PHP 4 and Apache 1.3 end-of-life

This is just a short announcement to let people know that both PHP 4 and Apache 1.3 are well past their supported lifetimes from the developers. We’ve been maintaining them internally (updated as recently as last week), but it’s getting more and more difficult; our development resources are not unlimited and our efforts in this area are veering dangerously close to necromancy.

Both Apache 2.3 and PHP 5.4 are on the horizon, and we think it will best support our members if we focus more on developing new technology and less on reanimating zombies.

As a result, we are now warning those customers who are still using server types based on PHP 4 and/or Apache 1.3 that they should upgrade their site type to a newer version (the current default is Apache 2.2 with PHP 5.3) as soon as possible. Anytime after January 1, 2012, we may start performing involuntary upgrades on sites still using these outdated technologies.
Continue reading PHP 4 and Apache 1.3 end-of-life…

Security flaw with login corrected

One of our members informed us a couple of days ago that due to a strange combination of actions and circumstances, he hit a flaw in our login system that enabled him to access the membership of another member with a similar name.

Of course we promptly investigated; the problem has been permanently fixed.
Continue reading Security flaw with login corrected…

A small billing error corrected

A few days ago, we noticed a tweet from one of our members mentioning that he had been charged twice in one day for his MySQL process, but that he didn’t plan to look into it. We, however, did. What we eventually uncovered was that for three of our services: MySQL, RespectMyPrivacy, and email forwarding, our system could hit a very rare case where it would “stutter” and double-bill somebody’s daily charge.

Of course, the first thing we did was turn off the billing on those services until the problem could be identified and fixed. So, pretty much everybody using MySQL, email forwarding, or RespectMyPrivacy received a day or two free this week.

In the case of MySQL, each charge “advanced the clock” by one day, so if a person got double-billed one day, they wouldn’t be billed at all the next; they were “early charged” rather than “overcharged.” Email and privacy work a little differently, however, and so people in a few cases did get double-billed for an extra penny. Fortunately, we do keep detailed billing records for active accounts, and were able to find all the cases where this had ever happened and over the past couple of days we have credited the accounts funding all affected email and privacy services. It turned out to be easier to credit both the original charge and the duplicate, rather than just the duplicate, so we did that.

A small minority of our members’ accounts were affected, and the amounts involved were fairly small (the average credit issued, which includes both the original charge and the duplicate, about 3 cents per incident). All told, we were off by around $56 over five years.

About $12 of that was related to accounts that no longer exist. As we do not have the ability to identify who those people were (nor would there be any viable way to refund a few cents to them even if we could), that amount will be included in our monthly donation to the EFF.

It may be tempting to blow this off due to the small amount of money involved. The original Twitter poster who mentioned it didn’t seem too concerned. But we did not blow it off. Being able to bill accurately is the cornerstone of our service. We take it incredibly seriously and no discrepancy like this, however small, will be tolerated.

We’re sorry this happened. To make it right, we’ve fixed the cause, credited the difference, and because we believe in transparency, we’re letting everyone know about it. And we appreciate the Twitter poster for bringing it to our attention.

Member support position

We are looking for one person willing to help out with member support on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

This is a tough rotation to fill, so I wanted to mention it on our blog to get the widest possible audience.

To apply, check out our Work page, and if you’re willing to cover these particular days, please indicate that in your application for fastest consideration.

Quick Quote

Apropos of nothing, I just ran across this quote:

Plato used the dialogue format because the exchange of views, the posing and answering of questions, showed that understanding is a living, dynamic process. He distrusted writing because the settled character of the written word makes it look as if truth can be fixed and made to stand still. It is worth remembering that this greatest advocate of the objective reality of truth also believed that our access to that truth was sustained in reasoned discussion.

— John Churchill, From the Secretary: Inspiring Conversations in The Key Reporter. Vol 67, Number 4. P. 2., Summer 2002

I think this is one of the strongest, most concise arguments in favor of free speech and open debate that I have ever heard. I’d never heard of this guy, but it seems he’s the secretary of Phi Beta Kappa. Sounds like a smart cookie.

(Posted at the very lowest possible priority on our blog because it doesn’t have anything to do anything, bears repeating, and won’t fit in a tweet.)

Scheduled maintenance November 22 and December 15

We are scheduling two maintenance windows in the next month to move some equipment:

Date: November 22nd, 2010
Window: 9am to noon UTC (4am to 7am US Eastern, 1am to 4am US Pacific)
Affecting: MySQL nodes m2, m3, and m21

Date: December 15th, 2010
Window: 8am to 1pm UTC (3am to 8am US Eastern, midnight to 5am US Pacific)
Affecting: File servers f2 and f5

Each server should be offline for about one hour, not the whole window. This will cause some downtime. While the MySQL nodes are offline, those MySQL processes hosted on them will be unreachable. While the file servers are offline, sites hosted by those file servers will show an official maintenance page.
Continue reading Scheduled maintenance November 22 and December 15…

Removing deprecated IP block

Many years ago, we were assigned the IP address block 64.238.220.0/23 by one of our upstream network providers. We officially deprecated the use of that block way back in 2008, and we will be returning it on December 1st, 2010, so it will not work after that point.
Continue reading Removing deprecated IP block…

Brief Network Maintenance July 20-22

This is just a quick announcement about some upcoming network maintenance.

Due to our load-balancing capabilities, most of this will be done with no disruption to our services. There are a few exceptions, though. We’ll be doing maintenance over the next few days in the early morning hours (between 1am and 5am US Eastern time — 5am and 9am UTC), the following services will be briefly disrupted (should be about 5-10 minutes each):
Continue reading Brief Network Maintenance July 20-22…

Domain registration price increases

Verisign has pricing increases going into effect on July 1st. As a result of these pricing changes, our registrar partner has informed us of corresponding increases which we must, in turn, pass along.

Effective July 1st, the new price for domain registrations, renewals, and transfers will increase from $8.59/year to $8.99/year.

Get your domain renewals in now to avoid the increase.

These changes have nothing to do with us, are not under our control, and are of no benefit to us. They’re bad for us, and they’re bad for you. Unfortunately, the same (auto-renewing into perpetuity) contracts with ICANN that grant Verisign a monopoly over .COM, .NET, and .NAME domains (among others) enshrine Verisign’s right to unilaterally raise prices by 7% every year, and they never miss a chance to do so. Their 30% profit margin in 2009 will almost certainly increase after they finish unloading everything not domain-related onto Symantec. It’s not bad work if you can get it. (And live with yourself afterward.)

Pools: Arbitrary HTTP Servers, Resource Reservation and Scalability

We are pleased to announce that we are beginning the beta of our new “pools” service. Pools are a way to reserve memory and CPU power for one or more web sites. This approach makes it possible to discard many of the limitations traditionally associated with our service.
Continue reading Pools: Arbitrary HTTP Servers, Resource Reservation and Scalability…