Archived updates

Curent status — 2018-08-01, hblanks

Today we finally have TLS for https://artifex.org.

Update: general notice — 2017-12-15 1500Z, hblanks

A 12-hour outage on 2017-11-15 led me to run an (already planned) server migration a bit sooner than planned.

We had no lost mail and no lost data (mail service was only down for ~18h, a short enough time that nobody should have lost any mail). But, the ugly news is I’m also taking the opportunity to do password resets across all accounts, since it’s been roughly 7 years since we ever did anything of the kind. And, a few things aren’t yet back up, notably userland SSH and (per-message, the more useful kind) spam filtering.

So, you’re going to need to set up a new password. (And spam filtering is just in…so check your spam/ folder and let me know how it’s working for you.)

Update: reboots for maintenance — 2017-12-15 1500Z, hblanks

FYI - I rebooted the machine a few times today, such that the instance is now verified to come up on its own after a power failure or unplanned reboot.

Update: spam filtering, part II — 2017-11-20 2150Z, hblanks

It’s too early to know much just how well it works, but system-level, per-message spam filtering is now in place.

Spam should now go into the spam/ mailbox.

Update: spam filtering, part I — 2017-11-18 2230Z, hblanks

The first part of spam filtering, which blocks by IP blacklists, is in place.

Yesterday I also re-enabled forwarding for a lot of older accounts that had .forward or the appropriate .qmail entries. That said, I’m also noticing that some forwarded mail, by its nature, will fail to forward due to DMARC / SPF policies of certain original sender domains. That’s not something anyone can fix, though.

Update: SMTP auth — 2017-11-18 2230Z, hblanks

We finally have SMTP auth, thanks to a more modern SMTP server. Next stop, spam filtering.

Update — 2017-11-16 2230Z, hblanks

All user files are sync’d to the new machine and I’ve got a tool working for migrating users’ mail from old to new directories.

Update — 2017-11-16 1230Z, hblanks

Mike’s brought up the old server and files look to be intact. I’ll be updating the new server to have a current copy of everything later today. -hblanks

Update — 2017-11-15 2100Z, hblanks

Services currently running on the new server:

Mail delivery (SMTP).
Mail retrieval (IMAP and POP, though POP’s not tested.)
This website.

Services not yet in place:

SMTP auth. (But it’s easy.)
User-level SSH.
Any other websites.
Webmail (although that may not be brought back up).

Files not yet in place:

All user files (including mail) from July onward. (This is only on the old machine until we’re able to bring it up, likely later today. After that, it’ll be another day until it’s in place.)

Things you’ll need to do:

Reset your password
(For SSH access only), also send us your RSA public key. See Reset your password for details.

Update — 2017-11-15 1730Z, hblanks

Our server for the past 7 years is, at last, unresponsive. Mike’s going to take a look later today, but in the meantime everything except this site is down.

I’ve been preparing the new server for the past few months, and at point I’m inclined to start the migration to it, even if that makes for more downtime during this outage.

A few key points:

All passwords will be reset as part of the migration. Procedures on that will follow.
Mail delivery (SMTP) will be the first service to come back up. This means that new messages to your artifex.org mail address should not be lost.
Mail delivery (SMTP) will also support SMTP auth.
Mail retrieval (IMAP & POP) will come back online at the same time.
Webmail service will not be brought back up. If you use webmail and need help getting your phone / tablet / computer / microwave set up to read mail, please don’t hesitate to contact me and I’ll help. Doing that is easier than maintaining the webmail service these days.
SSH access will only be permitted by pubkey authentication. Procedures on getting your public key registered will also follow.