[general_re]

And yes, I'm logged in...

[stainlessbanner]

Glad you made it back. Bring the others!

[Constitution Day]

I was having FR problems too, but now everything seems fine.

[GunnyB]

Same here in VA - via AOL. Obviously I can get through - sometimes. About half of the attempts to read articles results in "Host Not Found" Errors. Placing my custom-made tin foil hat on, the errors seem to occur more often when I try to access stories about Clarke. You know, DICK Clarke, cyber warrior.

[YummiBox]

Thanks for the hosts file idea - I have sent an email to Jim as well... looks like there is a registrar issue.

[eyespysomething]

Note, problem like you were having.

[Tolik]

Thanks to invaluable advise by yahoo-group freerepublic2 user named "gmbeahan" http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freerepublic2/message/21464 you need to update your hosts DNS lookup file.

It is located on your hard-drive:   (or substitute windows instead of winnt)

Edit hosts file with Notepad or WordPad and save.

My hosts file looks like this:

# Copyright (c) 1993-1999 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host

127.0.0.1 localhost
209.157.64.200 www.freerepublic.com
 

The most important line here for you is this one: 209.157.64.200 www.freerepublic.com
 

As "gmbeahan" said in his yahoo post:

After you save, www.freerepublic.com should work normally, at least
until the IP address changes, in which case remove the entry or update
it with the new address.

This in effect creates your own private DNS entry. This is needed to
log on because of the way FR's login scripts are written. They don't
work right with an http IP address.
 

Worked for me. Thanks, "gmbeahan".

 

[kenth]

Dunno if it's my ISP (Verizon) or what, but I had to manually edit the hosts file to get here.

Not just you, I'm on Alltel. Man, I was getting desperate! I did exactly the same thing too.

[steveegg]

Ping.

[OXENinFLA]

This happen to me too. THANKS FOR THE INFO ON HOW TO FIX....

[beckett]

I had the problem and added (on a line by itself)

209.157.64.200 www.freerepublic.com

to my Hosts file, which fixed it. I had had the hosts file hardcoded in Windows 98, but this is the first time it became necessary in XP.

Something went screwy with DNSlookup for FR.

[aomagrat]

Same here in South Carolina. I had to fix the hosts to get here. What's going on?

[E Rocc]

I can get in (slowwwwwwwlllllyyyyy) using the AOL (9.0) browser, but not using Mozilla which usually works much faster.

-Eric

[FReepaholic]

Still not working at 11:29 Eastern. Had to modify my host file just to log in.

[BaBaStooey]

weird. Is this some kind of hacker out to get FR or is it another problem?

[steveegg]

Update from John Robinson over on the Yahoo lifeboat:

Something odd is happening with our domain at GKG.net (registrar.) For some reason their records say our domain is INACTIVE (expires Sep 22, 2006.) We're looking into it, I will keep you posted.

[dep]

there has been some kind of truly dreadful storm in the cybersphere this morning -- knocked everything out here for several hours. i think today must have bene some kind of zombie trigger day. it's a wonder we can get through at all.

[Junior]

I had a Free Republic main page from 9-14-2001 come up on my laptop yesterday while I was on the site. I couldn't figure out why so many people were responding to ancient posts, then it dawned on me what had happened.

[mhking]

OK, who forgot to feed the hamster?

[Psycho_Bunny]

I'm in Seattle and the DNS is borked....I had to connect via FR's IP.

[steveegg]

Possible workarounds for Mac users (I won't guarantee anything as I'm a Windoze user)

Mac OS9 - http://www.modwest.com/help/kb8-52.html

Mac OSX (and possibly Linux/Unix) - http://peter.nyc.ny.us/docs/macosx.html