.1 in the HOSTS file, then running a little server on your computer that returns "good" to all requests. This tricks the software into asking your own computer for validation, where your fake server validates it, and the software goes on its merry little way.

As for why 4chan isn't responding to queries... well, I have no idea, honestly. It's possible that they're getting DDoSed from another angle, but I could be wrong. Maybe their DNS servers just crapped themselves. In any event, this is why it was nice when the 4chan status was at 4chanstatus.blogspot.com, as that's external to 4chan entirely; because 4chan's DNS is down, it can't answer questions about status.4chan.org, making the whole status page thing pretty damn useless.

If I figure out more or hear more information about why the DNS servers for 4chan are both down, I'll be sure to post it here, but at the moment I can't rightly say. I can only assume DDoS based on the fact they were getting DDoSed last week. 4chan should probably look into getting some external DNS hosting that can handle an attack... and next time the webserver's getting DDoSed, set 4chan's records to 127.0.0.1 so the hackers aren't actually wasting bandwidth, though they should probably reduce the TTL values for their records, as last I checked they're set pretty high and blah blah jargon jargon...

~Lord Licorice

Candymen.

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