Linux Server Network Cluster

Currently there are no reported major issues on this server network.

Windows Servers

Currently there are no reported major issues on this server network.

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22/5/2008 - "unknown user" email bounce issue due to spam filter
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Between 17:07 and 20:15 tonight there was a problem with our upstream providers Spam filtering system that affected mail delivery. Messages sent from some ISPs to some email addresses were bouncing back with "unknown user". Of the email addresses that were affected, 50% had 1 or 2 bounces, 20% had 3, the rest had more that 3. The majority of email addresses were not affected.

For those addresses that were affected we sincerely apologise. The senders would have received a bounce back message so they have been notified mail delivery was unsuccessful and we'd expect most to try sending mail again.

Our providers have determined the cause for the Spam filter problem and have changed the configuration and capacity to make an event like this unlikely in the future.


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22/5/2008 - Spam sent via Web Cluster
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A user on the shared server network has sent a number of Spam messages via the Web Cluster. This means a couple of web servers have been listed on a Spam blacklist. The end result is bounced and delayed messages sent via the web servers. Unfortunately this has affected web site forms and webmail.

Web Server blacklisting can happen from time to time on shared web servers. For that reason, we highly recommend you configure your forms and scripts to use our Authenticated SMTP server (smtp.webhost.co.nz) rather than sending mail via the local mail server.

We apologise for the problem. Our upstream providers have closed the customer's account that caused the problem and requested the servers be removed from the blacklists.


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31/03/2008 - New Control Panel Released
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A new Control Panel version has been released. The following changes have been made:

* A redesigned login page with integrated password reset functions for both Control Panel and Email.
* New WebMail system, @Mail is now officially supported.
* It is now faster and easier to use contact management for domains.
* Various interface enhancements.
* Various bug-fixes (including fixes to the new email system).

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6-5-2008 Mail Delivery Delay - Mail has been delayed overnight
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Mail received between 9:00 PM last night and 8:30 AM this morning has been delayed, due to a problem with our upstream provider. It is queued on our servers ready for delivery. All mail in the queue is being delivered now. We expect all mail in the queue to be delivered within the next two hours.

-Update- Delayed email should now have been delivered. People with large volumes of email, some email may still be coming through.

If you have also upgraded your legacy email address, and are having trouble with now receiving and /or sending email in their email client software, please make sure you have followed the instructions in full, on how to upgrade at http://loungenetwork.co.nz/faqman/index.php?op=view&t=295 . This includes making sure that you alter the username in your email client, to that of your Full Email Address. This means your username and email address will be the same eg. If your email address is name@yourdomain.co.nz, then your username will also be name@yourdomain.co.nz. You must also make sure that your SMTP settings remain the same, which must be set to those of your ISP. If you don't know what these are, please contact your ISP. If you are having trouble sending email, this will be because your SMTP settings are incorrect. If you are an XTRA/YAHOO user, please refer to the message in the left hand column of this page.

Please note that we have had some clients who have contacted us, but have provided us with reply email addresses, that were the same email addresses that they were having trouble with, which means they weren't able to receive a reply from us. If you haven't received a reply to your email, this will be the reason. If you have a problem with a particular email address you must provide us with an email address that you can receive an email reply from us on, otherwise we are not able to help you. Your ISP will usually provide you with a backup email address, and if not you can sign up to free backup Gmail email addresses at http://www.gmail.com. We have also had emails that we have sent to backup email address on record that have bounced back.


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Planned Outage 01/04/2008
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Planned Outage:

Date: 01/04/2008
Start Time: 12:01am
End Time: 4:00am
Services Affected: General, Linux Shared Hosting, Windows Shared Hosting

Customer impact: Various devices providing hosting services are being relocated this evening to allow for recabling of the cabinet that they are presently located in. This will result in outages for the following services: * Recursive DNS (one server moved at a time, each server unavailable for 10 minutes)
* Shared MySQL databases, 10 minutes downtime.
* Shared Linux hosting filer, 10 minutes downtime.
* Shared hosting statistics, 20 minutes downtime.
* Load balancing, affecting shared Linux hosting and shared mail services, 10 minutes downtime.
* Shared SQL Server 2000 databases, less than 1 minute downtime.
* One shared Windows hosting machine. If your sites have win.secureserver.co.nz as the SSL server address, they will be affected. 15 minutes downtime.

We appreciate your understanding during this maintenance window.

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10/12/07 Web Cluster PGP migration to GnuPG
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Our providers PGP server software will change from PGP version 5 to GnuPG on Thursday the 13th of December at 8:30 AM. The shared /php-bin/PGPFormMail..php script will be modified to use GnuPG

We don't expect any outages as both of the software packages can be used interchangeably, however on Thursday we recommend that you test any scripts you have that use PGPFormMail.php or the pgpe encryption command.

New PGP users added via the Control Panel will need to use the gpg command for encryption. Existing users will continue to work with the pgpe command for some time. We ask that you modify your scripts to use gpg as soon as possible.


