Live data from Hacker News

Tell HN: Please update your DNS records when abandoning servers

news.ycombinator.com

51–60 of 69 posts

Re: Tell HN: Please update your DNS records when abandoning servers

#51
I have a dedicated box just for this kind of thing. When I'm offlining names I point them all to this one. It marks all pages as 410 (except for stuff I want to 300). It catches mail. Has a little script to help me verify necessary settings.

So, while winding down or pending removal it's basically a dead-end parking page.

Re: Tell HN: Please update your DNS records when abandoning servers

#52
post #38
post #4

Yep. A few years ago I had a server on DigitalOcean and stopped using it. I forgot to remove the A record for it on a sub-domain connected to my main site and suddenly a sub-domain on my main site was serving ~400,000 pirated PDFs because the old server's IP address was in control by someone else. I wrote about it here: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/a-recycled-ip-address-caused-... And it was discussed on HN back th…

Although in OP's case someone wanted to buy the domain, so maybe don't update your DNS records, in case your subdomain becomes worth a lot of cash? I mean hell, create a bunch of random bogus A records too just in case any of them wins the lottery ticket. A records are free, after all.

Is an open commons to be treated like this by civilized people? Why throw garbage in the streets? It makes no sense or else is motivated by reaction and negativity.

It seems either desperate, or hostile, or so casual as to be literally stupid.

Re: Tell HN: Please update your DNS records when abandoning servers

#53
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although in OP's case someone wanted to buy the domain, so maybe don't update your DNS records, in case your subdomain becomes worth a lot of cash? I mean hell, create a bunch of random bogus A records too just in case any of them wins the lottery ticket. A records are free, after all.

I think you have it backwards. OP didn't own the domain, just inherited the IP address through their host. The actual domain owner is losing out on the sale.

Yup. You could however try to middle-man the sale if you could find the actual domain owner.

Re: Tell HN: Please update your DNS records when abandoning servers

#57
post #18

I agree, but there's something related which I feel is very weird and I wonder if I'm the rule or the exception: I have close to 100 domains to my name(for relatable reasons, i.e. "hey I have a wix site can you please add a domain to it, idk how") in addition to a dozen servers. Some of those domains are completely unused but could be pretty valuable to some people. No one has ever contacted me about either one of th…

If you want someone to buy your domains, you need to list them on the domain marketplaces, e.g. Sedo and GoDaddy.

Re: Tell HN: Please update your DNS records when abandoning servers

#58
post #9

Another reason to require https?

If somebody is in control of the content served via the domain, as this is the case, they can obtain a valid HTTPS certificate

Not necessarily. You can always generate self-singed certificate, yes, but trusted issuers such as Let's Encrypt often use challenges that require you to temporarily modify the DNS record - that wouldn't be possible in this case.

Re: Tell HN: Please update your DNS records when abandoning servers

#59
post #12

While domain registrants should certainly be careful that their DNS records point to trusted servers only and should definitely remove any stale DNS entries, we should also configure our web-servers to return successful response for specific hostnames only and error/no response for everything else. Here is roughly how the configuration for, say, https://example.com/ , would look like: sudo mkdir /etc/nginx/ssl sudo o…

This is a great suggestion and I'll set up servers this way from now on rather than allow default fallback content to be served. Others are quick to point out this only fixes half the problem, well that's 50% more than nothing. For the other 50% you have control of your own DNS records, keep them up to date. And if everyone did this mismatching hostname/content would be a thing of the past.

Re: Tell HN: Please update your DNS records when abandoning servers

#60
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If somebody is in control of the content served via the domain, as this is the case, they can obtain a valid HTTPS certificate

Not necessarily. You can always generate self-singed certificate, yes, but trusted issuers such as Let's Encrypt often use challenges that require you to temporarily modify the DNS record - that wouldn't be possible in this case.

The HTTP-01 challenge for example can be performed on any domain pointing to a machine you control, without the need to further modify DNS records, resulting in a valid certificate accepted by most browsers.

https://letsencrypt.org/docs/challenge-types/

Post reply on HN