NetLink IT Services

Scheduled maintenance on ECHO server

noreply@blogger.com (NetLink) — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 07:41:00 +0000

The hard drive on the server ECHO will be swapped out today and the operating system will be reinstalled on the new drive. This will take approximately 4-6 hours, during which time the server will be inaccessible.

We'll post an update here once this has been resolved.

We apologise for the inconvenience.

[UPDATE 2010/08/10 17:28 UTC]

The operating system on ECHO has been reinstalled, and the restoration process along with the drive swap is scheduled for 23:00 UTC tonight. We will do our best to minimise disruption during this time.

[UPDATE 2010/08/11 06:55 UTC]

The new system is now running on the new drive. We're working as quickly as we can to get the individual accounts restored. If you have any questions, please send an e-mail to support @ netlink.ie.

[UPDATE 2010/08/11 13:55 UTC]

The accounts have now been restored. Every user is kindly asked to verify that everything with their own site or sites is working as it should be, and get in touch with us if this is not the case. Again, sincere apologies for the inconvenience.

Server Downtime [Resolved]

noreply@blogger.com (NetLink) — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 00:34:00 +0000

The server ECHO will be disconnected for a maximum of about 15 minutes within the next 24 hours to install a second hard drive. This hard drive will be used to secure backups so that we can proceed with the re-installation.

Scheduled maintenance on ECHO server

noreply@blogger.com (NetLink) — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:58:00 +0000

A 6 hour maintenance is planned for the server ECHO on Saturday, the 31st of July at 21:00 UTC (22:00 Irish Standard Time). During this maintenance, the primary hard drive will be replaced with a new one. The hard drive will be cloned and replaced. This will take up to 6 hours. The server will be unavailble during this time. The maintenance is unavoidable as there are some errors on the current drive that are causing high CPU loads.

Since we are cloning the drive, everything will be restored immediately after the new drive is installed. Nonetheless, we urge clients on this server to download a backup of their files, databases and e-mails. This can be done easily by logging into your cPanel account. Alternatively, you can also contact us at support @ netlink.ie and we'll download the backup for you.

We apologize in advance for any inconveniences.

[UPDATE 2010/08/01]

Unfortunately, the drive cloning has failed. This means we will need to backup the entire server and re-install the system on to a new hard drive. This involves a fair amount of work, and we regret that further downtime is unavoidable. We will post new information to keep you up to date. Any further updates will be posted as new entries.

Server will be disconnected

noreply@blogger.com (NetLink) — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:08:00 +0000

The cPanel server CHARLIE will be permanently taken offline on or before the 17th of August 2010. All data still on this server will be permanently erased. Clients are advised to contact us if they think they may still have important files on this server. You can contact us by sending an e-mail to support @ netlink.ie.

Network Outage (Resolved)

noreply@blogger.com (NetLink) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:34:00 +0000

Due to some technical problems at the data centre, two of our servers, ALPHA and BRAVO are currently unavailable. Technicians are currently working on the issue and we hope to have everything back to normal within the next hour or two.

The outage affects all services, however, e-mails can be retrieved as soon as the servers come back online.

We apologize for any inconveniences.

Datacenter Outage (Resolved)

noreply@blogger.com (NetLink) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 20:37:00 +0000

A datacenter where one of our primary DNS services is being hosted has reported some outages due to electrical faults caused by a fire.

The outage is affecting some DNS services, mainly URL forwarding.

We are currently trying to reroute traffic to an alternative datacenter and hope to have any issues resolved as soon as possible.

Fantastico Unavailable (Resolved)

noreply@blogger.com (NetLink) — Mon, 04 May 2009 06:05:00 +0000

Fantastico De Luxe is currently unavailable on our cPanel server, ECHO, due to an issue with the installer. We are working on this problem, and will hopefully have Fantastico up and running again within a day or two. In the meantime, please feel free to contact support if you require assistance with anything.

[UPDATE 04/05/2009 19:00 GMT]

Fantastico is now functional again.

Wordpress themes infected with Trojans

noreply@blogger.com (NetLink) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 21:05:00 +0000

We have discovered that some free Wordpress themes offered on the Web are infected with Trojans. This means that when downloading and installing such a theme, the Trojan is automatically installed with it.

The Trojan discovered earlier today, which was found hidden inside the theme named "Eco-blog" and hosted at http://www.zizapixel.com/wp-themes/eco-blog-theme.html, had following signatures:

PHP.RSTBackdoor (Symantec)
Trojan.Shell-2 (ClamAV)

When installing the theme mentioned above, this backdoor PHP shell will install itself to:

wp-content/themes/eco-blog/function.php

We advise everyone to do a virus scan on any Wordpress themes not downloaded from a reputable source before uploading and installing such theme.

