October 5, 2011: New Security Rules Please be advised that we have updated our mod security ruleset on the DR1 server.   As mod security attack detection rules can cause problems with complex web applications, we request that you report any unusual errors to SRO Hosting so we may adjust the ruleset accordingly.   As always, we can individually configure or disable modsecurity on a per-site basis until rules can be adjusted to 'play nice' with your applications.

September 9, 2011: Software updates (cont)... Due to security vulnerabilities in previous Apache and PHP versions, SRO has been 'forced' (by Trustwave and other auditing agencies) to upgrade to PHP 5.3.8 on all servers. While SRO STRONGLY disagrees with PCI compliance policies based on comparing software versions against the CVE rather than testing for actual exploitable vulnerabilities, we have little choice but to comply lest our clients lose card processing privileges.   The end result is many SRO customers will be forced to update their sites to ensure compatibility with the newest PHP versions long before it should be necessary and we are sorry for this inconvenience this may cause. It is important to state that SRO independently patches/hardens our servers against known vulnerabilities using our own code and third party modules such as Suhosin and mod security (why SRO has NEVER experienced a 'server software version' related compromise affecting customer data), however the 'PCI compliance cartel' continues to force upgrades with no evidence of actual vulnerabilities. While there is no arguing the importance of standards such as PCI DSS for general security, the fact is: most substantial compromises to consumer card security in recent memory have had NOTHING to do with the metrics tested by the PCI compliance industry in this case (php/apache versions) but rather social engineering, card skimming and good old fashioned burglary (stolen trash/flash drives).

September 8, 2011: Server software update notice SRO Hosting will be performing an Apache/PHP software upgrade this weekend on Friday and Saturday, September 9-10 at 11PM Pacific time. The upgrade window is from 11PM to midnight and web sites may be unavailable for several minutes at a time while various software packages are re-compiled and re-installed.

June 7, 2011: Server crash update Status: Web sites and email have been succesfully migrated to the DR1 hosting server.  Most sites and email accounts were up and running again within an hour or two of the crash. Unfortunately, DNS issues, loss of some MySQL passwords and "legacy" (PHP 5.x incompatible) code caused delays with some sites. Please see the new server software versions below (old versions in parenthesis). Server Software versions Apache: 2.2.19 (1.3.27) PHP: 5.2.17 (4.4.8) MySQL: 5.1.45 (4.1.45) Note that SRO discontinued PHP 4.x support in May of 2010. While we will attempt help customers who need PHP assistance, it is a webmaster`s responsibility to maintain and update web sites security and manageability.

June 6, 2011: DB1 Server crash The DB1 hosting server crashed for unknown reasons at about 8:00am this morning.   Clients who were hosted on DB1 are being moved to the 'DR1' hosting server ASAP. Status: Email service has been transferred to the new server and missing email account re-created.   Web site DNS has also been pointed to the new server and the Apache configuration replicated.   Sites using Mysql databases might still be non-functions (see below). Please understand there will be some delays and glitches to resolve during the transfer, specifically: 1) DNS takes time to propagate. Some people may be unable to see your site or send you mail for a few hours. 2) Due to a sync error, Mysql database passwords may not have transferred. We have backups of the DB1 mysql config and will be manually updating mysql passwords through the evening. 3) Web sites, database and email accounts were all mirrored to a new server. Some data was not included in the backups, such as webmail contacts, mailing lists and global software (webmail, cp) preferences. 3) Some sites are still PHP 5.x incompatible and will have trouble on the new server. SRO discontinued official PHP 4.x support over a year ago, but we will do our best to assist customers who need help converting code. SRO Hosting is doing everything possible to restore sites, email and databases as quickly as possible.   We appreciate your patience during this transition.

May 15, 2010: DR1 Server installed Just a quick note that the new DR1 server is now installed and has passed initial burn-in testing. Like most of our new machines, DR1 has dual quad Xeon cpus and 100mb/sec SATA3 drives, so it's nearly double the speed in every respect than our older shared hosting servers. DR1 is running Apache 2.2.x, PHP 5.2.x and Mysql 5.x, so it will be perfectly appropriate for newer sites not relying on legacy code.

