RB dead - Page 2

Milan · 5 Dec 2006, 05:31 PM

Listen guys, you are freaking out way too soon. Overall, Runbox is doing great job and from time to time problems do appear. There is just no such a thing as a perfect service in life. Grow up. At least they fix the problem very fast. The system is now up.

I must say I am little bit fed of people like kzemach who are planting bad seeds into community. If you want to migrate, go ahead. At least there will be one negative post less when the next temporary problem occurs. Good luck with your next provider. I am happily staying with RB.

itsme · 5 Dec 2006, 05:33 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by spoonguy
Wow up and quite speedy for me!

As responsive as it should be. Wonder for how long.

sigurdur · 5 Dec 2006, 05:36 PM

Hi,

my name is Sigurd, I'm one of the sysadmins managing Runbox.

I'm usully not around here, but I thought I'd just post a notice that Rubox are up and running again.

This morning's problems was caused by the database server being brought to it's knees when generating the new filters with the entire adressbook in Whitelist.

We have reverted the filtergenerator for now and will have a look at it with Runbox later on today to see how they can enable it without killing the DB server.

We should be up and stable now.

Sorry for any and all trouble caused by the downtime.

kind regards,
-sig

b_ariela · 5 Dec 2006, 05:44 PM

up and running indeed!

however, this is the first we've ever had a nearly 3-hour downtime with not a single word and/or heads-up from runbox.

personally, not the kinda record i'm looking forward to...

ariela

itsme · 5 Dec 2006, 05:47 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Milan
Listen guys, you are freaking out way too soon. Overall, Runbox is doing great job and from time to time problems do appear. There is just no such a thing as a perfect service in life. Grow up. [...].

Milan,
you've good a very good point here. My point is that much of the recent issues seem to be caused by underpowered hardware, or by experimenting with the configuration without trying out first. Today's outage seems to be one of those Oops issues. That's hardly acceptable for a professional service.

I agree alternative providers are unlikely to be better in the long run, though.

mbz · 5 Dec 2006, 05:59 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Milan
Listen guys, you are freaking out way too soon. Overall, Runbox is doing great job and from time to time problems do appear. There is just no such a thing as a perfect service in life. Grow up. At least they fix the problem very fast. The system is now up.

I must say I am little bit fed of people like kzemach who are planting bad seeds into community. If you want to migrate, go ahead. At least there will be one negative post less when the next temporary problem occurs. Good luck with your next provider. I am happily staying with RB.

I agree with you. However - I am sure Runbox also appreciates when we post on downtime, with our location etc. Then Runbox know something is wrong with Runbox, and not at the costumers end.

That being said - I am also tired of people shouting about migration etc. every time something is wrong. The overall performance of Runbox has proven to be very good. And when they are not posting on the problem right away, it probably means that they are working with the problem, right?

kzemach · 5 Dec 2006, 09:43 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Milan
Listen guys, you are freaking out way too soon. Overall, Runbox is doing great job and from time to time problems do appear. There is just no such a thing as a perfect service in life. Grow up. At least they fix the problem very fast. The system is now up.

I must say I am little bit fed of people like kzemach who are planting bad seeds into community. If you want to migrate, go ahead. At least there will be one negative post less when the next temporary problem occurs. Good luck with your next provider. I am happily staying with RB.

That's a fair enough criticism, and I'll stop posting asking when things'll get fixed, and go look now. My main frustration is born from the fact that ever since I joined, when outtages would occur I'd always hear about how new servers were being added, whatever, and something else. But, my experience is, over time, the downtimes and slowness (barring one REALLY bad month) have been pretty consistent. I'd agree that it's not that bad, but I've said it before: I don't really care what it costs, I want reliability. I'm not out looking for the best deal, I'm looking for premium, reliable service. So Milan, I'll agree with you: time to stop complaining, and time to go pay $100-150/year for a dedicated high end uptime service.

Appologies for 'planting bad seeds' or whatever, if that's how you took it. I'm just tired of feeling like I'm being led along, holding out hopes each time that it'll be back to the "good old days" of performance as I hear from the much older members who seem to wax poetic about how good it used to be.

Overall, I do want to thank Rich and Geir and Liz and all the staff for certainly trying their hardest.

Regards,

Ken

Geir · 5 Dec 2006, 11:58 PM

Let me clarify that this downtime was not caused by a generic lack of resources or capacity, but an attempted improvement that put excessive load on system far beyond what our tests showed.

I implemented the modification at 23:00 CET last night, and monitored the system for several hours afterwards without registering anything abnormal. Apparently the load accumulated over time until the database server became unresponsive. Once we stopped the whitelist update script and restarted the database, performance returned to normal.

We're now looking at alternative ways of creating the whitelists. We are also taking steps to improve overall spam filter performance by making SpamAssassin and Dspam work smarter and better together.

- Geir

net14 · 6 Dec 2006, 01:35 AM

A suggestion was made in a previous post:

Quote:

Other webmail providers use brightmail rules and other commercial solutions to keep spam down.

