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Fri, 25 Jun 2010
Certificate Renewed
Rather than making everyone suffer any longer with the expired fancy
cert from GeoTrust/Equifax as we struggle against OpenSRS to renew it,
I decided to go for one of those cheap, instant certs.
Now you should no longer get a cert error when you visit the site https://www.jtan.com
Posted Jun 25, 2010 at 03:22 UTC [/] permanent link
Expired SSL Cert
Some of you have noticed that the www.jtan.com SSL cert has expired.
The reason this is so is that we've been unable to renew the cert with OpenSRS. I'm not sure why. It's just a formality to reissue the cert (after a payment to them). I can't understand why we've been unable to get them to reissue the cert. We continue to try to pay them.
In any case, rest assured that the old cert is still there. Your browser will tell you it's still signed by Equifax, just like it was a few weeks ago. SSL to www.jtan.com is just as secure as it ever is. The only thing that has changed is that we've been unable to pay OpenSRS.
Thank you for your patience. -- C
Posted Jun 25, 2010 at 02:56 UTC [/] permanent link
Fri, 28 May 2010
Increased Spam Level Reversed
Needless to say, once we realized the mistake, we patched the hole.
Spam levels should return to normal. Let this be a reminder to us all
that spam is really out there, and is really a problem, and its only
the policies of reputable ISPs that keep it in check.
--
C
Posted May 28, 2010 at 13:48 UTC [/]
permanent link
POP/IMAP Down, Now up.
Posted May 09, 2010 at 17:42 UTC [/]
permanent link
Jupiter Down
Posted May 04, 2010 at 01:46 UTC [/]
permanent link
Thebe Temporarily Down
Posted Apr 11, 2010 at 12:50 UTC [/]
permanent link
Registration for .mobi and .tel Now Available
The top level domain .mobi is emerging as the de facto standard for mobile internet domains
With the growth of the mobile Web comes the need for standardization to
allow consumers to easily find mobile content.
The .tel top level domain
allows you to put all your communications Under one name.
All the ways of reaching you can be under a simple name that's
impossible to forget “"YourName.tel".
Write to JTAN tech-support if you have any questions about these
domains.
Posted Feb 06, 2010 at 17:42 UTC [/]
permanent link
VERP Policy
And thus it has come to pass that I have the pleasant duty to set new JTAN policy
regarding this kind of event.
Should JTAN receive a third party complaint about a list post, we will
unsubscribe the complainer from the list and notify the listadmin of the
event. We recommend that the list administrator not permit the
complainer to rejoin the list until they learn how to operate their
computer.
Should a list generate too many of these complaints, we
will disable the list.
Posted Jan 22, 2010 at 19:34 UTC [/]
permanent link
Seems Like We Did OK
Reports from the list administrators are that we got the restoration
right. I'd like to thank you all for your patience.
Posted Jan 22, 2010 at 12:38 UTC [/]
permanent link
Mailman Re-Enabled
Posted Jan 22, 2010 at 03:07 UTC [/]
permanent link
Get Ready Mailman
All that remains is to turn the valve to let the mail
flow, which I'm about to do. If you don't see your
list functionality return by, say, 1200 UTC, and there isn't
a post here explaining why it didn't work, please report
the outage with a simple email to tech-support.
But I'm optimistic.
Although this outage was an inconvenience, I expect
that the Majordomo users will be happy with the upgrade, and everyone
should benefit from VERP support -- if it actually works. We also
hope that the brand new CPU and disk fix the mailman server
instability we've been
noticing over the last few months.
Posted Jan 22, 2010 at 02:34 UTC [/]
permanent link
Majordomo Lists Found
Please confirm that you want your list converted
to Mailman. If you have a Majordomo list that
isn't given above, Let us know immediately.
Posted Jan 21, 2010 at 16:21 UTC [/]
permanent link
Mailing List Update
Bad news on the Majordomo front. It appears that the actual membership lists for Majordomo
were not on the directories we have restored thus far. I was fooled by a symbolic link (shortcut
in Windoze parlance) thinking that the Majordomo lists were included with the restored data.
They were not. What this means is that I need to return to the restore-from-backup well and see if I can
recover the Majordomo membership lists. I'm optimistic.
In yet another Majordomo disappointment, it appears that we do not have an accurate record of
which Majordomo lists are actually active. Rather than doing a lot of unnecessary work restoring
lists that no one uses, I need no make the Majordomo restorations "on request" instead of automatic.
