Convince my boss's Mac the website has moved

We just changed the IP address of our web site, but I don't know how to get my client's mac to look at the new site.

She is seeing the "site has moved" message, but everybody else is just fine. I tried a hard fresh in firefox and flushed the cached in OS X 10.5.8

What do I tell her to do?

When I ping the site it goes to 67.xxx.xxx.xxx When she pings the site is goes to 207.xxx.xxx.xxx

Is this a problem with the ISP? (att in Florida)

Update:

The site resolves properly in Oregon California Colorado

The site resolves to the OLD ip address in Miami, FL

The Florida computer is going to what USED to be her site, but is not a holder page. Everybody else is getting redirected by the old host's DNS to the new host's IP while the nameserver changes at networksolution resolved.

MrChrister

Posted 2010-01-15T23:57:38.423

Reputation: 274

3with the original title i really thought you were trying to redirect mac.com and keep the managers blissfully unaware... – quack quixote – 2010-01-16T00:18:12.860

1can you determine (via dig or nslookup) where the bad IP is coming from? – quack quixote – 2010-01-16T00:37:58.297

The IP address is that of the old server. Her computer is resolving incorrectly (or hasn't updated how it resolves) Her ping and tracert are accurate, for the old server. – MrChrister – 2010-01-16T00:59:54.430

1@MrChrister: yeah, that was obvious. you need to check the DNS servers directly, via the dig or nslookup tools. the bad IP is coming from somewhere; might be the DNS server her computer is configured to use, a DNS server that server is talking to, her computer's cache, etc. the tools i mention allow you to query the servers directly to find out what they know. – quack quixote – 2010-01-16T01:15:40.727

Answers

The term Client makes me think this person isn't using your network? If you 'just' changed the IP, this is normal, it can take hours for DNS changes to propagate across every DNS server. If the problem persists tomorrow, look for solutions - otherwise, point her towards the IP, not domain, for now.

If it's not the ISP, make sure her /private/etc/hosts file doesn't have any rules that could redirect the URL, and she's not browsing through a proxy server that could potentially be caching DNS entries (many corporate proxies do this to reduce bandwidth load and improve loading times) - also make sure the behaviour doesn't carry on between browsers (some browsers cache DNS more aggressively than others, though this shouldn't be a problem unless something's gone wrong), but if everything is alright, I'm not sure what the issue could be!

Phoshi

Posted 2010-01-15T23:57:38.423

Reputation: 22 001

1sorry, phoshi, doesn't look like this'll get you any closer to that Mind Reader badge... – quack quixote – 2010-01-16T00:36:48.530

I have updated the question. I was being childish under pressure. I apologize to anybody I have offended. It is not excusable. – MrChrister – 2010-01-16T01:01:36.990

1It's alright - we all have the right to get a bit snappy under pressure - I'd be a hypocrite if I said otherwise! Updated the answer with a few more things, just in case! :) – Phoshi – 2010-01-16T01:13:14.987

1note the title indicates boss-lady is on a Mac. not sure where they keep their hosts files... – quack quixote – 2010-01-16T01:17:32.067

Whoops! Too used to windows-centric questions! – Phoshi – 2010-01-16T01:23:45.490

@~quack The hosts file is at /etc/hosts on Mac OS X. – Chealion – 2010-01-17T18:30:18.400

You can add the HTTP headers:

HTTP/1.1 Moved Permanently
Location: http://www.example.com/

to the header messages. This will redirect all browsers, robots, etc. to the new URL.

amphetamachine

Posted 2010-01-15T23:57:38.423

Reputation: 1 443

Everybody in the planet has the new URL, just this computer pings to the wrong IP address – MrChrister – 2010-01-16T00:07:23.253

Ended up doing this, but I have asked a question as to why I needed to. This is just a temp fix until the nameservers update – MrChrister – 2010-01-16T06:26:22.607

According to serverfault.com, this is what happened

https://serverfault.com/questions/103281/why-did-this-website-dns-change-fail-in-some-parts-of-the-us

Sure I did the transfer and everything worked as I expected, but the TTL was cached all over the internet, and depending on the path followed from the request to the destination, it might have gotten side tracked. I have to wait for the TTL on the old host DNS server to expire BEFORE everthing is ok again.

MrChrister

Posted 2010-01-15T23:57:38.423

Reputation: 274