Strangecode Hosting Status

Email quota bump

As a benefit of the migration to bigger badder servers we all get a bump in email mailbox quotas: a 12x bump to 1200MB for all accounts. Enjoy!

Upcoming server migrations [with an update]

In the spirit of new, better, and faster we are planning a migration of all websites and email to new servers in October. You can look forward to receiving resource upgrades, higher performance, and a more modern OS.

The migrations will take place Oct 4–8. We’ve designed the migrations to be as low-impact as possible: you shouldn’t notice it as it occurs—there will be less than a few minutes of downtime for each site as they are moved to the new system, and a few minutes more when we migrate mail services.

To further reduce possible impact on your business, we will be doing our work well after business hours PST. During the migration email, SFTP, and SSH access will be locked to prevent file modifications. Access will be restored immediately after files are copied.

New IP addresses will be assigned to each server. If you manage your own DNS, make sure you’re using “CNAME records” to point to our hostnames instead of “A records.” We will be reviewing DNS configurations and contacting those of you who need to change your settings.

If you have any questions please contact us.

----

UPDATE 1—We've postponed the migration date until October 4–8 to ensure ample time for testing the new infrastructure. 

Discontinuing CRAM-MD5

On December 15, 2013, we will be performing a maintenance on our email servers which will remove the ability for mail clients to send mail using the legacy authentication protocol, CRAM-MD5. Once removed, a very small portion of our customers may lose the ability to send mail until their mail client’s SMTP authentication method is changed.

Why? While CRAM-MD5 is a secure authentication protocol, the industry as a whole has been migrating away from using this mechanism. The recommended method for sending mail today is to use PLAIN/PASSWORD authentication over an SSL or TLS connection.

Will I be impacted? In preparing for this maintenance we discovered the vast majority of mail clients do not use CRAM-MD5 by default. It is very difficult to pinpoint each and every mail client, version, device, etc that could be impacted, although we do know that if you are running one of these configurations you could be impacted by this change:

• Thunderbird
• Apple Mail
• iOS devices still running iOS versions prior to iOS 6.x

If this affects me, how do I fix it? If you notice you are no longer able to send mail from your email client after December 15, you can resolve the issue using one of the following means:

1. Reconfigure your mail client so it does not use CRAM-MD5 authentication for SMTP (outgoing messages). See the links above for tutorials.
2. We also suggest using an encrypted connection via SSL or TLS when sending and receiving mail.

If you have trouble, you can always login to Webmail (at https://webmail.yourdomain.com/) to access and send email like normal.

Dev server maintenance

We've been alerted to a failed RAID5 drive on our development server, pine.strangecode.com. We have scheduled the drive to be replaced Nov 12 between 2:00 AM CST - 6:00 AM CST. This server will be offline briefly while the new drive is rebuilt. Note: this doesn't affect any of our customer's production websites. This server is used for development sites at *.dev.strangecode.com and for a few of our partner developer's sites (you know who you are).

It’s time to update your domain’s name servers

We are migrating to a faster DNS system and have new name servers! Our previous secondary name server seconly.rackspace.com is being decommissioned so this is a necessary change. If you have any domains on Strangecode’s DNS, you will need to update their name servers before July 25. This setting is changed at your registrar – e.g., Go Daddy, Dotster, et al – to find who your registrar is run a ‘whois’ query through a site such as whois.sc.

This change must be completed before July 25 to ensure reliable DNS for your domains, website and email.

The Strangecode DNS servers are:

• ns.strangecode.com (currently active)
• ns2.strangecode.com (new DNS server)

You’ll notice ns.strangecode.com is the same as before – we’re just adding ns2.strangecode.com to the mix. Be sure to remove any other name servers listed for your domain (i.e., seconly.rackspace.com must be removed).

If you need assistance with this process or have any questions please email hosting at strangecode.com or call us at +1.530.636.2633.

Prepare your sites for PHP 5.4.x

We will be upgrading to PHP 5.4.x on April 13th. We wanted to give you enough notice so you have time to ensure your web apps are ready to support this new version. If Strangecode built your website, you don't have anything to worry about. Otherwise, please refer to php.net's notes on Migrating from PHP 5.2.x to PHP 5.3.x and Migrating from PHP 5.3.x to PHP 5.4.x (we're currently running the latest of the 5.2.x branch, which is EOL, so this is a mandatory upgrade). Most sites should be fine with the upgrade, but if your website is running very old code you should take the recommended precautions in the above links.

Server oak ssh unresponsive

Server Oak seems to be inaccessible over ssh because of a high iowait caused by our backup system. We're rebooting this server now so we can go in an see why it was misbehaving.

UPDATE—10:43: we've restarted the server and backup process, and all is running smoothly now. We'll keep a close eye to ensure it stays smooth.

Gmail SSL Issues

In a move not communicated to its users beforehand, Gmail has decided to no longer accept self-signed certificates, causing users to choose between unencrypted downloading of messages, or no messages at all. We've updated our mail server mx.strangecode.com with a non-self-signed SSL certificate, which isn't much more secure, but makes Google happy.

If you are connecting to our mail server using SSL or TLS and are having trouble, please use the hostname mx.strangecode.com instead of mail.whateveryourdomainis.com. If you still have problems, please write to [email protected]

Firewall upgrade scheduled Aug 30

We will be upgrading the software and RAM of our firewall. This required maintenance is scheduled to occur between 3-4am PST early Thursday morning, and will effect all shared hosting servers. Downtime during the upgrade should be 20-30 minutes.

UPDATE—03:18 PST: Upgrades completed; downtime was limited to 10 minutes.

Balsa experiencing traffic spike

We're experiencing heavy traffic on balsa.strangecode.com; some sites may be inaccessible at the moment. We're investigating to determine the cause of the traffic and apply mitigation. Please stand by.

UPDATE 05:34—We've blocked a few IP addresses that seem to be associated with botnet activity from China at the firewall. This should help with the load. We'll continue monitoring to ensure things quiet down.