Thus, if you have a Majordomo list you want restored and converted to
Mailman, please email tech-support at jtan.com and say
Maybe you've noticed the sudden increase in the volume of spam. We
certainly have. The cause of this increase has been traced to a
particular exception we coded into our strict reverse-DNS policy. We had received
complaints from certain senders with lazy/incompetent/uncooperative ISPs
(e.g. Verizon and Comcast) that couldn't send us mail. In an effort to
accommodate them, we coded an exception that let in a whole load of spam.
Sun, 09 May 2010
The power supply failed on the POP/IMAP server. This has now been
repaired.
Tue, 04 May 2010
It appears that jupiter is not processing very well. It is in the
process of being rebooted. It should be back up within the hour --
unless it doesn't boot.
Sun, 11 Apr 2010
We are rebooting thebe for maintenance reasons. With luck, it will
be back up within the hour.
Sat, 06 Feb 2010
The cell phone oriented domains .mobi and .tel are now available
for registration through the JTAN system.
Fri, 22 Jan 2010
The VERP addressing system implemented with the new Mailman
server appears to penetrate AOL's pointless redacting of recipient
addresses. In less than a day, I've received the first "Spam" complaint
from AOL regarding a legitimate mailing list post mis-reported as spam
by one of their lusers. Although AOL redacted
numerous headers, their censor failed to snip the recipient username hidden
in plain sight as part of the sender address. Thus, we know what luser
misreported
the post.
I have the Mailman server down briefly to tidy some problems that
we discovered when the flow of mail hit. Don't
panic if you can't use it right now (1230 UTC), it should be back
in a jiffy.
The flow of mail to the Mailman server has been re-enabled.
All the original Mailman lists have been recovered.
I have converted the Majordomo lists of those who have requested
conversion to Mailman. List memberships have been copied. Admin
password and admin address have been copied.
Thu, 21 Jan 2010
These appear to be our Majordomo lists
Good news on the Mailman front.
Some list admins have confirmed that the Mailman lists seem relatively intact. I
will soon turn on the valve to the firehose that will allow mail to flow into
Mailman. Please report anomalies quickly in case we need to shut it off to prevent a
mess. Mail loops are the biggest concern.
Please restore my Majordomo list "xyzzy-l"
with administrator "me@mydomain.com" and
admin password "abracadabra".
Sending those requests will help us a lot.
Posted Jan 21, 2010 at 15:20 UTC [/] permanent link
Majordomo Not Restored
We are not planning on restoring Majordomo or MajorCool. The software is
no longer maintained, having been eclipsed by Mailman. It seems
unjustified to expend effort migrating the old Majordomo software from
backup to the new server. More importantly, we don't have a VERP
solution for Majordomo. I apologize for the inconvenience, but I'm sure
that once you see the improved capabilities of Mailman, you'll wonder
why you didn't switch earlier.
Keep in mind that we will happily be migrating the membership of each Majordomo list to a new Mailman list. We will do this automatically, trying to preserve the subscriber address list, the list admin address, and password. Other details will be defaulted. If you want some special configuration, let us know.
Posted Jan 21, 2010 at 04:05 UTC [/] permanent link
Mailman Lists Restored
I believe we have restored all the Mailman lists and associated
archives. Anyone who is a Mailman listadmin should take a look
at your web interface to see if everything looks restored to you.
Note that mail is not flowing into the Mailman server yet.
Mailed-in posts will still bounce.
I want to confirm everything is correct before turning on the firehose.
On the other hand, outgoing mail from the Mailman server is working, so any message you generate through the web interface should really go out (with VERP info on the Sender address, if we're lucky).
Please contact tech-support@jtan.com to let us know that your list seems ready to be re-enabled.
Thank you for your patience and understanding.
Posted Jan 21, 2010 at 03:53 UTC [/] permanent link
Mailman and VERP
We've had problems in the past with mailing list posts being reported
as spam to services like AOL. Enough of these false complaints and AOL
will block all JTAN email. Although AOL does send us copies of the
posts in question, they remove any indication of the recipient. Since
we don't know who complained, we can't tell list admins who to unsubscribe.
Now that we are re-engineering the Mailman server, we have the opportunity to add support for message tracking. The system we are looking at is VERP. Combined with improved logging, I think VERP would do the trick.