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Scheduled Maintenance this Thursday the 29th of November
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This Thursday the 29th of November our providers will be performing maintenance on a number of their systems at the Albany datacentre.

All shared Windows servers in our network will have the latest security patches applied. This will involve approximately 5 to 15 minutes of downtime per Windows machine. The reboots will start at 12:00 AM Thursday morning and they expect them to be complete by 4 AM.

They will also move some of their Linux servers to a new power supply. File system checks are required on some of the machines, so they expect extended downtime for some services up to 1 hour. These include Statistics, the Control Panel, and Domain Manager. There will be a short outage on the shared web hosting service as the load balancers are restarted and a couple of switches are moved. The outages will be between 12:00 AM and 5:00 AM.

We appreciate your understanding during the maintenance window.


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15/11/2007 PHP 5 will be upgraded tomorrow morning
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PHP 5 will be upgraded on the shared hosting cluster from version 5.2.4 to 5.2.5 tomorrow morning the 16th of November at 8:30 AM.

There will be no downtime and we don't expect any issues as this is only a minor version upgrade.


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24/9/07 - Important Message For PHP 5 users on the Albany Server Network
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This message applies if your websites uses our PHP 5 service on our Corporate or Business Class hosting plans. It does not effect cPanel hosting plans.

Currently this service uses PHP version 5.1.6. The reason this version is still used rather than the newer 5.2.4 release is due to reports that some sites not running correctly on the 5.2 install. The problem appeared to be Zend Optimiser bug.

Several months have passed now with our supplier holding back the upgrade. A few new versions of the Zend Optimiser have been released during this period. In the interests of security, our providers have scheduled PHP to be upgraded to 5.2.4 at 9 AM on the 24th of October 2007. Our providers have set up a server with PHP 5.2.4 that you can use for testing. The server is running on 202.89.43.100. The easiest way to test your site on this new server is to modify your hosts file. If you are using Windows, your host file is in the following location:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

For example, if you domain name is mydomain.co.nz, you can set www.mydomain.co.nz and mydomain.co.nz to point to 202.89.43.100 with the following entries:

202.89.73.100 www.mydomain.co.nz
202.89.43.100 mydomain.co.nz

This will make the domain point to the new IP address just for your computer. Remember to remove these lines after you have finished testing.

If you have trouble getting your code to work on the new version of PHP please email us with more information and we will forward this onto our supplier.

--UPDATE 2/10/2007--

Our providers have discovered that our PHP 5.1 install is not picking up the change in Daylight Savings. Time is currently running 1 hour slow on the PHP 5.1 install. A recompile does not correct the problem so they assume it is a problem with PHP 5.1.

Our providers strongly recommend that you switch to PHP 5.2.4 as soon as possible. The upgrade to PHP 5.2.4 is still scheduled for the 24th of October at 9AM. To manually change your site(s) to run on PHP 5.2.4 please update your domain template the IP address to 202.89.43.100



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18/9/07 - All Windows servers on the Albany network require an update and reboot
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All Windows servers at the Albany datacentre require updates and reboots to allow for New Zealand's Daylight Savings Time changes. The reboots are scheduled for tomorrow night, 12 AM to 3 AM. We expect the server reboots to take 5 to 15 minutes for each server.


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31/08/07 - Mod re-write update to Linux shared hosting
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There was an update to our upstream providers mod re - write engine, which may affect your rules.

If you have a re-write rule which does a redirect as following:

https://www.domain.co.nz/terms
to
https://www.domain.co.nz/terms.html

And, the above re-write rule is not working for you, then you may have to update your htaccess file with following:
Options +MultiViews

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New Statistics Software
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If you are unable to access your statistics, or your statistics are out of date, this will be because our upstream providers have updated the statistics software to AWStats. You will now be able access the new statistics software at
http://stats.mydns.net.nz/your_domain_name.co.nz/
(Please replace the your_domain_name.co.nz with the primary accounts domain name)
You can also add an A record for 'stats' pointing to 202.89.43.20 in your domain templates, so you could use http://stats.your_domain_name.co.nz .


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10/07/2007 Scheduled Maintenance - File Server Migration and Network Upgrade for 18th July
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Our upstream providers will be migrating to a new shared hosting file server on Wednesday the 18th of July. The migration should not cause any downtime for sites, but they need to disable FTP access while it is taking place. The migration will start at 10:00 PM Wednesday night to ensure we have sufficient time to move all the files. They anticipate the transfer will be complete by 6:00 AM Thursday morning.

We appreciate your understanding during this transition. The new file server should result in much improved performance for all sites.


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30/06/2007 Sheduled Maintenance - Windows Server Migration
Scheduled for Wednesday 4th of July
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Our upstream providers will be migrating their primary Windows service to a more powerful machine on Wednesday 4th of July.

