Network Dissolutions, h4xx0ring and more!

Thursday, July 5th, 2001 at 12:00 am | 1,992 views | trackback url
Tags:

Sun Jul 1 01:01:14 PDT 2001

colorquiz.com

I can’t recall who had this linked in their diary recently, but the results for mine were somewhat scary.

“…Depleted vitality has created an intolerance for any further stimulation, or demands on his resources. This sense of powerlessness, combined with frustration that he cannot control events, subjects him to agitation, irritation, and acute distress. He tries to escape these by stubborn insistence on his own point of view, but the general condition of helplessness renders this often unsuccessful. Is therefore very sensitive to criticism and quick to take offense…”

I pointed it out to afew friends, and theirs were dead-on also. Scary how 8 colored blocks can determine so much about someone… if you believe such things.

Network Dissolutions
I highly recommend that anyone using href=”http://www.nsi.com”>Network Solutions get off of them as fast as possible. I’ve been trying for over 5 weeks to relocate the domains I own from a network in CT to a new network in CA. First, there is a bunch of incorrect information on my records, scattered all over the place.

One of my domains’ Administrative contact is DD989,while it’s supposed to be registered to my internic handle of DD989-ORG, (they dropped the -ORG from my entry).After three phone calls to them personally, I managed to get them to change my address and telephone number from the CT location to the CA location. I couldn’t do this via their “automated” email system after 52 failed emails (with NIC tracking numbers on each of them).

I then tried to remove this erroneous person from my record, and sent many more emails. I emailed Darin DeCuir at his given address (dead), and then did a Google search for his name, to find out if he had any other address I could use. I found one entry, and emailed him there. No response. I tried calling Kaiwan, and the numbers were turned off.

I then called Network Solutions back, and spent 75 minutes on the phone with one of their operators, who proceeded to do nothing more than send me a blank Service Template to fill out, which generated a volley of more failed “automated” emails. Another phone call the next day, 1:07 long, and the same results.

This operator was much more clueless than the first. I was irate. She insisted that I send a fax in, on “company letterhead” (which I have none, and do not intend to) and photocopies of my license. I asked to speak with a supervisor, since I had emails and phone calls going back 5 weeks, without a single change to any of my domains, accounts, or records. Unacceptable!. She proceeds to tell me that the supervisor is in a meeting.

I settle, frustrated, on that, and decide to comply and send them a fax. I faxed a new copy of the Service Template to them, signed, dated, with NIC tracking number on it, and included photocopies of my CT driver’s license and a photocopy of my passport. There was no doubting that the person whose name is all over the domain records, and the address of the registrar, my web company, is the same one which appears on both my passport and my license (and anyone who knows me personally knows how much I HATE having pictures of me floating around) I can literally count the number of pictures of me in existence on both of my hands.

I call them again to verify that changes I made to a domain in progress were indeed being made, and that my address on my own internic handle records was being updated. The (non-English-speaking) woman proceeds to tell me that I filled out all the wrong forms in my email requests. I explain to her that their staff needs more training, since the operator from the previous day was the one who showed me which forms to submit. I explain to her that I’m moving my domains from a network which has a DNS server, to a network without any local DNS. She proceeds to start talking to me in a condescending tone about how I can’t possibly have a website without having a dns, and how a host, website, and dns are all the same thing, and have to exist before I can have a domain.

Ahm, no. I explain to her again what I’m trying to achieve, and she comes back in her best 3rd-grade-schoolteacher voice telling me that I’m wrong, and I obviously don’t know how the internet works. “…the IP address is like a telephone number… ” After 2 full hours on the phone with her, frustrated, I simply hang up on her. (blood boiling)

The next day I call again to verify that they received the fax (this was Friday), and the operator (very helpful) indicates that they do, and proceeds to read off information ONLY shown on my passport. Great! He says it will take 24-48 hours to affect the changes. Perfect.

I then log into EasyDNS (thanks again go to rasmus for giving me the tip) and set up my domains to relocate to the new network. I pull all of the records, hosts, subdomains, etc. into there, and purchase a 25-domain block.

I call NSI again (Saturday) to see if my information has been updated, so I can make the final moves, and the operator this time says that they never received my fax, and that none of my information was updated at all, because I used the wrong templates. I inhale slowly, trying not to reach into the phone, and have her go over the process with me, which I verified was the right process. She then tracks back three identical requests in 3 consecutive days with 3 individual NIC tracking numbers, that I requested, responded, and confirmed the domain changes with their automated system, but their system ate the final responses, and never made the changes. She then proceeds to tell me that they have a NEW fax number for “expedited” requests to change my info, and if I fax them again, but this time on “company letterhead”, they can make the change in 24-48 hours instead of 3-5 business days.

After about an hour on the phone, and frustration mounting, I begin to boil.