The latest Mailman has support for VERP, so it would be relatively easy for us to implement. If systems like AOL don't wipe the envelope sender address, VERP would allow us to tell who complained and pass the info to the list admin.
There are two problems with VERP. One is that it would increase the load on our mailserver as it requires every list post to be individually sent to each recipient. This isn't that big a problem since most large ISPs already limit the number of recipients on an envelope. I suspect that even our largest lists will still have reasonable performance.
Another problem is that Majordomo does not have built in VERP support. Majordomo was depreciated at JTAN years ago. We've only been keeping it around as a favor to some of our oldest customers. I'm thinking its time to let Majordomo finally die. We should be able to create Mailman lists to replace each Majordomo list. If there's anybody out there that has heartburn with moving from Majordomo to Mailman, let me know.
We have a new Mailman installation in place and we have recovered the old data from our backups. We are in the process of testing operation and implementing VERP. I'm afraid it still is going to take some more days to get this all working. When it does work, however, we should have a much better setup when it comes to dealing with bounces and complaints.
Posted Jan 21, 2010 at 00:47 UTC [/] permanent link
Wed, 20 Jan 2010
Mailman Progress Report
Things are looking up. Although the mailman disk still seems
unrecoverable, it appears that we do have some viable, recent backups.
This includes backups of list membership and archives -- archives that
date back 15 years!
Restoring the lists is not trivial. It will take some doing. But the good news is that we didn't lose everything. Although JTAN does backups in our effort to protect your data, and our backups save us embarrasment in these situations, the bottom line is that we do not guarantee data recovery. All JTAN customers with important data should keep that sober fact in mind.
Fortunately, this time, we seemed to have dodged the bullet.
Posted Jan 20, 2010 at 03:25 UTC [/] permanent link
Tue, 19 Jan 2010
Mailman Server Unrecoverable
The hard disk on the mailman server is bad and cannot be repaired.
We will attempt to restore the mailman system from our backups and place it on a new machine. Because of the complexity of our mail system, restoring and relocating mailman will take some time -- probably a few days.
Posted Jan 19, 2010 at 02:32 UTC [/] permanent link
Mon, 18 Jan 2010
Mailman Server Down (again)
The mailman/majordomo server is down (again), but this time it's reluctant to come
back to life. We're trying to lure it back from the grave. I expect success, eventually.
We're working on it.
These recent crashes should be a warning to all list admins. Keep a backup of your list members, just in case.
Posted Jan 18, 2010 at 19:35 UTC [/] permanent link
Sat, 02 Jan 2010
Year 2010 Bug Fixed -- Upgrades On Deck
A quick thinking, sharp eyed user reported a Spam Assassin bug that began
this New Years Eve. Mail with 2010 dates was erroneously marked as spam. This
bug has been calmed.
Our version of Spam Assassin has been getting rather long in the tooth. The same can be said for a few other packages, most notably PHP. It is our plan in 2010 to upgrade several of these packages. Look in this space for upcoming details.
Happy New Year!
Posted Jan 02, 2010 at 18:31 UTC [/] permanent link
Thu, 16 Jul 2009
Ganymede Fixed
It appears that the problem with Ganymede was a bad power supply. The
supply has been replaced. Ganymede is back up.
Posted Jul 16, 2009 at 14:05 UTC [/] permanent link
Wed, 15 Jul 2009
Ganymede Down
Ganymede appears to be down and won't come
back up. We are investigating.
Posted Jul 15, 2009 at 20:56 UTC [/] permanent link
Thu, 28 May 2009
New Cert for SMTP
Back in the Fall of 2008 we renewed all our server certificates.
Apparently, we botched the update of the cert for smtp.jtan.com.
This mistake has just been rectified. Those of you that use TLS
for outgoing mail may be asked to accept the new cert if you don't
already have our CA certificate. No worries. Accept the new certificate
and things should be good for another nine years.
Posted May 28, 2009 at 23:19 UTC [/] permanent link
Sat, 16 May 2009
Ganymede Restoration Progress
The new machine is up and there are reports of people being able
to log in. Initially some people couldn't log in because certain special
shells (tcsh, bash, zsh,...) weren't installed. Now they are. Passwords
were restored too, so if you can't log in now, we want to know
about it immediately. Write tech-support at jtan.com.
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
A new ganymede is up now and the files are rolling back in
from the backup. That's the good news.
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
Bad news. Ganymede's disk is unrecoverable.
