Server reboot - Page 2

zaurus · 15 Aug 2004, 02:09 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by ReuvenNY
Half an hour could take up to 1 hour plus... Luckily it happened at nigh on Saturday in the US. Otherwise it would get crazy here in the forum.

No, it's not lucky at all for asian users. Here is 2 p.m.
The smtp, and pop die too, so I cannot send any mail.

Anyway, try your best , FM.

Jeremy Howard · 15 Aug 2004, 02:24 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by rakhesh
I am guess that if its just the IMAP or web server that is down, then email forwarding should work (coz that depends on SMTP and stuff like that). Am I guessing right?

Forwarding is not working at the moment, since it requires the database - sorry.

anachron · 15 Aug 2004, 02:26 PM

What happened to the old fastmail? The reliable one?

Once this current batch of issues is resolved, PLEASE don't implement any new features until you have some kind of OPT-IN beta server setup whereby interested users can have their accounts migrated to the beta test server.

All the new features are handy, but email is just email, and it should just work. All of these outages, short ones, long ones, and in between, is starting to put me in a mood for migration, sadly enough.

Even on Saturday night it is getting pretty annoying to have my IMAP client request my password for the umpteenth time because the server was rebooted, or have no connection at all, or hung connections, etc.

PLEASE RETURN FASTMAIL to the good old days.

Thank you!

bitequator · 15 Aug 2004, 02:31 PM

I recall Jeremy mentioning a few days ago that they were planning to install the kernel patch this weekend -- I look forward to that being a fix in the long term...

P.S. I have no problem though as my own-domain emails are being automatically routed via the backup MX server to my backup account (I'm reading the new messages there as I speak). And when FM goes backup up these messages will automatically get synchronized back to my FM primary mailstore so I don't have to maintain two separate mailstore locations...

rakhesh · 15 Aug 2004, 02:33 PM

Don't want to get anything started, but I happend to go through the status blog and I couldn't help noticing that Fastmail has been having outages pretty regularly. I mean: Aug 15 (today; for atleast an hour so far), Aug 13 (abt 10 mins), Aug 04 (abt 10 mins), Jul 31 (abt ten mins), Jul 13 (abt five mins), Jul 12 (abt an hour), Jul 09 (abt ten mins), Jul 02 (abt twenty mins), Jun 29 (abt fifteen mins), Jun 17 (abt 10 mins), Jun 16 (abt an hour) ... in the past two months itself, some 11 outages! Am sure J/R are aware of this ... but, are so many outages normal? I mean, most of them are thankfully only 10 mins or so and hopefully barely noticable ... but still ...

rakhesh · 15 Aug 2004, 02:35 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by bitequator
P.S. I have no problem though as my own-domain emails are being automatically routed via the backup MX server to my backup account (I'm reading the new messages there as I speak). And when FM goes backup up these messages will automatically get synchronized back to my FM primary mailstore so I don't have to maintain two separate mailstore locations...

Huh? How can that be?? Jeremy just posted above that mail forwarding (for own domains) wont be working ...

severach · 15 Aug 2004, 02:36 PM

I'm chasing other threads as fast as I can.

Jeremy, is there a way in this board for the same thread (not 3 separate threads) to appear in all 3 Fastmail groups, then later when the problem clears, you can change it back to a thread in the one group of your choice? That way everyone can post to the same thread no matter which group they read and keeps these messages out of inappropriate groups.

Can we have a red bomb icon so people notice? It should be an icon that noone but admins can specify and a color that stands out from the others.

I don't think it's necessary to make it sticky. Sticky messages are often ignored and when Fastmail is down, the usual drivel takes second place.

Quote:

What happened to the old fastmail? The reliable one?

Hotmail goes down pretty often but their email is distributed among many servers so only a small set of users get knocked offline when it happens.

I don't think it's new features that are the problem. They are tested as you suggested.

Quote:

Huh? How can that be?? Jeremy just posted above that mail forwarding (for own domains) wont be working ...

Sounds like he is hosting his MX record elsewhere and he has programmed more SMTP servers than the ones shown in the FM help. This also means that he has purchased own-domain email from someone other than fastmail and only uses it during emergencies.

To soften this problem in the future, a UI change is needed. It is easy enough to run off a backup copy of that database on another machine but anything that would modify it needs to be disabled. Click on Add Alias, can't add Alias right now. Click on change Sieve Script, can't do that right now. At least allow partial functionality.

bitequator · 15 Aug 2004, 02:48 PM

Yeah rakhesh, what severach said (so eloquently)... >

<

P.S. How come the above post is blank, just curious?

David · 15 Aug 2004, 02:51 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Hlao-roo

Hlao-roo, I agree.

rakhesh · 15 Aug 2004, 02:54 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by severach
Sounds like he is hosting his MX record elsewhere and he has programmed more SMTP servers than the ones shown in the FM help. This also means that he has purchased own-domain email from someone other than fastmail and only uses it during emergencies.

