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JTAN News and Network StatusSignup for Email Alerts
Thu, 28 May 2009
New Cert for SMTP
Posted May 28, 2009 at 23:19 UTC [/] permanent link Sat, 16 May 2009
Ganymede Restoration Progress
All the /home files should be restored. The backup was about a week old. Let us know at tech-support if you detect any massive omissions from /home. We have not lost hope on the /var/mail INBOX files. We found a backup of /var that may be viable and quite recent. Stay tuned. Our first priority is to get the webserver working. Once all the web sites hosted on ganymede are back on the net, we'll attempt to get email working. Pine is still not installed. This is intentional as we'd rather not have people messing with email on ganymede till we get the INBOXes back in place. Any mail put in an INBOX now would likely be lost. Try to use alternative email methods till we sort this out. For example, you could visit your members page and direct your mail to the POP server, or to another shell machine (e.g. callisto) till this is all sorted. Thanks again for your patience. Posted May 16, 2009 at 16:30 UTC [/] permanent link
Ganymede Being Restored
The bad news is that there are a LOT of files and it takes a long time for them to be restored. Passwords have already been restored, so you may be able to log in now. Please don't panic if you don't see your files yet. The /home and /etc directories seem to be available on the backup, but for some reason a readable copy of /var isn't there. We are going to try to pull /var from the sick disk if possible, but if we can't, that will have two bad consequences: /var/mail will be lost (email INBOXes), and it will take us a while to recover the webserver configuration that was in /var/www. Be assured that we are doing what we can to restore from our backups, and we hate to lose even one file, but I also need to say that JTAN does not in any way guarantee our backup. This is clearly stated in our policy. I think we are going to get back 99% of everything that was on ganymede a week or two ago, which is not perfect, but pretty good. Another thing lost would be any installed apps that people have requested over the years. If your favorite editor or utility no longer exists, please email tech-support and we'll put it back in. Thanks again everyone for your patience and understanding as we restore this machine. Posted May 16, 2009 at 02:09 UTC [/] permanent link Fri, 15 May 2009
Ganymede Down For The Count
We will be coming back up ASAP with a new incarnation of ganymede. With luck the most recent backup will reduce the lossage to manageable proportions. We'll try to restore everyone's account, but I can't make any promises as of yet as to what we can recover from the backup.
Posted May 15, 2009 at 16:17 UTC [/] permanent link
Ganymede Down
Preliminary reports indicate that the machine is not powering up. We should be able to do more detailed diagnosis on Friday and hopefully fix whatever's wrong. Thank you for your patience and understanding. Posted May 15, 2009 at 00:41 UTC [/] permanent link Thu, 14 May 2009
Dialup Service No Longer Offered (final notice)
JTAN has offered dialup service in one form or another for over 15 years. Unfortunately, it no longer makes business sense for us to offer this service. Dialup will continue to work for a few more weeks, and those of you with dialup accounts are welcome to use them. However, be aware that the service will eventually stop working. You should seek an alternative dialup provider as soon as possible. Posted May 14, 2009 at 00:53 UTC [/] permanent link Tue, 14 Apr 2009
Mailman Server Replaced
Posted Apr 14, 2009 at 16:29 UTC [/] permanent link Wed, 08 Apr 2009
Dialup Service To Be Eliminated
