Jan 31

Written by:
1/31/2008 6:53 PM 

I recently had a problem where overnight most (but not all) of the domains hosted on my GoDaddy.com virtual dedicated server could not be reached via ping, web browser, email, etc. The machine was running fine, so I suspected a problem with the Plesk DNS service. However, unlike past times, this was running fine.

However, when I checked the file "C:\SWSoft\Plesk\dns\etc\named.conf" (a source of previous problems), I found that all the problem domains were missing from this zone file. So this was a clue. But even restoring these entries in the named.conf file didn't help.

Then I noticed that this file references files in the folder "C:\SWSoft\Plesk\dns\var\". The files it references were missing from the folder. Another clue!

After trying lots of reboots, etc., the final solution was agonizingly simple. Go to the Plesk control panel for each domain and click the Disable button for the domain. Then click Enable. Voilà - the domains came back! (Checking "C:\SWSoft\Plesk\dns\var\" showed that the files were recreated - confirming the original clue.)