This is unacceptable. I have NIC tracking numbers going back 5 weeks. You’ve already confirmed that your system is eating the responses. I’ve got over 50 emails here from your system, full of NIC tracking numbers, requesting changes, and NONE have been made. I’ve faxed you everything about me possible, to verify I am who I am. I want my domains moved, and I want this other person off my record, he is blocking my access to change my information on a domain I paid for. You are deliberately restricting my ability to run a business. I would like you to either change the information now, as I’ve requested, or give me a supervisor.”(puts me on hold for 7 minutes)

Sir, I’m sorry, but the supervisor is in a meeting right now but if…

(I cut her off)

Unacceptable! I called on Tuesday with the same request, and he was in a meeting then. No supervisor is in a meeting at 10:00AM on a Saturday morning. Either you get me a supervisor now, or you get me his manager. Pull him out of the meeting. I don’t care. This is unacceptable. You gave me the same excuse on Tuesday. I don’t want excuses, I want answers!

(automated voice)

We’re sorry, the line has been cut. Please try your call again later…

She hung up on me! (blood boiling)

I call back, get someone else after 37 minutes on hold waiting for someone to answer the line, and THIS person tells me she’s looking at the fax itself, and that it will take 3-5 business days to process. Why can she see the fax, but the previous operator 37 minutes previous, could not. Another volley of automated email, no changes made, and still I haven’t seen a single change to my domains, other than my contact information in my internic record has been updated.

The result is that I have less than one week to relocate my domains now, including the ones with incorrect information in them, and get a box built onto the new network. My current provider is cutting off the service. He emailed me asking me to call him, and specifically said not to email him back. I called him on his cell phone, left a message. I called him at home the next day, left a much longer message, describing the details of the changes I was making. No calls back yet. I’m getting very suspiscious.

h4xx0ring
This weekend has been quite busy, and it’s only 1/2 done. I’ve been hacking a ton of things. I was helping eriddle and another friend (separately) get cvs working, hack his sshd to function properly, get Sitescooper working for Brian (and give him the crash course in CPAN and building perl modules.

I managed to get annotation working with named anchors in ViewCVS. I’ve emailed gstein the patch I made. Simple 3-line patch, and now it looks like code2html‘s output, with numbered lines with links for each line. I can now email someone a direct link to a line in an annotated file. I’ve got quite a lot of customizations going into ViewCVS on my new site. Have to get ready for a huge launch. It’s going to be so much fun doing this!

I’m still muddling with getting my new apache build out the door for the new box. I need a server with mod_php, mod_perl, mod_python, mod_ssl (with certificates), and all the other goodies build as DSOs. Not an easy task. I’ve been tinkering a bit with ApacheToolbox, though the latest version is horribly broken. I spent more time patching bits and bobs here and there in the scripts and tarballs than I did letting this “automated” system build them for me. I did manage to get the following
working though:

[Sun Jul 1 00:35:27 2001] [notice] Apache/1.3.20 (Unix) mod_python/2.7.2 Python/2.0 PHP/4.0.6 mod_gzip/1.3.19.1a mod_perl/1.25 mod_ssl/2.8.4 OpenSSL/0.9.6a configured — resuming normal operations

There’s still a problem though. If I have mod_python loaded, the server segfaults. GAR! Still working on that one. Certificates are working, and all of the Rewrite rules are functional. I’ve been spending some time splitting off the larger chunks of httpd.conf into separate external files, so I can manage them easier (it also makes it easier when you have to disable ssl, for example, to comment out one include line, then to comment out 75 SSL defines and structures in the master httpd.conf file itself).

For those wanting manual instructions (HIGHLY recommended), there’s Apacompile.

I found this invaluable trying to figure out how to juggle the things that were always nearly impossible manually.

pilot-link.org is up.
{news|bugs|cvs|irc|www}.pilot-link.{org|com|net}
are all routed to the same box. Only the .org points to the old domain until we roll over to the new network. The same will go for all of the other sister and vanity domains held on the machine.No, the IRC services offered are not in any way going to be attached to, pointed to, or affiliated with the private services of OpenProjects, otherwise known as OPN. I will not confuse people by affiliating a
free, open, public service with a closed, private service such as OPN.

Lots of new stuff coming up for LWE. Surprises abound! Can’t say any more. My skills will be put to some of the ultimate tests with this design, development, and architecture and implementation. I like biting into stuff like this!

Went for my cardiologist-ordered chest Xray at Seton Medical Center on Friday afternoon. Will find out the results on Monday.

Ok, this isn’t hacking, but I haven’t had a haircut in over a year. Went from bald to… this… without a single cut. Stopped at the local (non-English-speaking) SuperCuts on Friday after my chest Xray, and got about an inch trimmed off. Much healthier now.

sshd, Sitescooper, CPAN, cvs

ViewCVS

Apache

Domain Hacking

Secret Project #209

Bones

Hair

Birthday’s coming up. I wonder if I can get this sleeve colored in before Mike kills himself on his bike.

What a Saturday! I wonder what’s in store for me tomorrow!

Last Modified: Thursday, July 5th, 2001 @ 00:00

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Bad Behavior has blocked 2652 access attempts in the last 7 days.