News

Notes, notices, and server news.

Writing on hosting, security, and running infrastructure in Canada, alongside migration notices and maintenance windows. Posts previously published at DigitalOrphans are archived here. Urgent status updates go out on Mastodon and the RSS feed.

Aug 8, 2026 A new website, and a bigger Silentweb Silentweb has a new home on the web — and new services to go with it: design and development projects are open again, cybersecurity and training are official, and security consulting is free for not-for-profits. Announcement Mar 31, 2024 Server migration notice: websrv06 websrv05 has served us well, but CentOS 7 reaches end-of-life in June 2024. Accounts move to websrv06 through April. Migration Dec 28, 2022 Server migration notice for websrv05 All hosting accounts on websrv04 move to a substantially faster machine with PHP 8.1/8.2 and MariaDB 10.5. Migration Mar 19, 2022 PHP versions upgraded on websrv04 Sites running unsupported PHP 7.1–7.3 were moved to 7.4 automatically. Most can safely switch to 8.1. Platform Oct 4, 2020 Email server changes on websrv04 Mail moves from QMail+Courier to Postfix+Dovecot, with Plesk Email Security Pro replacing MagicSpam. Email Mar 7, 2020 Plesk and PHP updates on websrv04 The SMTP issue following the Plesk upgrade is resolved; PHP 7.4 is now available. Maintenance Mar 7, 2020 Service Interruption: Update Please note that the majority of the Plesk upgrade and kernel patching was successful; however, we are currently experiencing an issue with outgoing mail (SMTP) at this time. Plesk support is investigating the issue,… News Updates Mar 6, 2020 Service Interruption Please excuse the 10 minute service interruption on websrv04 this evening as the system is rebooting in order to apply a patch. News Updates Mar 4, 2019 Plesk & PHP Updates on websrv04 Plesk 17.8 Upgrade Plesk server control panel on websrv04 will be upgraded this weekend to version 17.8. This upgrade will result in some periodic downtime on Saturday evening and Sunday morning. No significant outage… News Updates Feb 17, 2018 websrv04 account migration complete All resellers, clients, and sites have moved, with PHP 7.2, Node.js, and automatic Let's Encrypt certificates. Migration Jan 3, 2018 Account Migration Has Started Just a brief note to mention that I have transferred 49 domains from websrv03 to the new websrv04 server tonight. This is going to be a bit of a slower process than I originally hoped, but the migration utilities prov… websrv03 Jan 1, 2018 Silentweb Server Migration Notice I would just like to let you know that I am starting 2018 off by doing some relatively significant server house cleaning for DigitalOrphans. This major server upgrade will begin this week, and I will be moving all 400… websrv03 Aug 9, 2017 Horde Webmail Folder Issue Please note that I was made aware of another issue this morning with the Horde webmail client. Essentially, mail within sub-folders appears to be missing. The messages are in fact there, they are just not being displa… News Updates Aug 8, 2017 Horde Webmail Login Issue Resolved My apologies for the inconvenience today for users of Horde webmail. An unforeseen side effect of upgrading to PHP 5.6 last night was failed logins for users trying to access to that particular webmail client. I have… News Updates Aug 7, 2017 PHP Upgraded A brief note to let everyone know that PHP has been upgraded to version 5.6.31. This is an interim step before we head-on-up to version 7.1 in a few months. Nothing but good things PHP7 and very little breakage. If yo… News Updates Nov 25, 2014 Scheduled Server Downtime Notification Please be advised that there is a scheduled server outage on Thursday, November 27th at approximately 6:30AM EST that will affect all services (web, e-mail, etc) on websrv03. This outage could last as long as 30 minut… websrv03 Feb 19, 2014 Scheduled Server Migration Notice The time has come once again for server hardware migration. The current hardware on websrv02 has served us well over the years but the warranty is now up and it’s time to move to bigger and better hardware. The new se… websrv02 Nov 8, 2012 We’re All Together Again I was trying to think exactly when it was that I decided to split our DigitalOrphans website load into two servers… I believe it was in 2005 when I was teaching at St. Lawrence College, and the program coordinator ask… News Updates Jan 20, 2012 websrv02 Scheduled Maintenance A brief reminder that we have a scheduled outage this evening of websrv02 so that maintenance can be performed on the server. We will be upgrading to Plesk 10.3, PHP 5.3, and also doing some operating system upgrades.… websrv02 Oct 14, 2011 websrv01 Maintenance Completed A quick follow up regarding the emergency maintenance that took place last night. Work started at roughly 9:50PM EST, and service was fully restored by approximately 10:15PM EST. During the rebuilding of the RAID arra… News Updates Oct 13, 2011 Emergency Maintenance on websrv01 Please be aware that one of the hard drives in websrv01 has predictive failure, meaning that it is possible the drive could fail in the not-so-distant future. I have scheduled a Dell technician to be onsite this eveni… News Updates Feb 15, 2010 Scheduled Replacement of websrv02 Hardware This is an important notice to inform websrv02 users that we will be replacing the websrv02 server hardware on Friday, February 19th, 2010. The current hardware is about four years old, and while it has not given us a… websrv02 Jan 16, 2010 Apache and PHP Upgraded: websrv01 Just a quick note to inform websrv01 users that I have upgraded both Apache and PHP on websrv01 this afternoon. This server is now running PHP 5.2.12, and previous pdo_mysql issues should now be resolved. Our next PHP… websrv01 Oct 27, 2009 Scheduled Maintenance on websrv01 Update: 9:29AM EST Dell has successfully completed the maintenance work and replaced the failed hard drive on websrv01. All services are currently online; however, the server will be a little slow until it fully syncs… websrv01 Oct 21, 2009 Unscheduled websrv01 Downtime Update: Oct 21 2:24AM websrv01 is currently back online. Diagnostic tests are currently running on the server as we speak (thanks to Greg), but initial reports indicate that 1 of the 2 hard drives on websrv01 has died… websrv01 Aug 27, 2009 Unscheduled websrv01 Downtime This morning we experienced a short unscheduled service outage on websrv01 due to spam attack that took place early in the morning. This incident could have easily been avoided if a select few users had e-mail address… websrv01 Jul 23, 2009 Unscheduled websrv01 Downtime We are currently experiencing an unscheduled service outage on websrv01 due to what we believe may be a hardware issue on the server. In fact, I think this could be the same issue we encountered on April 25th, and I h… websrv01 Apr 25, 2009 Unscheduled websrv01 Downtime We are currently experiencing an unscheduled service outage on websrv01 due to what we believe may be a hardware issue on the server. Unfortunately our co-location provider misconfigured the power port that our server… websrv01 Mar 22, 2009 Unscheduled websrv02 Downtime A quick post to let you know that as of 10:55AM today websrv02 is currently off-line, and we are currently investigating the issue. At this time it appears as though the power port the server is plugged into at our da… websrv02 Feb 1, 2009 Silentweb News Update (Volume 4, Issue 3) Final Upgrade Status Report I am pleased to report that the upgrades to both websrv01 and websrv02 were completed successfully, and for the most part without incident. There were a few minor hiccups which were caught… News Updates Jan 31, 2009 Silentweb News Update (Volume 4, Issue 2) Server Upgrade Status Report I just thought I should send out a quick update to give everyone an idea how the upgrades are going. websrv02: We successfully upgraded websrv02 last night, with little in the way of probl… News Updates Jan 26, 2009 Silentweb News Update (Volume 4, Issue 1) New Scheduled Downtime Notice I would like to notify you that there will be some scheduled downtime on both of our servers this coming weekend while we perform scheduled maintenance tasks and upgrades on both of the p… News Updates