DNS trouble for octave.org domain

[John W. Eaton]

The problem with the octave.org DNS is that the domain registration
lapsed and the name server information was changed by the registrar
(they automatically renewed the domain and "parked" it with a service
that puts advertising on it).  There was no unauthorized access or
change that I know of, and no one has stolen the domain from us.

I don't own the registration or do it myself because when it was first
registered 15 years ago I had no idea how to do it.  So someone else
(John Turner, if you looked up the WHOIS info) did it and has been
paying for and renewing it ever since.  This year,  he forgot about it
and the expiration date passed.  He's since renewed it and attempted
to fix the name server info.

It may take a few more hours from now for it to get back to normal.
The name server in my corner of the net is returning correct info more
often than not now, but it is still not always correct.  The correct
info is something like this:

  coredump:402> host -a octave.org
  Trying "octave.org"
  ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 49303
  ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 9, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

  ;; QUESTION SECTION:
  ;octave.org.                    IN      ANY

  ;; ANSWER SECTION:
  octave.org.             12562   IN      MX      0 mx4.cae.wisc.edu.
  octave.org.             12562   IN      MX      0 mx1.cae.wisc.edu.
  octave.org.             12562   IN      MX      0 mx2.cae.wisc.edu.
  octave.org.             12562   IN      MX      0 mx3.cae.wisc.edu.
  octave.org.             12562   IN      SOA     ns1.dreamhost.com. 
hostmaster.dreamhost.com. 2013011800 18076 1800 1814400 14400
  octave.org.             12562   IN      A       208.113.197.36
  octave.org.             12562   IN      NS      ns3.dreamhost.com.
  octave.org.             12562   IN      NS      ns1.dreamhost.com.
  octave.org.             12562   IN      NS      ns2.dreamhost.com.

  Received 250 bytes from 192.168.1.1#53 in 15 ms

but I'm still sometimes seeing ns1.voodoo.com (the DNS server for the
domain parking service) as the SOA, which is not correct, and
sometimes I just see some voodoo.com addresses and no dreamhost
addresses in the results.  These problems should fix themselves as the
DNS caches are flushed.  That should happen within about 24 hours of
the time the nameserver entries were modified at the registrar.

Sorry for the trouble.  We will try to ensure that this kind of
problem doesn't happen again.

jwe