Month: August 2003

Delayed Email: We discovered ~2,500 inbound…

Thu Aug 28 17:56:00 PDT 2003 — Delayed Email: We discovered ~2,500 inbound messages that had gotten wedged in our mail queues. For some unknown reason these messages were not processed by sendmail’s queue running processes but delivered correctly when explicitly sent from the queue. The overwhelming majority of the messages delayed were SPAM. -Sonic Operations

Our San Francisco POP is back up.

Mon Aug 25 08:35:26 PDT 2003 — Our San Francisco POP is back up. Power was restored at about 8:10 this morning. The dialup numbers served from that facility are currently in operation. -John

POP outage.

Mon Aug 25 03:00:27 PDT 2003 — POP outage. The 200 Paul POP in San Francisco is currently offline. We are working to restore connectivity as soon as possible. -Nathan

Update: This appears to be a facility-wide power outage in SF. We have re-routed all traffic that was entering and leaving Sonic’s network via 200 Paul to our other Internet links. Currently, dialup numbers served out of 200 Paul (707-522-1003, among others) are returning busy signals. However, backup numbers are available. To get a list of POPs in your area, visit:

www.sonic.net/cgi-bin/pops.pl

-Nathan

Altnews problems.

Sun Aug 24 13:23:13 PDT 2003 — Altnews problems. One of our Usenet news services is having problems. The system reachable as altnews.sonic.net had hardware problems during a recent system move and is waiting for repairs. Article retention and completeness has been affected. Until altnews is repaired, please use our other Usenet servers: news.sonic.net and supernews.sonic.net. -John

Mail server upgrade: The mail server…

Sat Aug 23 09:57:09 PDT 2003 — Mail server upgrade: The mail server conversion will start at 10:30 am PDT today. This migration is expected to cause some delays in delivery of messages. If you experience this, please wait and try again in a short time. Tech support can not expedite delivery of email to your mail box during the migration.

For more information, please see:

www.sonic.net/whatsnew/mailservers/

If your email client reports an actual error when downloading your messages, please call tech support. We may be experiencing higher than usual call volumes, so please be patient. -Operations and Tech Support

Update 11:11:24 PDT 2003 — We have migrated to the new POP servers and new email is being delivered on the new servers. We have corrected one small problem and are working on another one involving mixed case logins. We expect to resolve that shortly.

Update 12:18:57 PDT 2003 — So far everything looks good. We are beginning the migration of old email spools to the new system now. -Operations

Update 14:08:50 PDT 2003 — 98% of mailboxes converted. We are converting the mailboxes in smallest to largest size order. Only the customers with the largest mailboxes are left to do. -Operations

Mailbox conversion done.

Sat Aug 23 15:22:12 PDT 2003 — Mailbox conversion done. The regular mailboxes have all been converted to the new format. We are now converting folders from webmail. We estimate this will take about three hours. -Kevan, Kelsey and John

Altnews service unavailable.

Thu Aug 21 23:05:39 PDT 2003 — Altnews service unavailable. The company that provides the news service reachable as altnews.sonic.net has been down and unavailable all day today. They had a planned outage to move some equipment and apparently ran into problems. The current status message says they expect to be back by 2 am Friday PDT. -John

Update: We got our last error message from Altnews at 9:21 am PDT, Friday, Aug. 22. Their server appears to be up and responding now. -John

Mail Server Upgrades: The new MX servers are…

Mon Aug 18 11:32:49 PDT 2003 — Mail Server Upgrades: The new MX servers are handling a share of inbound email handling now. So far everything appears to be going well. If the new servers still appear to be working properly in a few hours we will direct all inbound email flow to pass through them. -Kelsey, Nathan and Russ

Mail issues from the shell server: A long…

Mon Aug 18 22:39:50 PDT 2003 — Mail issues from the shell server: A long lived configuration error in sendmail was uncovered today when the new MX servers where brought online. This only affected mail sent from bolt to unqualified addressees and possibly to ‘user@sonic.net’ as well. This mail might have intermittently been bounced by the new servers. We’ve corrected the error and bolt is now properly addressing and routing email sent to sonic.net. -Kelsey

Sebastopol POP down.

Mon Aug 18 15:50:44 PDT 2003 — Sebastopol POP down. The router at our Sebastopol facility is having problems. We are on our way out with a replacement, but until that time, dialup will not work through 707-823-8812. Please use our POP finder at www.sonic.net/cgi-bin/pops.pl to find an alternate. -Zeke, John, Nathan and Matt

Update: The router’s services have been restored but we are still going to replace the router around 5:00PM today. Users accessing the Sebastopol POP may notice a brief interruption as the replacement is swapped in.

Update: The Sebastopol POP router has been replaced.