Ah! I see ... so he's prolly got another server's MX record in between the fastmail primary server and backup server ... that way if primary server is down, mail will be accepted by this other server and so he'll get it.

And apart from that he's prolly got some way to sycnh these two accounts. Could you explain a bit more on your setup bitequator? (edit: Didn't see your post above while posting. Checking it out now.)

Thanks,
Rakhesh

severach · 15 Aug 2004, 02:54 PM

Ya, at least put in bump, or in-before-the-lock, or some other irritating message.

Fastmail is down so we got nothing else to do.

I don't think the synching is anything special. All he needs to do is drag-n-drop from one account to the other in his email client. Everyone has Outlook Express which can be used for fly by night email movement.

What's even cooler is that his other account does not require the names or complex setup. He only needs a catchall and he can sort the messages out manually.

Yahoo would be a great choice for a backup domain since they are only $10/yr if you already own the domain and you do NOT need a Plus account to run domains. That's a lot of back up for not much money. No worry about spam since Yahoo's free spam filter works fairly well.

http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/info/learn-pa1.html

Unfortunately I don't see a catchall in Yahoo which is kinda critical in this process.

bitequator · 15 Aug 2004, 03:09 PM

Sorry rakhesh, I almost didn't put in the link since my past posts tend to ramble without much clarity so it might not help you much...

Anyways I inserted the backup MX servers in between FastMail's "smtp.us2" and "smtp.eu". It was a judgement call (instead of inserting in between "smtp.us" and "smtp.us2").

The "auto syncing" is nothing more than:
- having the backup account auto forward mail to FM account
- having FM auto fetch mail from the backup account via POP3

I was paranoid and went ahead set up both methods (redundantly) and rely on FM's duplicate suppression mechanism to delete any redundant copy of the same message. So in case FM was totally down and actually rejecting messages, the forwarding from the backup account would get lost but the POP3 fetching would still perform the job. On the other hand FastMail's POP3 fetching from external account is only once per hour at most, so usually I want it faster

P.S. I use MailSnare as the backup, which offers its own two MX servers ("mail.mailsnare.net" and "mx2.mailsnare.net"). What's interesting, they just told me that the "mx2.mailsnare.net" backup MX server is not a store-and-forward backup queueing server but can deliver directly into the iMAP mailstore.

What's cool about it -- the message where they told me this information was just received now during the FM outage, where this message was automatically MX routed to the backup account so I could read it immediately

Edit: I just saw severach's post, good stuff

(But in regards to mentioning "catchall" and such -- just to clarify I'm not using email forwarding)

CML209 · 15 Aug 2004, 03:10 PM

I've gotten so comfortable with the FM storage that I have always kept hoping these problems will be fixed. It's officially too much. A patch? Patches usually blow, for crying out loud. I have barely looked at my email today as I was happily working on my music folders. I come here now, it's down, with the hopes of it being up in a few hours?
FM, you really need to extend contracts another month for this one. When I say this one, I mean the straw that broke the camel's back.
CMLane

A few minutes ago the message said 2 AM EDT. Now it's 3??? GIVE ME A BREAK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

rakhesh · 15 Aug 2004, 03:16 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by severach
I don't think the synching is anything special. All he needs to do is drag-n-drop from one account to the other in his email client. Everyone has Outlook Express which can be used for fly by night email movement.

What's even cooler is that his other account does not require the names or complex setup. He only needs a catchall and he can sort the messages out manually.

Yahoo would be a great choice for a backup domain since they are only $10/yr if you already own the domain and you do NOT need a Plus account to run domains. That's a lot of back up for not much money.

Yup, he's fetching the mails from his backup account to Fastmail through POP. Pretty neat, I must say. When Fastmail is down, POP doesn't work anyways and so mail goes to the backup account. Then when Fastmail comes up, it will fetch mails from that account through POP. Cool!

Thanks for the Yahoo suggestion. bitequator uses Mailsnare, but I don't like their interface much. Will check out Yahoo's options now ...

Jeremy Howard · 15 Aug 2004, 03:17 PM

We have monitored the database recovery speed and based on the rate so far, completion of the database recovery will take another 90 minutes.

15 Aug 2004, 02:26 PM	#18
anachron Member Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: San Francisco, CA Posts: 35	All of this downtime, short and long, is tiresome. What happened to the old fastmail? The reliable one? Once this current batch of issues is resolved, PLEASE don't implement any new features until you have some kind of OPT-IN beta server setup whereby interested users can have their accounts migrated to the beta test server. All the new features are handy, but email is just email, and it should just work. All of these outages, short ones, long ones, and in between, is starting to put me in a mood for migration, sadly enough. Even on Saturday night it is getting pretty annoying to have my IMAP client request my password for the umpteenth time because the server was rebooted, or have no connection at all, or hung connections, etc. PLEASE RETURN FASTMAIL to the good old days. Thank you!