If your account bundles dialup access along with other features, such as email, your other features will continue to work. We will reduce your charge by an amount corresponding to the portion of your fee that was associated with dialup. If your account has nothing but dialup, then your account will be discontinued. JTAN has offered dialup access since roughly 1991 when we were primarily a USENET and BBS node. Over the years, we expanded our telephone access reaching a peak when we acquired LineX Communications and added nationwide dialup access. Nowadays, things are a lot different, Internet access wise. Very few people still use dialup. Because of this low usage, our cost of maintaining dialup access is greater than the revenue we receive selling the service. Thus, for basic business reasons, we must discontinue this unprofitable service. We apologize if this decision causes anyone hardship. There are still other dialup providers (NetZero, EarthLink, BasicISP, Copper.net, etc...) If you still need dialup service, one of those providers will be happy to help you. Feel free to write to JTAN tech-support if you have any questions. Thank you for your dialup business over the years. Again, if you have other features, such as email, rest assured that they will continue to work and that we will lower your charges appropriately, only charging for services you still have. -- C Posted Apr 08, 2009 at 02:04 UTC [/] permanent link Sun, 05 Apr 2009
Mailing List Server Sick
Posted Apr 05, 2009 at 19:43 UTC [/] permanent link Fri, 13 Feb 2009
Ganymede Rebooted After 585 Days
When we have some issue with a flakey service or machine, people start to whine that JTAN is unreliable -- as if "JTAN" is entirely that one thing that is broken. They forget that we have 50 other machines humming along 24 hours a day, many of which are tireless, flawless performers. Let's hear it for Ganymede, the Lou Gehrig, Cal Ripken, of computers. Posted Feb 13, 2009 at 15:03 UTC [/] permanent link Sat, 13 Dec 2008
Happy Holidays
Posted Dec 13, 2008 at 02:20 UTC [/] permanent link
Weirdness Finale (I hope)
We have some theories, but nothing definite. Thanks to all of you that sent in reports. As to those of you that kept calling every 5 minutes, then figured out my wife's work number and called HER every 5, stalked my kids, made JTAN Voodoo dolls... Ummm... Errr... Sorry? Collatoral damage at this time (besides many P-O'ed customers) is a broken POPS service on thebe, and a broken traffic monitor. We moved our traffic monitor to investigate various possible causes, never finding anything and we have yet to replace it. Sleep comes first. Then, maybe, I'm thinking about a traffic monitor upgrade. Maybe next time we can do better pinpointing the problem. Hopefully, we have some time till next time. Besides that, I'm not sure. Several cusomers have asked what they/JTAN can do to prevent this from happening again. Unfortunately, we still remain in the dark about what "this" might be. In the 15 years I've been running JTAN, I haven't seen one quite like "this". In any case, thanks for you patience and your business. Posted Dec 13, 2008 at 02:17 UTC [/] permanent link Fri, 12 Dec 2008
Wierdness Encore
We have received a lot of calls and complaints. I know how you all must feel -- a down web site, an important email, etc... I assure you that I feel your pain. Pain flows in my direction. We have been on the hot seat for two days trying to figure this out. Posted Dec 12, 2008 at 15:05 UTC [/] permanent link Thu, 11 Dec 2008
Wierdness Update
None of this really explains the wiredness. Posted Dec 11, 2008 at 19:26 UTC [/] permanent link
Wierdness Reported
We don't know what this is, but I assure you we have gone to "red alert", trying to discern the problem. As you may know, there were several massive network attacks in the past week. This may be part of it, but I don't really know. All I do know is that we don't appear to have any equipment down, we aren't fixing anything, and there's no known and specific problem to tell you about. Just "wierdness". Stay tuned. Posted Dec 11, 2008 at 13:31 UTC [/] permanent link Wed, 03 Dec 2008
Thebe and Jupiter, Power Supplies Replaced
While we were at it, we chose to do some proactive maintenance on Jupiter, replacing its power supply, which had a supply of the same vintage. With luck, both machines now should be good for several years again. Thank you for your patience and understanding. Posted Dec 03, 2008 at 01:32 UTC [/] permanent link Tue, 02 Dec 2008
Thebe Down
Posted Dec 02, 2008 at 18:20 UTC [/] permanent link Wed, 26 Nov 2008
Bandwidth Limits Expanded -- Accelerator Service Eliminated
To replace the accelerator support for busy sites, we've decided to increase bandwidth limits by a factor of 10 for all accounts. ProShell is now 20GB/mo, ProWeb is 200 GB/mo, and dedicated servers are also allowed 10 times their former limits. Not all our online docs reflect this increase. Over the next few weeks we'll be updating everything to reflect the new limits. Thank you for your business. Posted Nov 26, 2008 at 03:06 UTC [/] permanent link Wed, 08 Oct 2008
