Hello all Owing to the fact that our server has developed a small problem, I need to take Mac Access and all other services off line for a short period early this morning whilst I work to rectify the issue. This is not, incidentally, related to our file manager although I’m planning to totally overhaul that today as well in order that I can get it back on line.
Basically the reason is that files which I need to modify are frequently accessed by MailMan and PostFix and if I try to edit them whilst the service is running, I will create further problems. To be safe, I am also taking Apache services off line because they are also used for some essential internal tasks and Apache services need to be stopped as well to ensure that there is no conflict. Please be aware that this is a necessary maintenance outage. I promise you that I would not consider taking the servers down unless it was absolutely necessary. Hopefully, the outage will be brief, maybe about 30 to 60 minutes at most. As you will be aware I think, we remain absolutely committed to providing a high level of service to all of our clients, irrespective of the level at which they use our services. We regard our group membership as indirect clients, but still clients. Therefore, they have a right to be informed regarding what is about to happen. Since April 2010, we have managed to maintain an up-time level in excess of 98%. Considering that we are a very small organisation with limited resources, I personally thing that is quite a staggering achievement and I’m very proud of it. I have been putting this task off, to be honest, in the hope that it wouldn’t be required. However, because of continuing problems with Apple’s new Server platform, I have still not updated our service from Snow Leopard Server. This in itself could bring a problem, and it is why I am now considering this maintenance. Security updates for Snow Leopard Server are sparse now, and that is putting it mildly. We all know about what happened with Apple’s own developer portal a week or two back and I do not wish Mac Access or any of our clients’ services to be in any way compromised. So, this task is actually one of prevention, rather than cure. All of our clients, whether they are commercial clients, visually impaired clients for whom we are proud to be able to provide services, or even just list members. You’re all important to us. We know that we don’t always get things spot on right. But be assured, I’m only doing this to enhance your security. Please be assured that no contact data or other confidential material regarding our clients has been, or ever will be, put at risk. We very much regret any inconvenience this may cause you. If you’re a direct client of ours, be assured that our secondary MX servers are up and running so mail will hopefully not bounce. If by any chance it does, because the sending server doesn’t check the entire MX chain to locate secondary services, I am very sorry for this. Feel free to get back to me should you require further information. The outage is scheduled to start at 05:30 UTC today, Tuesday 20 August, and should hopefully last no more than a maximum of 60 minutes. All being well, services should resume well within that time. But I have to allow for possible complications and I don’t want to make promises I cannot keep. So in the event that the outage lasts longer than 60 minutes, please understand that I’m doing my very best and will get things back up on line as quickly as possible. I have tried to schedule this outage at a time which I believe will bring the least inconvenience to our clients. It’s late night in the US, early evening or late afternoon in Australasia and early morning in Europe, before most businesses open their doors for the day. Finally, I am sending this to all of our E-Mail groups, so my apologies of you see this more than once. It’s important to let everybody we serve know what’s happening. Kind regards <--- Mac Access Support, [email protected] ---> ======================================= To post to this group, please send your message to: [email protected] The Windows-Access E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit your personalise subscriber options page, located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/windows-access You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Windows-Access forum at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/windows-access/index.html Or: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> --------------------------------------- [email protected]
