Server and System Status

Decommissioning of old nameserver

19 October 2019 01:41:05 +0000

We are in the process of decommissioning server NC020. Among other functions, this server is also the machine on which nameserver ns3.niner.net is hosted. Not many clients’ domains are using ns3.niner.net, and of those that are most are registered with and therefore under the control of NinerNet. For this reason we can implement this change without bothering most clients.

However, if you have chosen to register your domain with another domain registrar and we don’t have access to your domain registration, we need to ask you to remove ns3.niner.net from the list of nameservers that are authoritative for your domain. If that is the case we will contact you via email, and point you to this notice to confirm the legitimacy of our request.

This change will not have any effect on your domain and how it, its website and email work. In fact, leaving ns3.niner.net in the list of nameservers authoritative for your domain will cause a slight decrease in performance, which is why we are asking you to remove it.

If you have any questions about this please reply to the email you will receive, or contact NinerNet support. Thank-you.

Tags: dns, nameservers
Categories: Domains, Maintenance, NC020
Comments Off

Secondary mail exchanger upgrade

17 October 2019 17:57:17 +0000

We have switched from using our old secondary MX (server NC020) to a newer server (server NC037) with modern software and better spam filtering and blocking. This information is only applicable to those clients who use our secondary MX in the DNS for their domains. It does not change anything for any clients who get their primary mail service from us, and should not change anything for those clients who use our secondary mail server to handle incoming email when their primary mail server is down.

For your information, the IP addresses of the new secondary MX are as follows:

IPv4: 50.23.135.218
IPv6: 2607:f0d0:2002:15::a

If you have any questions please contact NinerNet support. Thank-you.

Tags: back-up mail exchanger, back-up mail server, back-up mx, email delivery, secondary mail exchanger, secondary mail server, secondary mx
Categories: Email, NC020, NC037
Comments Off

NC020: Reboot

2 June 2018 07:02:10 +0000

Server NC020 was rebooted at 06:19 UTC, and was back online again at 06:22.

Tags: down time, hardware, reboot
Categories: Incidents, NC020
Comments Off

NC020: Reboot

8 May 2018 00:38:35 +0000

Due to an issue with the FTP server on NC020 we rebooted it at 00:27 UTC. It was back online at 00:28.

Tags: connection issues, down time, ftp, reboot
Categories: Incidents, NC020
Comments Off

Meltdown and Spectre hardware vulnerabilities

17 January 2018 13:58:43 +0000

As you may have heard and read in the news since the beginning of January, major vulnerabilities in very widely used computer hardware (not software) were discovered in mid-2017 by security researchers in Austria, Germany, the United States and Australia, and were publicised on 3 January. Fixes to mitigate some of the vulnerabilities are now being released, and further mitigating measures are under active development where such mitigation is possible.

To this end we will be applying patches to our servers starting tomorrow (18 January) that will necessitate some down time. Due to the nature and scale of this problem — illustrated by the answer to the question, “Am I affected by the vulnerability?” being a simple, “Most certainly, yes” — these patches cannot be delayed or scheduled for a more convenient time. Also, as work continues on ways to mitigate some of the vulnerabilities, there are some updates to the operating systems on our servers that are yet to be developed that will need to be applied in the future. As further related maintenance takes place we will link back to this post.

Following this blog post we will post the details of the first server to undergo patching.

Further details on these vulnerabilities can be read at the following links:

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us. Thank-you for your patience.

Tags: down time, hardware, reboot
Categories: Maintenance, NC020, NC023, NC027, NC031, NC033
2 Comments »

NC020: Server networking issues

17 December 2017 12:27:45 +0000

Due to a misconfiguration of server NC020 by data centre personnel in response to a networking request from NinerNet that resulted from a change in one of their policies, this server stopped processing email properly earlier today. This resulted in some instability and the rebooting of the server three times between 07:22 and 08:06 UTC.

These problems affected only email processed for NinerNet domains, not any client email. However, because there are still a few client websites hosted on this server, including this status blog, these sites would have been down and up for some time this morning.

We have corrected the networking issue and have remonstrated with the data centre over the issue. We apologise for any inconvenience caused and will endeavour to ensure that this does not happen again.

Tags: connection issues, down time, email delivery, performance, reboot, web server
Categories: Email, Incidents, NC020
Comments Off

All servers: SSL certificates updated

23 October 2017 18:45:48 +0000

The *.niner.net SSL certificate was updated over the weekend on all servers, as the old one has just expired.