JTAN on RBL
This problem has already been reported to several of these ISPs, including ATT and Comcast. At this stage it's up to them to take action to resolve the issue. If you are a customer of ATT/Comcast, or are corresponding with a customer at one of these ISPs that have blocked JTAN, a direct complaint to them may help push them along. Note that the problem only affects outgoing mail relayed through smtp.jtan.com. If you use a local outgoing mail server provided by your local ISP, you will not be affected. Sadly, this event represents yet another example of how the email infrastructure has been rendered unreliable by spamming and the reaction to spamming. Posted Oct 08, 2008 at 11:51 UTC [/] permanent link Mon, 04 Aug 2008
JTAN CA Certificate Re-Mint
Anyway, it was quite a fire drill, fixing this. We received scores of complaints about various secure services no longer working. I guess we have lots of customers who rely on these certs. Who knew? Fortunately, we were able to mint some new certs super-quick and get most everything working again. Unfortunately, we were somewhat slapdash in our super-quick efforts. There were a few t's that we forgot to cross, and i's we forgot to dot when we minted our new CA certificate. Even though many services worked, some did not. Particularly members area certificate login, and VPN services. In an effort to fix our CA correctly, we have re-minted all our certs. As before, this will cause some errors in browsers and email clients. Generally, clicking "OK" or "Accept" or "Make Exception" or "Add Certificate" will calm these errors. If the errors don't calm by simply saying "OK", you can download the new-and-improved JTAN CA certs here. Get your new client certs for VPN and passwordless members access through the members page. Thank you for your patience and understanding as we figure this all out. With luck, we'll all be here 10 years in the future to do this all over yet again! Posted Aug 04, 2008 at 17:54 UTC [/] permanent link Tue, 22 Jul 2008
Downloading the New Certs
Posted Jul 22, 2008 at 02:58 UTC [/] permanent link
New JTAN CA Certificates
I need to point out that the old JTAN CA certificate was minted in 1998. While in one sense it's inexcusable that we forgot about its renewal in 2008, I think it's at least understandable that this slipped our minds. I mean, in 1998 I myself never dreamed that JTAN would exist in 2008, let alone that the cert would need renewal. In any case, thank you for you understanding. You can get the new CA cert at our Certificate Authority site. You can download a fresh client cert from the members page. Posted Jul 22, 2008 at 00:50 UTC [/] permanent link Mon, 21 Jul 2008
JTAN CA Certificate Expired
Posted Jul 21, 2008 at 21:44 UTC [/] permanent link Thu, 03 Jul 2008
Fake Email Pretending to be From JTAN
As a general rule, any email that asks you to supply a password or any personal information, either directly or indirectly, should be assumed to be a scam. I repeat, all official mail from JTAN has the curly-brace prefix {JTAN} in the subject line, and JTAN never, ever asks anybody to email passwords. Posted Jul 03, 2008 at 02:11 UTC [/] permanent link Fri, 06 Jun 2008
Order Processing Suspended
We apologize for this interruption in service. Posted Jun 06, 2008 at 12:47 UTC [/] permanent link Mon, 02 Jun 2008
More News About the EV1 Disaster
Dear Valued Customers: Posted Jun 02, 2008 at 14:07 UTC [/] permanent link
Problems Continue After Explosion
Because of the EV1 outage in Texas, we have been forced to route some of the heavy traffic normally handled by the accelerators back onto our main servers in Conshohocken. This has caused a few delays, particularly in email. I apologize for the inconvenience. The initial burst of traffic seems to have settled, and things seem to be flowing smoothly again. Although we expect accelerator service restored momentarily, if anyone decides they don't want to wait, we can swing your traffic over to Conshohocken if necessary. Email tech-support for instructions if you want to take this step. Posted Jun 02, 2008 at 13:43 UTC [/] permanent link Sun, 01 Jun 2008
Explosion in Data Center