April 13, 2010: PHP 4.x support ending SRO Hosting support for PHP 4.x will be ending as of May, 2010. Tests indicate some clients may still be running scripts which do not work under PHP 5. While we do not wish inconvenience, we can't continue to support PHP 4 as neither it nor its extensions are supported by the authors. We will attempt to contact customers whom we expect to be affected by the end of PHP 4.x support, however it is the responsibility of site owners/managers to keep software up to date and all applications not already updated for PHP 5.2/5.3 compatibility should be updated immediately.

March 24, 2010: Network/server maintenance IMPORTANT: There will be a 3-hour maintenance window this evening from 9:00pm to 12:00am PST for network and server repairs/upgrades.   A primary ethernet switch is being replaced, so all users will experience some network down time.   Two servers also require cooling system maintenance, so these servers may experience outages of up to an hour. Status messages will be posted at http://bk1.srohosting.com during maintenance. 03/25/2010: Maintenance complete.   All servers are online and operating normally.   Thanks for your patience.

January 17, 2010: (3:15pm) Mail recovery One more step in return to normalcy: IMAP folders are being synchronized from the DG1 backup server to DB1. We weighed a number of options for doing such a large transfer without scheduled planning and in the end opted to err to the side of redundancy. ALL mail on the DG1 backup server is being copied to DB1. That means you may encounter duplicate messages and you may see folders/mail which you deleted after Jan 16th return. We appologize for any inconvenience this may cause, however it is the best way to ensure nobody loses mail which was received between the last time they checked mail and the date the server went down.

January 17, 2010: (4:00am) Database recovery In spite of drive array failure, we have made progress in recovering Mysql databases from the DG1 backup server. As installed, DB1 only had data from Thursday, January 14, however new data recovered from the failed MYSQL array is currently being uploaded. This data spans to a few hours before the failure on January 16th around noon. Thank you for your patience during this time. Having a primary and backup server fail within weeks has been a bit trying, however we will continue to work to preserve our customer data to the greatest extent possible.

January 17, 2010: (Midnight) DB1 server installed The DB1 hosting server which was scheduled to be re-installed later this month was installed tonight (Sat, Jan 16 at 10:30pm). This was necessary as the DG1 backup server's MYSQL storage failed unexpectedly a few hours prior. DB1 was fortunately synchronized during testing a few days ago, but there are several days of missing data. It will take some time to determine if/when the missing data on DG1 from the last few days will be restored. News will be updated as data is restored.

January 16, 2010: (6:30pm) Failover server failure Around 5pm this evening, the DG1 (failover) server experienced an unknown problem causing MYSQL database failure. This will cause database driven sites to fail and cause mail authentication errors. Fortunately, we had already finished repairs to the DB1 server and will simply move the installation date forward (to tonight). Status will be updated here as soon as more information is available.

January 4, 2010: Outage Status update All clients on the db1.srohosting.com server should have been successfully migrated to the mirror server ('dg1') by now. For most sites, this was automatic and painless. IMPORTANT: Shared hosting customers not using SRO DNS need to point their domain DNS (A records) to the new server IP '64.235.233.36'. Basically, wherever you see '64.235.233.35', change the last number from '35' to '36'). If you have a dedicated IP address, it will not need to be changed. UPDATE: According to our logs, some customers are still having trouble with IMAP over SSL on the new server. If your mail client is displaying errors, please let us know.

January 2, 2010: Server Outage Due to problems on the DB1 hosting server, customers have been migrated to the DG1 failover server at this time. There may be intermittent outages for some time, so please be patient during the migration process. Please do not hesistate to email support@srohosting.com with any additional information or trouble and we will respond as soon as possible. We will update this news page as status changes. Note: As this is the second failure on DB1 in less than two months, the server is being removed from service and critical components replaced.

November 10, 2009: Outage Status update Repairs have been made to TIG and DB1 servers and customers who were temporarily moved to failover servers have been quickly moved back to their primary server to avoid lengthy database resynchonization issues. We have temporarily suspended mirroring, so if you require resyncronization with the mirror server database (used between 7pm and 11pm November 9th), please let us know as soon as possible. Please be advised, this outage may cause some email to be re-downloaded several times as switching between servers confuses the 'last read' timestamps.

November 9, 2009: Outage Status update We are in the process of migrating customers to backup servers at this time. Some live failover backups were corrupted, so we are doing everything manually and this may take until morning to complete. We thank you for your patience during this difficult time.

