ENS domain is not accessible through IPNS

Protocol
1

Hi! I am Ahmed, Software Engineer @ Panther Protocol

On Thu 2 Feb, our users started reporting that they can’t access our dApp which is hosted on IPFS. The outages lasted for the whole day but started to work normally the day after (Fri 3 Feb) without any interventions.

The Weird was that the dApp was not accessible using the IPNS link with the ENS domain (https://ipfs.io/ipns/pantherprotocol.eth/) but was working just fine using (https://pantherprotocol.eth.limo/) or through IPFS CID directly ipfs://bafybeicfwkwxy7g27x2rgiaa5f5bv5rupfxablc4ngqftptpns2dlpk6pm

It was only the IPNS link that was not working.

Here is a screenshot of what you would see if you opened https://ipfs.io/ipns/pantherprotocol.eth/ on Thu 2 Feb.

image
image1124×342 13.6 KB

Also here is our ENS domain information details

Was there any issue on IPFS/IPNS side that day? Or an idea about what was the root cause? Or about the possibility that this might happen again in the future?

Thanks!

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Hey @ahmedibrahim,

Thanks for reporting this problem — this is a great question. This may have been a problem in the DNSLink resolution, which is how the IPFS node resolves from pantherprotocol.eth to a CID.

For reference, in Kubo, the DNS resolution for .eth names is done by default using the Cloudflare DNS over HTTPS for ENS names bridge: https://github.com/ipfs/kubo/blob/b58356939e92729ab34e6c5e2615c67c7c4c1292/core/node/dns.go#L17-L18

You can test the resolution manually as follows:

curl -H "accept: application/dns-json" "https://resolver.cloudflare-eth.com/dns-query?name=pantherprotocol.eth&type=TXT"

Which currently correctly returns "dnslink=/ipfs/bafybeicfwkwxy7g27x2rgiaa5f5bv5rupfxablc4ngqftptpns2dlpk6pm"

However, we’ve seen problems with this in the past, e.g. Could not resolve ENS domains · Issue #8836 · ipfs/kubo · GitHub but these are usually on the Cloudflare end of things.

If you are running your own gateway node, you can configure Kubo to use the eth.limo DNS over HTTPS resolver: https://github.com/ipfs/kubo/blob/master/docs/config.md#dns.

Either way, https://ipfs.io/ipns/pantherprotocol.eth/ works for me now

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@danieln Thanks for your response! Now we have more insight into what might be the root cause.

I will try to run this command next time and see if the ENS domain is not accessible on the Cloudflare side!

Good suggestion, we will try to do this!

Thanks again for your help!

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