If you get any certificate errors in either your web browser or email program, please close down all programs, restart your computer, and try again. This should clear the cache of the programs in question and force them to download the new certificate information.

If you have any problems, please contact us.

Tags: ssl, ssl certificate, tls, tls certificate
Categories: Maintenance, NC020, NC023, NC027, NC031, NC033
Comments Off

NC018: Server to shut down

8 September 2017 01:19:46 +0000

We will be shutting down server NC018 within the next 24-72 hours. Normally the closure of a server would not be an event we’d dwell on, but server NC018 has been around for a long time and the migrations off of it have been dragged out for longer than they should have been.

We want to assure all hosting clients that the email that used to be hosted on this server has long since been moved to server NC027, and all websites that used to be hosted on NC018 have been moved to servers NC020 and NC031. No email or websites remain on server NC018.

What does remain on this server at the moment is the DNS (domain name system) service. A new server (NC033) has been commissioned and configured to take over this service, and the DNS information for all domains has been transferred to the new server.

All that said, completely removing NC018 from the NinerNet ecosystem at the flick of a switch will probably reveal one function or another still connected to and relying on a server that has been around for as long as it has. While this is possible, any such function will be of minor significance — it won’t be anything vital to the operation of your email or website — and we’re doing this at the start of a weekend so that we can quickly address any issues that may arise outside of your business hours. We will, of course, post any necessary updates here on our status page (status.niner.net), to which you can subscribe.

One long-standing item that we will address after NC018 has been removed is the matter of control panels. The reason we have multiple control panels will be the subject of a future blog post, but there is a reason we don’t have one grand, unifying control panel … besides the fact that we’ve been there and done that and don’t want to do it again. We have three main servers (with control panels) providing our three main hosting services:

NC027: Mail server (email hosting)
NC031: Web server (website hosting)
NC033: Name server (DNS hosting)

Once server NC018 has been shut down we’ll redirect cp.niner.net to a page that explains the above. (You’re reading it now.) In the future we’ll implement a more elegant way of unifying (to a certain extent) the way you access the three control panels.

We thank you for your patience as we work very hard to improve our infrastructure to serve you better. As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Craig

Tags: migration, nameservers
Categories: Maintenance, NC018, NC020, NC027, NC031, NC033
Comments Off

Chromium certificate issue resolved

17 November 2016 20:08:44 +0000

The issue with the Google Chromium web browser reporting valid certificates as “unsafe” has been resolved today with an update to Chromium.

Update, 2016-11-20: We’ve posted a commentary about this on our blog.

Tags: browser warnings, ssl, ssl certificate, tls, tls certificate, web server
Categories: Incidents, NC018, NC020, NC027, NC031
Comments Off

Issues with *.niner.net certificate

16 November 2016 10:34:52 +0000

We are aware that s small subset of users of the Chromium web browser may receive the following error when trying to access websites and control panels via HTTPS that use the *.niner.net certificate:

Your connection is not private

Attackers might be trying to steal your information from cp31.niner.net (for example, passwords, messages or credit cards). NET::ERR_CERTIFICATE_TRANSPARENCY_REQUIRED

(cp31.niner.net will be replaced by whatever domain you are trying to access.)

If you click the “ADVANCED” link you will see the following additional information:

The server presented a certificate that was not publicly disclosed using the Certificate Transparency policy. This is a requirement for some certificates, to ensure that they are trustworthy and protect against attackers.

This is a bug in Google Chromium, not a problem with our certificate.

Until Google fixes this bug we recommend using a better web browser (e.g., Firefox), or clicking the “Proceed to cp31.niner.net (unsafe)” link that is revealed when you click “ADVANCED” as described above. Clicking the “unsafe” link is indeed safe in this case. Even very big and very busy websites — such as Yahoo and Flickr for example — are currently affected by this bug.

Tags: browser warnings, ssl, ssl certificate, tls, tls certificate, web server
Categories: Incidents, NC018, NC020, NC027, NC031
1 Comment »

System	Status	Ping
NC023	Internal	Up?
NC028	Internal	Up?
NC031	Internal	Up?
NC033	Operational	Up?
NC034	Internal	Up?
NC035	Operational	Up?
NC036	Operational	Up?
NC040	Internal	Up?
NC041	Operational	Up?
NC042	Operational	Up?