After a power outage last night the Ubuntu production web server I am responsible for is not resolving its domain name to the ip address. I can access the web server by typing the ip address into a browser and everything works as normal, but if I type the domain name into the browser then the connection just times out.
I can ping google.com from the production server itself. but nslookup mydomain.com gives:
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached
As a quick bit of background to this question - I have taken over the role as sysadmin for this site with no documentation except for what is in the configuration files on the server. The dns appears to be handled by dnsexit, since whois mydomain.com | tail -3 gives:
Name Server: ns1.dnsexit.com
Name Server: ns2.dnsexit.com
So my question is: do I need to fix something on the Ubuntu server, or has dnsexit simply seen my lack of activity and discontinued my account? I don't know the account username or password for dnsexit but it seems that some kind of dns client should be running on the Ubuntu server to keep dnsexit updated. How can I find this dns software and possibly turn it back on (if it is turned off)?
update
i had to leave early yesterday, and today the dns has magically fixed itself. now when i type mydomain.com into the browser it resolves to my website. my guess is that dnsexit's policy must be to cut off the dns records while the target website is down (and maybe they only check the up-down status every 12 hours or 24 hours)... anyway, all is fixed now.
