Re: IPv6 access to gnuplot.info is broken [was Re: www.gnuplot.info lagging]

[Tait <gnu...@t4...>]

I understand how any of this works, but without administrative
control of the webservers in question -- or failing that, at
least the DNS or domain registration for gnuplot.info --
there's not much that can be done.

Back in 2018, it appears gnuplot.info was a vhost to
sourceforge, meaning there was no independent web server for
gnuplot.info; it just pointed users to sourceforge by a
different name. SourceForge has moved their public-facing
addresses to CloudFlare (specifically,
projects.sourceforge.net.cdn.cloudflare.net). And in fact,
216.105.38.10 is still that same IP from 2018, so SourceForge
has moved on and apparently not told you (or anybody else).
What would be ideal is to make gnuplot.info a CNAME to
projects.sourceforge.net.cdn.cloudflare.net, but then
SourceForge would have to have gnuplot.info as a SAN on their
TLS certificates, and it appears they do not. Maybe someone
could ask SourceForge if they still support CNAME redirection
for giving projects a "friendly" DNS name, since they
apparently did back in 2018. Make sure to mention TLS since
changing DNS won't do any good unless SourceForge also
updates their TLS certificates.

On the IPv6 side, 2001:468:c80:a202:0:b074:0:c082 belongs to
Virginia Tech and seems to be part of some defunct "funnel"
project on which I can't find any information. In fact all of
https://www.vtti.vt.edu/ seems to be dead. That address is
certainly outdated, and as with IPv4, the correct address
should probably be projects.sourceforge.net.cdn.cloudflare.net
but TLS gets in the way of the naive approach to that.

The domain (gnuplot.info that is) seems to be held through
Hover(.com) who apparently resells Tucows registration.
Administrative contact information is "redacted for privacy",
but https://tieredaccess. com/contact/1f00f497-18bb-4578-95c4-43ff3950d7ba
purports to be a way to contact the domain owner. (I've added
a space in there so the link doesn't get auto-harvested.)
It's common for domain registration contact info to be bogus
or ignored though, so if you have any other ways to reach
whoever owns/controls gnuplot.info, I'd try to pursue those.
If there's no other response, you could plead with Hover
support to try to get a hold of their customer and maybe
they'd be sympathetic and try whatever contact information
they have on file.



Ethan A Merritt <me...@uw...> said (on 2024/02/17):
> On Friday, 16 February 2024 14:42:51 PST Cottrell, Allin wrote:
> > I noticed today that the "gnuplot homepage" seems to be more than a
> > year out of date: the "latest release" there is 5.4.5 from October
> > 2022. The "gnuplot download" page lags even more, with the "latest"
> > being 5.4.2 (June 2021).
> > 
> > Allin Cottrell

> ...
> If anyone here understands how any of this works or how to fix it,
> please speak up! 
> 
> I tried to forward it to the last Email address I had for Clark Gaylord
> but it bounced.
> 
> 	Ethan

...

> It appears that the A and AAAA DNS records for "www.gnuplot.info" are
> pointing to completely different webservers.
> 
> The server that's answering IPv4 requests seems to be up-to-date, with
> information about Gnuplot 6.0. It reports a Server header of "nginx", and a
> Last-Modified date for the front page of December 29, 2023.
> 
> The server that's answering IPv6 requests, on the other hand, is
> substantially out-of-date. The front page shows Gnuplot 5.4 as the latest
> release, with a Last-Modified date of October 2, 2022. New pages such as
> http://www.gnuplot.info/ReleaseNotes_6_0_0.html all return 404 errors. The
> server also reports its version as Apache 2.2.17, which is from 2010.
> 
> This affects everyone with a working IPv6 setup. If it's not possible to
> find and update the server that's serving the v6 traffic, then I think it
> would be best to remove the AAAA DNS record so that everyone can see the
> updated version of the site. v6 support isn't just limited to a few people
> anymore.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Andrew