DoS Attack (Resolved)

noreply@blogger.com (NetLink) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 18:40:00 +0000

Earlier today, we had a DoS (Denial of Service) attack on one of our networks. The attack affected two of our servers - ALPHA and BRAVO.

Security measures were taken to block the attacks, and we are happy to inform our clients that the network is back in operation since shortly after 18:00 +0000 DST.

Server Migration

noreply@blogger.com (NetLink) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 18:56:00 +0000

In the next 2-3 weeks we will be migrating our Fedora server CL-T090-550CL to a new CentOS server. This migration is scheduled to start some time next week. The new server features a much more stable OS and a higher performing dual core processor.

We kindly ask all our clients on this server to download backups of their account data as well as database dumps as the old server will be taken offline once the migration has been completed.

[UPDATE 2009-03-31]

Our new CentOS server "ECHO" is now live. Please stand by for transfer of accounts. Do not hesitate to contact us should you have any questions.

Server Downtime (Resolved)

noreply@blogger.com (NetLink) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 16:43:00 +0000

Our Confixx server ALPHA is currently offline due to server maintenance being carried out. Unfortunately this downtime was unavoidable, but we are doing our best to get it back up asap. We apologize for the inconvenience.

UPDATE: due to an unforseen widescale power failure at the data center, the server downtime will be slightly prolonged. Technicians are currently working on this issue. Backup power is in operation and not all servers are affected.

Mail Server Problems (RESOLVED)

noreply@blogger.com (NetLink) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:19:00 +0000

We have had a few reports today about emails not being received on mail.netlink.ie. Technicians are looking into this now and we will do our best to resolve this as soon as possible.

[UPDATE]: This issue has now been resolved and held messages in the mail queue have been released for delivery.

Server Maintenance

noreply@blogger.com (NetLink) — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 17:49:00 +0000

On the 25/08/2008 we will be doing some maintenance on the server at 195.137.213.66. Customers on this server may experience some downtime between 18:00 and 21:00 GMT. We apologize for any inconvenience.

E-mail will NOT be affected.

Server Upgrade [postponed]

noreply@blogger.com (NetLink) — Sat, 24 May 2008 14:24:00 +0000

An OS upgrade is being planned for CL-T090-550CL. The upgrade will involve a complete re-installation. It will therefore be necessary to backup any important files on the server. We will do our best to fully restore all cPanel accounts once the upgrade is complete, however, it is advised that clients download a copy of their backups as a precaution. During the upgrade there will be 2-4 hours downtime.

Please check back regularly for updates.

[UPDATE: 2008-05-28]

The new operating system we are installing is CentOS. This will replace the currently installed Fedora Core 6, which has become outdated and is no longer maintained or supported by its developers. CentOS is more stable and, in our opinion, a better choice for a production server environment.

The maintenance is currently being planned. Once it has been scheduled, we will copy a complete backup of all cPanel accounts, which we will use to restore your accounts after the installation. This means that any changes to your account AFTER the backup has been downloaded will be lost after the installation. We therefore recommend that you download a copy of your own account (and your customers' accounts) about an hour before the scheduled maintenance. It is also advisable to download SQL dumps of your databases as SQL dumps can often become corrupt while moving data around.

Server Software Upgrade

noreply@blogger.com (NetLink) — Fri, 23 May 2008 13:18:00 +0000

The web server on CL-T090-550CL has been upgraded to
Apache 2.2. The MySQL server will be upgraded to 5.x in the next couple of days, so we would like to ask all our clients on this server to make backups of important MySQL tables and data.

DoS Attack (Resolved)

noreply@blogger.com (NetLink) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 18:56:00 +0000

Over the last few days, our server CL-T090-550CL has been subject to a DoS (Denial of Service) attack. During this time you may have noticed that HTTP connections where slow or timing out. We are happy to announce that our server administrators have now resolved this problem and the attacking IP addresses are now being blocked by our firewall.

About 90% of the attacks originated from networks located in Turkey.

Server Maintenance (Resolved)

noreply@blogger.com (NetLink) — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 14:46:00 +0000

Throughout the next few days, one of our servers, CL-T090-550CL, will be subject to some routine maintenance. This maintenance will include a RAM upgrade, and hence the server may become unavailable for short periods during this time. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

UPDATE 24-03-2008 18:50 GMT:

All maintenance has been completed and the new RAM has been installed.

