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Long live https://blogs.oracle.com.

It appears that blogs.sun.com URLs no longer work. They are now blogs.oracle.com.

An Oracle employee is working his way through the relatively small number on ServerFault; however, SO has 800+ links and there may be others throughout the network.

I've randomly checked a sample of the links and simply changing sun to oracle fixes them.

The problem ones are like this http://blogs.sun.com/chengfang/entry/why_am_i_using_netbeans which should now be http://blogs.oracle.com/chengfang/entry/why_am_i_using_netbeans

Can someone with suitable powers fix the links network wide?

https://i.sstatic.net/APV6x.png

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  • 99
    This is a brilliant and eco-friendly move on Oracle's part. Everyone knows that header redirects are extremely energy intensive. Breaking a million links Internet wide is the much more sustainable option
    – Pekka
    Commented Jul 26, 2012 at 7:21
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    I just hit that url and it redirected me, after warning me that there was a security issue. While not technically "broken", they should definitely be fixed...
    – jmort253
    Commented Jul 26, 2012 at 7:28
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    @jmort253: Which URL? The problem ones are like this blogs.sun.com/chengfang/entry/why_am_i_using_netbeans which should now be blogs.oracle.com/chengfang/entry/why_am_i_using_netbeans
    – user147520
    Commented Jul 26, 2012 at 7:31
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    Someone is being extremely stupid. Redirects do happen, just direct to blogs.oracle.com/roller-ui/errors/404.jsp.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Commented Jul 26, 2012 at 9:18
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    Meanwhile in the Oracle Headquarter: "Whaaat? I've just read on the Internet that our links on Stack Overflow are broken!? Call the same guy in cubicle #123125 that has fixed the Server Fault links and order him to fix also the other 800+ links. Nooow!"
    – systempuntoout
    Commented Jul 26, 2012 at 10:54
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    Note that while changing blogs.sun.com to blogs.oracle.com works in most cases, there are some exceptions - blogs of long gone employees were purged unless specially chosen to be saved, and some blogs had to be renamed due to conflicts with existing blogs.oracle.com blogs in the site merge. For instance, there was already blogs.oracle.com/security so what was blogs.sun.com/security became blogs.oracle.com/sunsecurity instead. Also if you want to save a redirect, all Oracle blogs now use https and redirect http URL's to https.
    – alanc
    Commented Jul 31, 2012 at 1:50
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    @BilltheLizard: This isn't really status-completed. Note my request was for a network wide fix. There are still some on SF and possibly elsewhere too. IF you could provide an answer too I can accept.
    – user147520
    Commented Aug 5, 2012 at 19:36
  • Ah, sorry about that. It took me the better part of a week to fix the links on SO, so I forgot about the "network-wide" bit. I removed the status tag for now.
    – Bill the Lizard
    Commented Aug 5, 2012 at 20:09
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    @BilltheLizard: Wow - heroic editing. Given the size of the job I was hoping someone with database access would step up and do it.
    – user147520
    Commented Aug 5, 2012 at 20:15
  • @BilltheLizard this is now complete, I just finished checking all the SE sites. Can you please provide an answer so I can accept it and mark this as status-completed - thanks.
    – user147520
    Commented Sep 3, 2012 at 15:48

3 Answers 3

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The broken links have been fixed across the network. Thanks to everyone who pitched in.

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We should complain to Oracle that they messed up their redirects.

Currently, http://blogs.sun.com/chengfang/entry/why_am_i_using_netbeans redirects to https://blogs.sun.com/chengfang/entry/why_am_i_using_netbeans, which redirects to https://blogs.oracle.com/roller-ui/errors/404.jsp (which despite the filename, responds with HTTP 200). (checked using wget 'http://blogs.sun.com/chengfang/entry/why_am_i_using_netbeans' --no-check-certificate)

They should be able to fix it trivially.

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  • I honestly don't think they messed up.
    – user147520
    Commented Jul 26, 2012 at 11:23
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    @Iain why? Putting up redirects when you move content should be done by any competent webmaster.
    – CodesInChaos
    Commented Jul 26, 2012 at 11:37
  • @CodesInChaos: Unless of course you want to expunge the original urls.
    – user147520
    Commented Jul 26, 2012 at 12:16
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    @Iain: Whatever there intentions are, the certificate error is a clear sign of somebody messing up.
    – Dennis
    Commented Jul 26, 2012 at 12:50
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    @CodesInChaos "why?" - yes they've made a mess of a lot of people's links. But you don't do something like this by accident, so clearly they're doing exactly what they want to do. It's just that they want to do something stupid. But they haven't "messed up" in the sense of making something that they will see as an error and want to fix.
    – Rob Moir
    Commented Jul 26, 2012 at 13:13
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    @DJPon3: re: "you don't do something like this by accident": just because they are a company with many smart, technically competent people doesn't mean that they assigned the website migration task to a smart, technically competent person. it could very easily be an accident
    – Kip
    Commented Jul 30, 2012 at 18:03
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    @kip - from what I've seen, big companies like that tend to have every little click of the mouse overseen by about 50 different people when it comes to stuff that's visible to the public.
    – Rob Moir
    Commented Jul 30, 2012 at 18:55
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    Sun/Oracle employees with blogs (such as myself) received notice earlier this year that "blogs.sun.com > blogs.oracle.com redirects will expire on Feb 10, 2012." and that we needed to "change any external links to blogs.oracle.com (from blogs.sun.com)." We already complained at the site maintainers who announced that, and it didn't help.
    – alanc
    Commented Jul 31, 2012 at 1:44
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    @alanc I'm not surprised. I'm a little saddened to see an era end though.
    – Rob Moir
    Commented Aug 2, 2012 at 8:40
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The http://download-llnw.oracle.com is also dead (well, actually, it returns HTTP 400 "Invalid URL"). We should replace it by http://docs.oracle.com. I just started editing a few of my posts, but I've hit the demotivating "max 5 edits on own posts per day" barrier too soon.

The http://download.oracle.com currently redirects to http://docs.oracle.com (by 302, not by 301 :/ ). Let's hope that it won't die sooner or later as there are currently 5000+ links to it...

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