Thu Jul 16 08:37:25 PDT 1998 — 522-1003 & 522-1389 have been successfully upgraded (and watched for 12+ hours). It looks as though the equipment is performing as expected. If you are a V.90 user, please give 522-1003 a try. -Brian

Wed Jul 15 10:21:52 PDT 1998 — We will be upgrading the USR equipment that serves 522-1003 & 522-1389 today. You may experience some instability. Please understand that this upgrade is necessary for the stability of the equipment. -Brian

Wed Jul 15 15:19:04 PDT 1998 — We’ve ‘backgraded’ our news server to Inn 1.5.1 + security patches. The new Inn 2.0 server just wasn’t stable enough — we are going to run it in test mode on another host until we’re happy with it. -Scott

Mon Jul 13 09:53:16 PDT 1998 — News was offline this morning for a few minutes while we upgraded our news server software to Inn 2.0. The new version supports a ‘cyclical news file system’ (cnfs), which is specifically designed for news article storage (and increases performance tremendously). We’re hoping to have the cnfs online within a week or so.

Meanwhile, we’ve had some reports of the article numbers being reset in some newsgroups, a situation that we are investigating. One symptom of this is not seeing traffic in a newsgroup which is usually busy. The workaround: mark the newsgroup ‘unread’, which should reveal both old and new messages.

We apologize for the dust as we reinvigorate our news server. -Scott

Fri Jul 3 09:56:10 PDT 1998 — Terminal capability libraries have been updated and all is fixed. Thanks Scott! -Brian

Fri Jul 3 08:32:43 PDT 1998 — A security update in the terminal capability library broke elm — we’re fixing it now. -Scott

Thu Jul 2 20:13:55 PDT 1998 — We’re pleased to announce the deployment of our new Napa POP! Users in Sonoma and Napa can dial this new access POP local call. We’re offering standard analog v.34 connections in this POP, plus K56Flex, v.90 and ISDN. In addition, we’re now offering dedicated Centrex ISDN, T1 and fractional T1 to the Napa area. If you’re interested in any of these dedicated services, do let us know. The new Napa access number is 707-255-4557. Please dial zero and ask for rate information to make sure that this is a local non-toll call for you if you’re like to use this POP. -Dane, Eli, Dustin and co.

Tue Jun 23 22:18:02 PDT 1998 — Two events are scheduled for 3am: * Attaching DLT tape drive to NetApp filer (2 minutes downtime) This will allow us to suppliment the NetApp’s snapshot system with tape backups. (Especially, we want a good tape of Thunder before our new web server, Storm, enters service.) * Moving Shell.sonic.net to another shelf (5 minutes downtime). This should result in almost no service disruption, unless you happen to be logged into the shell server. -Scott

Tue Jun 23 05:00:00 PDT 1998 — Two updates this morning: * Attached DLT tape drive to NetApp filer. This allows us to supplement the Network Appliance’s snapshot system with tape backups. {Especially, we want a good tape of Thunder before our new web server (Storm) enters service.} * Moved Bolt (Shell.sonic.net) to another shelf. This moved Bolt to the shelf directly above its RAID-5 array, freeing up some slack in its SCSI cable so that it could be re-routed. Earlier, there was a chance that the SCSI cable could be damaged while unracking some equipment — now, we don’t have to worry about hurting Bolt as we move servers into the new facility. -Scott

Sun Jun 21 06:00:00 PDT 1998 — The core router move is complete, and it went very smoothly. Total downtime while we moved the core router was under 10 minutes at 3:35AM PST. We migrated our six data T1 circuits and two T3 circuits into the new datacenter, and also moved their connections to our new Extreme Networks Gigaswitch. More servers will be migrated into this facility and into this new core network switch in the next couple weeks. -Dane, Scott and Dustin