Urgent Mail Server Maintenance

[aos101]

From the Freedom2Surf website:

"4th of May 2006

We will be undertaking emergency maintenance work today 4th May 2006. This will cause an interruption to the email service. Down time will be kept to a minimum approx. 20 minutes this afternoon.

We will keep you updated on the progress of this maintenance work.

Please accept our apologies for the short notice given and any inconvenience this may cause."

Update: This work will commence at 16:30 today.

Update: The Freedom2Surf site shows the maintenance was completed at 17:20, however a mail server has failed as explained here.

[aos101]

Freedom2Surf spelt "maintenance" wrong on their site about this. Must have been in a hurry to get the alert up and do the emergency maintenance I guess?

Edit: They fixed the spelling.

[richard_f2s]

We now have a definite time of 16:30 today for the commencement of this work.

[aos101]

Thanks Richard. I've updated the post with that information.

[hullydude]

It seems a little unrealistic to quote 20 mins max when 36 mins later it's still not working. If you said an hour, I wouldn't mind.. but your forecasting seems to iumply you don't know what you are doing!

[fatJock]

Right ..... part of it seems to be done seeing as I can log-in now. All my mail that was previously in there has gone however ..... I'm hoping that'll be restored.

I have to ask the question though ...... why was the maintenance/upgrade not scheduled to a more appropriate time i.e. overnight.

[helen_f2s]

I appriciate during the day is not the best time to carry out maintenance, however we looked at the urgency of the issue and decided it would be best to start the work sooner rather than later.

Regards
Helen

[fatJock]

Thanks Helen - I suppose emergencies can't be helped .... is my mail going to reappear however?

[helen_f2s]

It should do, no mail would have been lost, just queued until the work was complete.

Send me a pm if it hasn't appeared by tomorrow morning.

Regards
Helen

[fatJock]

Helen .... I'm not on about mail waiting to be delivered .... I'm talking about mail that was already in there. I normally only download it from the server every few months ..... and all the stuff I had in there previously [sent & received items] is gone!

[Nigel Dallard]

Well it's now 5:28pm and I still can't connect to the e-mail server via POP3. So much for 20 mins downtime!

The server is there if I ping it, just not accepting POP3 connections.

Nigel

[fatJock]

Just to clarify .... I can only get onto webmail interface, but as thats all I typically use I presumed it was all back.

[hullydude]

Originally Posted by Nigel Dallard

Well it's now 5:28pm and I still can't connect to the e-mail server via POP3. So much for 20 mins downtime!

The server is there if I ping it, just not accepting POP3 connections.

Nigel

Ah, this sounds like BTinternet of old.

Um, yes, well we found this email server on Ebay and when we installed it, we found it was designed for Russia. The downtime has increased to 2 weeks while we fly in a Russian network engineer.

[ron.hen]

Helen
Why do not f2s send mass E-mail outage notice prior to starting maintenance?
Ron

[Nigel Dallard]

Originally Posted by Nigel Dallard

Well it's now 5:28pm and I still can't connect to the e-mail server via POP3. So much for 20 mins downtime!

The server is there if I ping it, just not accepting POP3 connections.

Nigel

And 20 minutes later, thing have got worse - it's not even responding to pings now!

[hullydude]

Originally Posted by ron.hen

Helen
Why do not f2s send mass E-mail outage notice prior to starting maintenance?
Ron

Because email is borked?

[helen_f2s]

There are alot of pro's and con's to e-mailing the customer base at times like these.

Yes it's a good idea and a way to make sure we advise everyone, but some people change their e-mail address and don't let us know, some treat the mail as SPAM and we get blacklisted etc.

We are looking at doing a more structured way of contacting customers when we have major outages/urgent maintenance.

Regards
Helen

[fatJock]

Is my mail gonna be restored Helen?

[hullydude]

My F2S address (s2f@f2s.com) is working but my domain names are not. Is this the longest 20 minutes in IT history?

[Designboy]

So am I missing something here but the f2s website states

"Urgent mail server maintenance has been completed as of 1720 on 4th of May 2006"

But I still cant log in via pop3 or webmail. this is really starting to take the p*** now!

[jolo0924]

I cannot download my emails from the server with outlook express or access the webmail. Is the server still down?

[hullydude]

Originally Posted by jolo0924

I cannot download my emails from the server with outlook express or access the webmail. Is the server still down?

No, it's the new and improved server. Bit like digital TV.

Give me 4 channels and a CRT anyday.

[Designboy]

Maybe it's a sneaky way of freeing up bandwidth!! If no-one can send an email things might speed up!!!!! Or am I just getting cynical in my old age.

[steveep]

2 hours later Email is still NOT working

[hullydude]

Originally Posted by steveep

2 hours later Email is still NOT working

...support have gone quiet

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