Yesterday evening at 21:55 in the H1 data center of EV1 in Texas, electrical gear shorted, creating an explosion and fire that knocked down three walls surrounding the electrical equipment room Thankfully, no one was injured. The JTAN web accelerator servers are hosted in this data center. They were not damaged or lost, but are currently without power. EV1 administration staff has just been allowed into the building to physically inspect the damage. Early indications are that the short was in a high-volume wire conduit. EV1 was not allowed to activate their backup generator plan based on instructions from the fire department. This is a significant outage, impacting approximately 9,000 servers and 7,500 customers. All members of the EV1 support team are in, and all vendors who supply them with data center equipment are on site. Their initial assessment, although early, points to being able to have some service restored by about 2100 UTC today. Based on that ETTR assessment from EV1, JTAN will take no immediate action to re-engineer our accelerator. We expect everything to recover when they get the power back on. We apologize for the outage this causes. Although no immediate action seems warranted, this event does illustrate a weakness in the design of our accelerator that we will attempt to fix in the coming weeks. Thank you for your business. Posted Jun 01, 2008 at 17:43 UTC [/] permanent link Tue, 15 Apr 2008
New JTAN PGP Key
For more info, see our PGP page. Posted Apr 15, 2008 at 14:03 UTC [/] permanent link Fri, 28 Mar 2008
Mail Sending Wierdness
It's possible that the network disruption on Monday caused some mails to be backlogged. We are investigating this possibility, but thus far we haven't found any logjams or errors to fix. If anyone has a specific error message dated today, or later, that we can investigate, please pass it on to tech-support at jtan.com -- C Posted Mar 28, 2008 at 16:14 UTC [/] permanent link Tue, 25 Mar 2008
DDOS Attack
Obviously, if anyone knows the miscreants responsible for this nonsense, please tell them to cut it out. Posted Mar 25, 2008 at 15:01 UTC [/] permanent link Thu, 14 Feb 2008
Network Disruption on .6 Network
Posted Feb 14, 2008 at 12:02 UTC [/] permanent link Fri, 11 Jan 2008
Thebe Out of Memory
We are trying to catch the errant process in the act of allocating all of memory, but thus far we have been unable to spot the culprit before the machine becomes inaccessible. Anyone running something new on thebe (new relative to the last couple months) should be concerned that your new program, website, perl or php script, is the cause of this problem. It would help immensely if everyone on thebe would monitor the memory usage of their stuff and be on the lookout for the runaway. Of course, those of you conscientious enough to monitor your stuff are probably not the people who would run something unstable in the first place. No doubt, the person running this has no idea that it's causing a problem and isn't even reading this notice. In any case, we will eventually find the cause of these memory exhaustions and put an end to them. Thank you for your patience and understanding. This sort of thing in an inevitable disadvantage of shared hosting. If you have a web site where uptime is critical, consider using a JTAN dedicated server, starting at $79/mo. Posted Jan 11, 2008 at 13:24 UTC [/] permanent link Tue, 08 Jan 2008
Not So Fast (a new thebe issue)
If your web site is hosted on thebe, you may see some delays. Thank you for your patience as we investigate. Posted Jan 08, 2008 at 21:25 UTC [/] permanent link Mon, 07 Jan 2008
Thebe Work
Thanks again for your patience. Although we cannot stop our machines from breaking, we can work hard to fix them should they need it. Rest assured that we are working hard right now to resolve these issues. Posted Jan 07, 2008 at 17:31 UTC [/] permanent link
Jupiter Fixed (again)
Posted Jan 07, 2008 at 16:46 UTC [/] permanent link
Jupiter Down
Thank you for your patience. Posted Jan 07, 2008 at 14:59 UTC [/] permanent link Sun, 06 Jan 2008
Jupiter Issues
Posted Jan 06, 2008 at 14:00 UTC [/] permanent link Mon, 24 Dec 2007
Happy Holidays
Posted Dec 24, 2007 at 19:27 UTC [/] permanent link Sun, 23 Dec 2007
Jupiter and Thebe Issues Seem Resolved
In any case, we hope these machines are happy now. They seem to be working OK. Thanks for the reports, and your patience. Posted Dec 23, 2007 at 19:40 UTC [/] permanent link | |||
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