November 9, 2009: Outage Status Outages have been reported on multiple servers (TIG, TC1, DB1) beginning at around 3pm this afternoon. Please be advised that we are still investigating the cause and are working to restore customer services to normal.

October 10, 2009: Email delivery failure (resolved) Please note that email delivery troubles reported by many customers (a side effect of the server migration) have been addressed. If you have had reports of "user not found..." or "not in my validrptto..." errors, any email you missed will have begun arriving as of approximately 7:40am this morning.

October 9, 2009: Emergency maintenance IMPORTANT: Due to power infrastructure issues, the previously rescheduled server migration was rescheduled to occur between 11pm and 2am (PST) TONIGHT. We appologize for the short notice, however we will do everything we can to minimize downtime during the move. UPDATE: All servers were successfully moved to the new location by 3:00am Saturday morning and residual effects of moving all servers (dns and email issues) are now being addressed.

August 11, 2009: Network issue (resolved) Our appologies for the trouble some users experienced this morning between 7:30 and 9:00am.  The firewall on DB1 (64.235.233.35) was recently reconfigured to block certain web based attacks.  One of the firewall rules used to do this was inadvertently broken this morning, and this prevented many users from accessing their sites and email.  The server was not 'down', it was simply unavailable from many locations. Please be assured that our security software will be updated today to avoid such a failure in the future.

April 22, 2009: Control panel backups It was reported that a recent glitch in the hosting control panel 'backups' section was preventing manual, 'on-the-fly' database backups. This problem has been fixed as of 04/22, so you should again be able to create and download html and database backups at any time.

February 19, 2009: Easier spam training We have updated our servers to allow simpler spam training. To report spam, you only need create a "Spam" or "Junk" folder (using Webmail or IMAP) and put spam you receive into it. The server learns spam from these folders daily, so just leave spam there for a few days to make sure it gets into the system. This should replace redirecting mail to 'spam-trap' addresses, but external reporting to Spamcop or other agencies is still encouraged. For more spam prevention options, please see the Associated FAQ Reference and be sure to check your webmail (ie: yourdomain.com/mail) 'options' section for additional spam reporting and filtering controls.

August 31, 2008: Power failure A power circuit feeding our racks had an outage this morning. The power distribution unit feeding TIG and DB1 servers experienced a surge, causing a brief outage on the SRO website and a 40 minute outage on DB1 as it corrected disk errors caused by the power loss. Customer sites were briefly re-routed to the DG1 fail-over unit as DB1 completed its disk check, however the outage was not long enough to justify database resynchronization. Some data loss may have occurred between 08:15 and 08:30am. Please contact us if you require database repair or resynchronization.

May 10, 2008: Mail admin fix Qmailadmin was recompiled today to fix broken spell checking and a few other minor bugs. Mail administration login was temporarily disabled during the update, however email delivery was unaffected.

February 20, 2008: Email updates All email servers were updated yesterday to allow several new features including; domain specific SMTP IP addressing and DomainKeys digital signatures (email content and source authentication) for outgoing mail. Mail servers were down for only a few seconds and service was not affected by the upgrade.

February 13, 2008: Software Upgrades Most shared hosting servers were updated this afternoon to install Apache (1.3.41), add IonCube loader and Image Magick (PECL) support as well as tweak FastCGI options. This update required Apache and PHP be recompiled and caused 10-20 seconds of down time while PHP and Apache were restarted.

October 22, 2007: So Cal Fires While hosting services were not directly affected by the California fires, several employees were evacuated and doing business from motels while waiting for mandatory evacuations to end. Evacuations ended as of the first week of November and we appreciated your patience as new hosting orders were delayed during evacuation.

September 22, 2007: Webmail change RoundCube has replaced SQWebmail as our basic webmail program. If you use http://your.domain/webmail, you will now be directed to RoundCube. If, for some reason, you prefer SQWebmail, you can still reach it at http://your.domain/oldmail. Squirrelmail is still available at http://your.domain/mail.

September 15, 2007: Software upgrade Servers running Apache 1.3x have been updated to version 1.3.39 with simultaneous updates for eaccelerator, mod_ssl, mod_security and other security software. Some users may experienced up to a minute of PHP downtime as various PHP modules had to be recompiled before Apache was restarted.

August 5, 2007: Maintenance complete DB1 was rebooted this morning after the addition of a new 100GB primary hard disk partition. The reboot caused approximately 3 minutes of service downtime and caused no data loss.