This will address the performance issues some Windows sites have been experiencing due to rapid growth. The migration will occur from midnight on the 2nd. They expect the migration to be complete within 3 hours, with 5 minutes downtime for all Windows services. They may need to disable services for up to 1 hour if the transfer of files is slower than expected. If you have Windows sites, please check them first thing Wednesday the 4th and email us if you have any issues.

We appreciate your understanding during this migration. Once it is complete all Windows sites will benefit from much improved performance.


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02/04/07 PHP Version 5.2.1 is available for testing
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PHP 5.2.1 is available for testing. If you use PHP 5 for your sites, please test them on the new version. Our providers plan to switch to this version next week.

If you append your domain to http://202.89.43.18/, you will see your site running on PHP 5.2.1

i.e.

http://202.89.43.18/www.domain.tld/

Previous versions of PHP 5 and the Zend Optimizer caused problems for some scripts. We are using a newly released version of the Zend Optimizer which should run fine.


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15-03-07 PHP Session Handling has changed
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PHP Sessions are now stored using a dedicated session service rather than being stored in /tmp/. This new setup should result in better PHP performance.

We don't expect there to be any issues, but if you have problems with your scripts' sessions, please let us know.


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19-02-07 Windows Security Updates will be applied tomorrow morning
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Windows Security Updates will be applied tomorrow morning 20/02/2007. The updates require a server reboot, so Windows services will be unavailable for a short period. We expect the outage to last no longer than 30 minutes and it will be between 12:00 AM and 3:00 AM.


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17-02-07 PHP 4 will be upgraded from version 4.4.4 to 4.4.5
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PHP 4 on our web cluster will be upgraded from 4.4.4 to 4.4.5 tomorrow 18/02/2007. The upgrade is for security reasons. More information can be found on the following page:
http://www.php.net/



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10-02-07 PHP5 has been upgraded on the web cluster
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PHP5 has been upgraded to 5.2.1
This is a security upgrade as detailed on the following page:
http://www.php.net/
As soon as an updated PHP4 is available we will upgrade it.
It has been reported that PHP 5.2.* an issue with the Zend Optimizer 3.2.2 with certain scripts. Unfortunately, as this is a security update we can not revert to an earlier version of PHP.


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11/9/06 - The database server is to be replaced
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The database server will be replaced on the 12/9/06 at 6 AM. The new machine is much more powerful than the existing one, so there should be a big performance increase. The switch to the new database server will be done within a matter of seconds, and no downtime is expected.

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PHP4 + PHP5 Upgrades
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Dear Clients,
Due to several vulnerabilities existing within both php versions < 4.4.4 php5 < 5.1.5 we will be upgrading both our php4 and php5 installations today.
Please review the php changelog for additional information pertaining to this release. http://www.php.net/ChangeLog-4.php#4.4.4 http://www.php.net/ChangeLog-5.php#5.1.5
There will be no interruption of service during this upgrade.


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PHP4 + Apache Upgrades (completed)
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Due to several vulnerabilities existing within both php4 ( versions < 4.3.3) and apache (versions < 1.3.37) we have upgraded both our php4 and apache installations. Please review the php changelog for additional information pertaining to this release. http://www.php.net/ChangeLog-4.php#4.4.3 There was no interruption of service during this upgrade.

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June 2006 - New Webmail and Statistics applications
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For users of our Corporate and Business Plans, we are pleased to announce that we are upgrading the webmail and statistics reporting systems.These applications are now ready for general usage. Details regarding these new service offerings are as follows.

New Webmail System:

We have had many requests to implement a better webmail system. We have as a result now installed a webmail system named @mail.
The webmail system also includes a wap optimised website, so that you can comfortably access your email using many mobile devices.
The service will go live at http://webmail.mydns.net.nz on the 1st June 2006, until that time you can login to the system at http://webmail2.mydns.net.nz

The existing 'Horde' webmail will still be available at http://webmail2.mydns.net.nz for approximately 3 months, giving plenty of time for you to come to grips with @Mail.
We hope that you enjoy @Mail.

Implementation of this new webmail has temporarily been delayed until further notice due to software conflicts.


Statistics Reporting

We have created a new web statistics application, that enables you to view advanced statistics reporting (AWstats) for all of your websites (both windows and linux hosted websites). On the linux platform we have also included webalizer as an alternative statistics package.The application also enables you to view raw web server access logs, error logs and optionally download them to your pc.

The system is live at present and can be viewed by using a temporary URL http://stats.mydns.net.nz/your_domain_name.co.nz/ (Please replace the your_domain_name.co.nz with your actual domain name) or by adding an A record for 'stats' pointing to 202.89.43.20 to your domain templates, you could use http://stats.your_domain_name.co.nz .We will be adding the 'stats' A record to our default domain template on the 1st June 2006.

We will discontinue processing the existing webalizer statistics located at http://your_domain_name.co.nz/stats or /statistics on the 1st June 2006 also. Historical statistics files have already been transferred over to the new system.

We hope that you find the new statistics reporting system of benefit to you.