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
At long last, ganymede.jtan.com seems to have some sort of problem. This
has been our most reliable machine, in service without an unplanned
reboot for over four years.
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)
Effective immediately, JTAN no longer offers dialup Internet access.
Those of you with dialup features or accounts have had your billing
fees adjusted downward to reflect the lost service.
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
After various debugging attempts and ineffectual fixes, I've completely
replaced the Mailman server. Maybe this will help. There's no way
to know for sure but wait and see. It's the same hard disk. If the
problem is in the disk, we'll need to start from scratch. Cross
your fingers.
Posted Apr 14, 2009 at 16:29 UTC [/] permanent link
Wed, 08 Apr 2009
Dialup Service To Be Eliminated
Beginning or about 1 May 2009, JTAN will discontinue offering dialup Internet
service through LineX telephone modem access.
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
We're not sure what the problem is, but it appears that the
mailing list server is not working properly. We are investigating
and will repair it just as soon as we can.
Posted Apr 05, 2009 at 19:43 UTC [/] permanent link
Fri, 13 Feb 2009
Ganymede Rebooted After 585 Days
Although it pained me to do it, I rebooted ganymede after
585 days of uninterrupted uptime. There were reports of
"too many connections" to the news server from ganymede
and I theorized that there may be a few stale connections
that were causing this.
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
| _...._
\ _ / .::o:::::.
(\o/) .:::""":o:.
--- / \ --- :o:_ _:::
>*< ':}_>()<_{:'
>0<@< @ ''//\\'' @
>>>@<<* @ # // \\ # @
>@>*<0<<< __#_#____/'____'\____#_#__
>*>>@<<<@<< [__________________________]
>@>>0<<<*<<@< |=_- .-/\ /\ /\ /\--. =_-|
>*>>0<<@<<<@<<< |-_= | \ \\ \\ \\ \ |-_=-|
>@>>*<<@<>*<<0<*< |_=-=| / // // // / |_=-_|
\*/ >0>>*<<@<>0><<*<@<< |=_- |'-''-''-''-' |=_=-|
___\\U//___ >*>>@><0<<*>>@><*<0<< | =_-| o o |_==_|
|\\ | | \\| >@>>0<*<<0>>@<<0<<<*<@< |=_- | ! ( ! |=-_=|
| \\| | _(UU)_ >((*))_>0><*<0><@<<<0<*< _|-,-=| ! ). ! |-_-=|_
|\ \| || / //||.*.*.*.|>>@<<*<<@>><0<<@>>>>>| ( ~~~ )/ (((((((())))))))
~~~~~~~~ '""""'------' 'w---w' '------------'
Happy Holidays from JTAN
Posted Dec 13, 2008 at 02:20 UTC [/] permanent link
Weirdness Finale (I hope)
I still have no idea what happened.
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
The wierdness got pretty severe this morning. Consequently, we have rebooted
nearly everything, reseated every cable, swapped equipment. Nothing
seems wrong and from what I can tell, everything is working now. I have
no explanation for what happened. No smoking gun.
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
Well, we've checked a lot of things. Our upstream provider noticed some
bursts of traffic early in the morning -- no idea what the source was.
We found someone pounding a dictionary attack at the POPS server on
thebe. POPS service on thebe in hereby shut down till this stops. Some
recent routing changes messed up a few scripts resulting in a full disk
on a diferent machine. And it's raining.
None of this really explains the wiredness.
Posted Dec 11, 2008 at 19:26 UTC [/] permanent link
Wierdness Reported
We have received several reports of "wierdness". Nothing specific.
Too many connections on databases, machines inaccessible, web sites
not coming up, etc... It's just a general pattern of strange stuff.
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
Thebe was down earlier today. It turned out to be a busted power supply.
I can't complain -- the supply lasted 5 years. In any case, the
supply has been replaced and thebe boots now.
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
Thebe is down and won't reboot. That's all we know at this time. We are
actively investigating the cause. If you have a website on thebe, it
will not be operating. Other JTAN services should be unaffected.
--
C
Posted Dec 02, 2008 at 18:20 UTC [/] permanent link
Wed, 26 Nov 2008
Bandwidth Limits Expanded -- Accelerator Service Eliminated
We never had much participation in our free accelerator service. Today,
the accelerator usage is pretty much NIL so we've decided, effective
immediately, to discontinue support for it. If you are one of the few
that still use it, please swing your DNS back to your local IP.
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
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