One of the largest, most elite and best kept secrets on the web for finding music and software is OiNK. It is an invite only, must keep a share ratio site that has the mentality of, If it’s a music album and it’s not on here, it probably doesn’t exist.

I’ve been using the site on and off for the last year or more now, simply a great resource for no bullshit music and software when I need it. Everything was great until Friday night going into Saturday, the torrents that I was seeding stopped and I was unable to get the site to resolve.

Tonight I did a blogsearch for recent articles about OiNK and found Daniel Lee Sale’s blog where hey speculates:

I don’t know if this has anything to do with it or not, but Apple’s Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard” beta leaked recently, and was on OiNK until CrunchGear, a technology blog, exposed it.

He’s also listed this information, which I have now verified from the official OiNK site and have my problem resolved

We apologize for the continuing DNS problems. You can get around this by adding our hostnames directly to your hosts file. Add the following lines to your \windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file (the number of spaces between the IP and the name doesn’t matter as long as there’s at least one space (or tab):
85.17.40.69 tracker.oink.me.uk
85.17.40.70 irc.oink.me.uk
85.17.40.71 oink.me.uk

If you use a Mac, there are a few more steps:

Temporary fix for Mac OS X, it requires some work in the Terminal. You need the admin password for your system for this. Make sure to enter all commands in bold correctly with the proper spaces and capitalization.1. Open “Terminal” from your Applications / Utilities directory.2. Type cd /private/etc and hit enter.3. Time to edit the hosts file, we will use VIM for it, which is a text editor for the console. You also need root privileges to edit the file because it is read only for normal users.
Type sudo vim hosts and hit enter. You will be asked for your admin password, enter it and hit enter, then VIM pops up.

4. You will see the content of the hosts file, first few lines are comments with # in the front, then 3 entries, do NOT touch these. Navigate to the last line with your cursor keys and then to the right till the cursor is behind the localhost entry

5. Now you need VIM to go into edit mode, do this by hitting i

6. VIM is in insert mode now, hit enter for a new line and type
85.17.40.69 tracker.oink.me.uk

If you want you can add the following lines too, in case you encounter trouble with IRC or the website. Hit enter after each line for a new one
85.17.40.71 oink.me.uk
85.17.40.70 irc.oink.me.uk

7. Time to leave edit mode now, do so by hitting the escape key.

8. Back in viewing mode, now you need to save the file. You can do this by typing :w and hitting enter, VIM will tell you something like “hosts (number of lines) written”.

9. Now you need to exit VIM. Type :q and hit enter, you will be back at the terminal.

10. Almost done, now you need to tell the OS to use the content of the new hosts file.
Type sudo niload -v -m hosts . < /etc/hosts and hit enter.
You will be asked for the admin password again, after that the hosts file will be parsed.

11. You're done, exit the terminal by typing exit and hit enter. Close the window.

Edit: To remove them again - follow the same steps, in step 6 delete the 3 added lines, then save the file, quit the editor. You can then either run step 10 or wait until your next reboot.

Now you can go back to getting your Moo on.

For those who are familiar with how BitTorrent works and are willing to keep a solid share ratio, I do have a few invites left. Please be aware that they will boot you for life if you do not share, so if you don’t know what you are doing, don’t bother me. Use the Contact Page to request one. Please put in the subject line OiNK invite request and be sure to include a first and last name and your current email, and why I should send you one.

Update:  I do not have anymore OiNK invites to give away.  Usually they give them to me randomly, when I get more I will hold another contest to give them out.  Please consider subscribing to the RSS feed or via Email Newsletter to stay in the loop.

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