001 java.net.UnknownHostException

periodically when i try to post a blog entry it will fail and i'll get this error message (001 java.net.UnknownHostException). i never really knew whether this was caused by blogger or my host (i suspected it was some of each, and technically i was right, but the mast majority of the time it was blogger).

well, it turns out that this error generally means that one of blogger's DNS servers is down. DNS servers resolve human-readable names (such as "animals within animals dot com") to actual IP addresses. so if blogger's DNS server is down, blogger won't be able to find your server, and your entry won't get posted, no matter how well your server might be performing.

(i say "generally" because if your server is, in fact, down, you will probably also receive this same error.)

anyway, the fix is to find your server's IP address and plug that into your blogger settings rather than the server's domain. there are lots of ways to determine that IP address, but the easiest is to go to a site like this one.

i was having this problem this morning, and assumed that srn was down for maintenance (that new new server is due pretty soon), but miraculously after several tries my ghost in the shell post went through... but then my DST post wouldn't. and i could log in, but still couldn't post. obviously the problem was not with srn. a little googling and here's the answer.

so if you use blogger and get a lot of failed posts, there's your answer.