Server Downtime (Resolved)

noreply@blogger.com (NetLink) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 12:11:00 +0000

We had to temporarily switch off one of our servers [CL-T090-550CL] to carry out necessary maintenance work. We assure you that we will have it back online as soon as possible. We thank you for your understanding and apologize for any inconveniences.

UPDATE:

As of 2008-02-29 12:49 GMT the server is back and operational again.

Server Downtime (Resolved)

noreply@blogger.com (NetLink) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 13:41:00 +0000

We are currently experiencing some network problems with affecting our servers at 195.137.213.66 and 195.137.213.94. Technicians are working on this issue and the network will be restored as soon as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience.

UPDATE [2008-02-21 13:52 GMT] :

All services have been restored.

Server Downtime (Resolved)

noreply@blogger.com (NetLink) — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:42:00 +0000

Two of our servers are currently down, including the server at netlink.ie and one of our secondary servers. The problem is network related and has nothing to do with the actual servers. Technicians are working on the issue.

The servers went down at 2007-10-16 19:57 GMT, and the downtime affects all services including mail. Mail, however will be delivered once the server is back up.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

UPDATE [2007-10-16 21:30 GMT] :

All services are up and running again.

Mail Server Maintenance

noreply@blogger.com (NetLink) — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 19:35:00 +0000

Today, 2007-11-10 between 20:30 GMT and 22:00 GMT, we will be carrying out maintenance to one of our mail servers, mail.netlink.ie. During this time, we may need to stop the server. If you experience any difficulty in sending or receiving mail during this period, we kindly ask you to be patient and apologize for any inconvenience. If you experience difficulty in sending or receiving mail after this period, please contact support to report any issues.

The maintenance carried out today will aid in our fight against spam.

IMPORTANT: Server Upgrade

noreply@blogger.com (NetLink) — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 20:38:00 +0000

This announcement is for all our cPanel hosting customers.

We are going to be migrating to a more powerful server this week coming. The new server will have an Intel Pentium E Dual-Core processor, double the memory and double the storage capacity. This is to give you more power, more security, and to cater for our growing customer base.

We kindly ask our resellers to be on stand by for this migration in case of issues that may arise from this move. A change in IP addresses may be possible. We will be keeping you updated with announcements throughout the migration process. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

[UPDATE 2007-10-03] IMPORTANT!

All accounts have now been moved to the new server. The primary IP address of the server has changed to 72.55.179.42. Any customers using their own nameservers should change the A records to this new IP address. Also, if using branded nameservers, the new IP address should be registers for the primary NS via your domain registrar.

IMPORTANT: Please note that the old server will remain up for approximately 7 days before accounts will be removed from it. It is therefore important to check your accounts on the new server to make sure everything has been transferred correctly. If you find that there was a problem with the transfer, we would be more than happy to restore the latest backup for you.

Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions.

Server Downtime (Resolved)

noreply@blogger.com (NetLink) — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 19:57:00 +0000

2007-09-25 20:57:39 GMT

Our servers at 195.137.213.66 and 195.137.213.94 are currently down. The issue is network related and not a direct server problem. Technicians at the data center are currently working to resolve the issue.

Services affected by this downtime include mail and web server. However, customers using the local mail server will not lose any mail. Any existing mail should get delivered as soon as the server comes back up.

We apologize for any inconveniences.

UPDATE [2007-09-25 22:28 GMT]

The issue has been resolved and services are up and running again.

Server Downtime (Resolved)

noreply@blogger.com (NetLink) — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 02:10:00 +0000

Due to some technical issues, our server at cl-t061-091cl.netlink.ie is currently down. We are aware of this problem and have a team working on it. We hope to have the server back up asap.

[UPDATE 2007-09-10 03:45 GMT]

The server is back online. There was a problem with one of the switches the server is connected to, and the issue has now been resolved.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

Deprecated php.ini directive

noreply@blogger.com (NetLink) — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 03:27:00 +0000

The directive allow_call_time_pass_reference is deprecated in PHP5, and will be turned off on our servers.

The setting is used to define whether or not to warn when arguments are passed by reference at function call time. This method is deprecated and is likely to be unsupported in future versions of PHP/Zend. The encouraged method of specifying which arguments should be passed by reference is in the function declaration.

You are encouraged to make sure your scripts work properly with this directive turned off in order to ensure they will work with future versions of the language (you will receive a warning each time you use this feature).