15 Aug 2004, 02:48 PM	#23
bitequator The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: USA Posts: 2,978	Yeah rakhesh, what severach said (so eloquently)... >< P.S. How come the above post is blank, just curious?

15 Aug 2004, 02:54 PM	#26
severach Essential Contributor Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Michigan Posts: 307	Ya, at least put in bump, or in-before-the-lock, or some other irritating message. Fastmail is down so we got nothing else to do. I don't think the synching is anything special. All he needs to do is drag-n-drop from one account to the other in his email client. Everyone has Outlook Express which can be used for fly by night email movement. What's even cooler is that his other account does not require the names or complex setup. He only needs a catchall and he can sort the messages out manually. Yahoo would be a great choice for a backup domain since they are only $10/yr if you already own the domain and you do NOT need a Plus account to run domains. That's a lot of back up for not much money. No worry about spam since Yahoo's free spam filter works fairly well. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/info/learn-pa1.html Unfortunately I don't see a catchall in Yahoo which is kinda critical in this process. Last edited by severach : 15 Aug 2004 at 03:15 PM.

15 Aug 2004, 03:09 PM	#27
bitequator The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: USA Posts: 2,978	Sorry rakhesh, I almost didn't put in the link since my past posts tend to ramble without much clarity so it might not help you much... Anyways I inserted the backup MX servers in between FastMail's "smtp.us2" and "smtp.eu". It was a judgement call (instead of inserting in between "smtp.us" and "smtp.us2"). The "auto syncing" is nothing more than: - having the backup account auto forward mail to FM account - having FM auto fetch mail from the backup account via POP3 I was paranoid and went ahead set up both methods (redundantly) and rely on FM's duplicate suppression mechanism to delete any redundant copy of the same message. So in case FM was totally down and actually rejecting messages, the forwarding from the backup account would get lost but the POP3 fetching would still perform the job. On the other hand FastMail's POP3 fetching from external account is only once per hour at most, so usually I want it faster P.S. I use MailSnare as the backup, which offers its own two MX servers ("mail.mailsnare.net" and "mx2.mailsnare.net"). What's interesting, they just told me that the "mx2.mailsnare.net" backup MX server is not a store-and-forward backup queueing server but can deliver directly into the iMAP mailstore. What's cool about it -- the message where they told me this information was just received now during the FM outage, where this message was automatically MX routed to the backup account so I could read it immediately Edit: I just saw severach's post, good stuff (But in regards to mentioning "catchall" and such -- just to clarify I'm not using email forwarding) Last edited by bitequator : 15 Aug 2004 at 04:20 PM.

15 Aug 2004, 03:10 PM	#28
CML209 Essential Contributor Join Date: Feb 2004 Posts: 328	This is too much I've gotten so comfortable with the FM storage that I have always kept hoping these problems will be fixed. It's officially too much. A patch? Patches usually blow, for crying out loud. I have barely looked at my email today as I was happily working on my music folders. I come here now, it's down, with the hopes of it being up in a few hours? FM, you really need to extend contracts another month for this one. When I say this one, I mean the straw that broke the camel's back. CMLane A few minutes ago the message said 2 AM EDT. Now it's 3??? GIVE ME A BREAK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

15 Aug 2004, 02:31 PM	#19
bitequator The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: USA Posts: 2,978	I recall Jeremy mentioning a few days ago that they were planning to install the kernel patch this weekend -- I look forward to that being a fix in the long term... P.S. I have no problem though as my own-domain emails are being automatically routed via the backup MX server to my backup account (I'm reading the new messages there as I speak). And when FM goes backup up these messages will automatically get synchronized back to my FM primary mailstore so I don't have to maintain two separate mailstore locations...

15 Aug 2004, 02:33 PM	#20
rakhesh Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Muscat, Oman Posts: 551	Don't want to get anything started, but I happend to go through the status blog and I couldn't help noticing that Fastmail has been having outages pretty regularly. I mean: Aug 15 (today; for atleast an hour so far), Aug 13 (abt 10 mins), Aug 04 (abt 10 mins), Jul 31 (abt ten mins), Jul 13 (abt five mins), Jul 12 (abt an hour), Jul 09 (abt ten mins), Jul 02 (abt twenty mins), Jun 29 (abt fifteen mins), Jun 17 (abt 10 mins), Jun 16 (abt an hour) ... in the past two months itself, some 11 outages! Am sure J/R are aware of this ... but, are so many outages normal? I mean, most of them are thankfully only 10 mins or so and hopefully barely noticable ... but still ...

15 Aug 2004, 03:17 PM	#30
Jeremy Howard Ultimate Contributor Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: Australia Posts: 11,501	We have monitored the database recovery speed and based on the rate so far, completion of the database recovery will take another 90 minutes.