Tue Mar 9 15:24:12 PST 2004 — Mail Server Upgrades: Over the past few days we’ve completed alot of behind the scenes mail server upgrades. We’ve upgraded to the latest release of sendmail in order to gain some additional controls over our mail queues. The controls have allowed us to significantly reduce the queue size on some of our servers which increases the rate that mail can flow through out servers. We’ve also upgraded both Clamav, the open-source Anti-Virus engine that we use, and the glue that we use to hook it into our mail servers. These upgrades have strengthened our anti virus filtering and should result in fewer viruses going undetected. -Kelsey

Thu Mar 4 20:43:51 PST 2004 — SMS Update: We just completed additional profiling work on the Santa Rosa SMS to address performance issues identified after last night’s reboot. Throughput looks better, and we’re hopeful that the DSL speed issues have been resolved. -Nathan, Kelsey and Dane

Thu Mar 4 02:38:42 PST 2004 — SMS Reboot Complete: The reload went as expected. It’s too early to tell for sure, but we are hopeful that the performance problems have been resolved. -Nathan and Kelsey

Thu Mar 4 01:38:05 PST 2004 — SR2 T1 Drop: One of the two T1s serving our SR2 POP stopped passing traffic around 10:45pm. The problem was quickly identified and a CSU/DSU reboot fixed the issue. Customers served out of SR2 experienced only 45 seconds of downtime due to this outage, as the second T1 to SR2 was able to sustain the load without incident. -Nathan and Kelsey

Wed Mar 3 12:08:11 PST 2004 — Update On Virus Alert: Since approximately 10:00AM this morning we’ve been blocking every known copy of the Beagle virus including the password protected zip file variant that poses as a message from your ISP. Additionally, we are working to remove all copies of this (and other viruses as well) from our user’s message stores. So far over 900 individual viruses have been removed.

We are also working hard on integrating our virus scanning software into our POP3 server as our last line of defense for our user’s inboxes. This final scan as messages leave our network, often hours or even days after it’s been received, eliminates the effects of the window between a virus’ release into the wild and its inclusion into filter definitions as best as possible. We hope to have the updated POP3 server in operation later today. -Kelsey and Nathan

Wed Mar 3 09:17:51 PST 2004 — VIRUS ALERT. A new variant of the Beagle virus was released yesterday. The virus spreads through an email attachment and is hidden in an attached zip file. UPDATE – This virus has been mutating extensively, and we are unable to block it’s many variants at this time. In addition, most PC anti-virus software is not blocking this virus.

That said, it requires quite a bit of user interaction for the PC to be infected. Uses must open the encrypted ZIP using the password, then run the enclosed program. Needless to say, DON’T DO THIS. The virus may pose as a communication from your ISP or mail service provider, and may include text which indicates that a security or virus problem requires that you open and execute the file. Don’t be fooled!

For more information on the virus and how to remove it, please visit:

www.sonic.net/support/beagle

-Sonic.net Support

Wed Mar 3 20:06:51 PST 2004 — SMS Reboot: As expected, we need to perform one last reboot of the SMS in Santa Rosa. We hope that the reboot will clear any lingering performance related problems. The SMS will be rebooted at 1:00AM tomorrow morning, downtime is expected to be a few minutes. -Kelsey and Nathan

Wed Mar 3 17:58:18 PST 2004 — Virus Filtering Update: At this time, all POP3 sessions are being handled by our new POP3 server which enabled virus, worm and trojan filtering when a message is retrieved from our server. If a virus is encountered, the infected message is replaced with an brief message explaining what was caught along with other details about the message. We’ve already caught a fair number of infected messages that would have otherwise been delivered to customers. This feature required significant modifications to our POP3 servers. The new software passed thorough internal testing and we are not aware of any bugs or other problems. However, please be sure to report any abnormal behavior to support as soon as possible. -Kelsey and Nathan

Tue Mar 2 09:02:19 PST 2004 — Customer sql failure. Our customer sql server rebooted this morning and sql services were down for 10 minutes. We’re investigating the cause of the failure. -Geoff

Tue Mar 2 16:26:14 PST 2004 — DSL Speed Update: We’ve done some additional work on the DSL speed profiling on the Santa Rosa SMS. At this time, results of the updated configuration look very promising and we believe that the problem is more or less resolved. We’ll continue to monitor and update as needed. -Kelsey, Nathan, John and Dane