Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 08:58:21 -0400 (EDT) From: BCPL.NET SysAdmin To: BCPL.NET News Subject: BCPL.NET NEWS: Mail Server Crash & New Mail Server Coming Soon -------------------------------------------------------- UNIX SERVER CRASH CAUSES UNEXPECTED SERVICE INTERRUPTION -------------------------------------------------------- At 7:45 AM this morning (Tuesday, April 8) our main UNIX server (mail.bcpl.net) crashed. I rebooted the server when I arrived at work at 8:22 AM, and all seems to be well for the moment. The symptoms you may have experienced depended on what you were trying to do while the server was down. If you were already dialed in when the crash occurred, you could no longer send or receive e-mail, access the BCPL.NET web site, or make Telnet or FTP connections to your UNIX shell account. If you were trying to make a dialup connection while the server was down, you could not because your username and password couldn't be authenticated. Our apologies for the interruption. ---------------------- NEW SERVER COMING SOON ---------------------- In BCPL.NET News on Dec 13, 2002 I mentioned that we were looking into getting a new UNIX server to replace the increasingly unreliable Sun SPARCserver 1000E we have been using since June 1996. I'm happy to report that the replacement, a Sun Fire V880, has arrived. In its current configuration it should provide vastly improved performance, and it can be upgraded considerably as necessary in the future. I have a lot of work to do on the new server to get it ready, so at this time I can't give you an exact date when it will be brought on line. The best I can say right now is "some time in April", but I'll announce the exact date as soon as I can. In the mean time, here are a few things you can do to make the transition from old server to new server easier, and to reduce the load on the old server during its last few weeks of life: Please keep your mailbox on the server as empty as possible. This will make it easier to transfer all the mailboxes to the new server when the time comes, and will also make mail service more reliable until then. If you use a POP3 mail program like Outlook Express, Eudora, Netscape Mail, Apple Mail, or Entourage, please make sure it is set up to remove mail from the server. There are very few situations where it is appropriate to leave mail on the server once you have downloaded it to your computer. If response seems slow when you are trying to get your new mail or send a new message, don't keep pounding on the "Get Mail" or "Send" button. When the mail system is slow, that just makes things worse. If you use WebMail, please delete messages you no longer need. Otherwise they stay in your New Mail folder forever. This slows down WebMail's response time when you log in. If you really must keep a message, move it to a Saved Mail folder. Click the Quick Start link on the WebMail login page if you need instructions. If you use Pine, do not leave a lot of messages in your Inbox. The more messages there are in your Inbox, the longer it will take Pine to start up. If a message is important enough to keep, save it to a Pine saved-messages folder. If you use your UNIX shell accounts, please go through the files in your home directories and delete anything you no longer need. Be sure to include your Pine saved-messages folders in your weeding. The emptier your home directory is, the easier it will be to move it to the new server. If you have Web pages on our server, please go through everything in your public_html directory and weed out files you no longer need. The emptier your public_html directory is, the easier it will be to move it to the new server. Chip -- BCPL.NET INTERNET SERVICES 320 York Road Towson, MD 21204-5179 U.S.A. CONTACTS: -------- Web Site: http://www.bcpl.net Administration & Policy: ispadmin@bcpl.net 410-887-6180 Sales, Renewals, Account Status: accounts@bcpl.net 410-887-4172 Technical Support (Help Desk): help@bcpl.net 410-887-3297 Usenet News Newsgroup Requests news-admin@bcpl.net 410-887-6180 E-Mail & Newsgroup Abuse Reports: abuse@bcpl.net 410-887-6180 Domain Name Service Issues: dnsadmin@bcpl.net 410-887-6180 FAX: 410-887-2091