I’m about to allow a domain to expire. I wanted to stay ahead of this to shake out any problems, so I removed the URL from the Piwik site and changed the DNS servers to a placeholder server. Something strange now happens to my archiving: It is trying to call my site, when it seems like it should be calling the API; the invalid response is exactly what the placeholder server would send if it were asked to serve a web page.
Tried without success:
- Did an export of the entire database and found no references to the old site name in any table.
- Put the old URL back into the site.
- Put the DNS servers back, reactivating the site.
I have shell access to the server on which Piwik runs and have confirmed through nslookup that the DNS changes have taken effect. I’m baffled at how Piwik could have any knowledge of the server below, and even then, I don’t understand why it’s calling my web site at all. Piwik runs on a completely different server and domain from the site being monitored.
(Log below. There’s no sensitive info here so I haven’t munged anything.)
INFO [2015-08-01 05:17:47] ---------------------------
INFO [2015-08-01 05:17:47] START
INFO [2015-08-01 05:17:47] Starting Piwik reports archiving…
INFO [2015-08-01 05:17:47] Will pre-process for website id = 2, period = day, date = last52
INFO [2015-08-01 05:17:47] - pre-processing all visits
ERROR [2015-08-01 05:17:48] Empty or invalid response ’ No page found
No page found
We couldn’t find a page for the link you visited. Please check that you have the correct link and try again.
If you are the owner of this domain, you can setup a page here by creating a page/website in your account.
’ for website id 2, Time elapsed: 0.560s, skippingINFO [2015-08-01 05:17:48] Done archiving!
INFO [2015-08-01 05:17:48] ---------------------------