I have not seen anyone at runbox address this issue--and you did ask for suggestions.

On a personal note, I don't have too much faith in DSPAM, as it simply has not worked very well for me.

carverrn · 6 Dec 2006, 03:29 AM

At this time there are no plans to replace the SpamAssassin and DSPAM spam filters.

Regards,
Rich

Geir · 6 Dec 2006, 04:30 AM

We're not tied to the current solution, and I've read good things about for instance Brightmail. However, it's very expensive (estimated USD 4 per mailbox) and although some users would probably be happy to pay that amount for better spam filtering I'm sure many would not.

Brightmail also appars to use Bayesian statistical analysis (similar to Dspam), and it's difficult to predict how it would perform on the Runbox system.

Therefore I think we need to look at open source alternatives -- there might be better alternatives than the SpamAssassin/Dspam combination we're currently running.

- Geir

net14 · 6 Dec 2006, 05:47 AM

Just a few observations:

1. When faced with a critical problem (and I think the spam issue for a premium email service is a critical problem), I would think it is important to look at all options, even if it means scrapping "the way we always have done it", and starting over. I did not say that the current DSPAM has to be thrown out, but the OPTION of having it replaced with brightmail (or other) should at least be considered and discussed;

2. The current situation with spam is only going to get worse;

3. To take then any option "off the table" before it is seriously considered is simply short-sighted.

P.S.: You raised the cost of runbox substantially this year, and you are concerned about charging $4 more for brightmail ?!? What are you willing to pay, then, to be considered a "premium service" ? If you want to be considered a "premium service", then do what is necessary to truly be a "premium service".

carverrn · 6 Dec 2006, 06:44 AM

Neither Geir nor I said anything about taking any options "off-the-table".

I said there were no plans to change from SpamAssassin and DPSAM at this time. And there isn't. That doesn't mean that options aren't being discussed.

As Geir said, there are a number of alternatives to SpamAssassin and DSPAM, both paid and open-source.

Before any change can be implemented the spam filters would have to be installed, configured and tested on the development systems. All this requires time, planning and money.

The immediate plans for Runbox spam filtering include better understanding of the performance problems with the current spam filtering setup and making changes towards improving the performance.

Regards,
Rich

jeffster · 6 Dec 2006, 11:08 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by itsme
Milan,
you've good a very good point here. My point is that much of the recent issues seem to be caused by underpowered hardware, or by experimenting with the configuration without trying out first. Today's outage seems to be one of those Oops issues. That's hardly acceptable for a professional service.

I agree alternative providers are unlikely to be better in the long run, though.

Just had a look at other forums / email providers, and noticed that Fastmail and Tuffmail have apparently had problems recently, so Runbox is certainly (and never was) not alone in experiencing downtime...

Also, As for Tuffmail, charging $74 a year for a 4 gig inbox ? Er, No Thanks !

Alien Camel is now US $80 / Aus $100 a year ! Again, No Thanks !

All things considered, I still think that Runbox offers great value for money, and a great range of services (multiple access options, webhosting, etc..)

Sure, downtime is anoying, of course it is, but downtime isnt exclusive to Runbox...

I have said it before, and I will say it again, its gonna take a pretty special email service to persuade me to move my email account away from Runbox, and I dont think such a service exists yet...

Jeff

itsme · 7 Dec 2006, 12:41 AM

How do the guys at Dreamhost.com manage? If the assumption of cost versus reliability holds, their uptime would be non-existant given the low cost and enormous feature set on offer.

Runbox works most of the time, and is cheaper than my previous provider. The previous provider's uptime was much better, too, but I paid more than twice as much.

RB renewal is up for March. Time to start considering the options.

5 Dec 2006, 05:31 PM	#16
Milan Member Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: London, UK Posts: 76	Chill out !! Listen guys, you are freaking out way too soon. Overall, Runbox is doing great job and from time to time problems do appear. There is just no such a thing as a perfect service in life. Grow up. At least they fix the problem very fast. The system is now up. I must say I am little bit fed of people like kzemach who are planting bad seeds into community. If you want to migrate, go ahead. At least there will be one negative post less when the next temporary problem occurs. Good luck with your next provider. I am happily staying with RB.

5 Dec 2006, 05:36 PM	#18
sigurdur Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Oslo, Norway Posts: 15	Todays downtime Hi, my name is Sigurd, I'm one of the sysadmins managing Runbox. I'm usully not around here, but I thought I'd just post a notice that Rubox are up and running again. This morning's problems was caused by the database server being brought to it's knees when generating the new filters with the entire adressbook in Whitelist. We have reverted the filtergenerator for now and will have a look at it with Runbox later on today to see how they can enable it without killing the DB server. We should be up and stable now. Sorry for any and all trouble caused by the downtime. kind regards, -sig

6 Dec 2006, 05:47 AM	#27
net14 Member Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 79	Just a few observations: 1. When faced with a critical problem (and I think the spam issue for a premium email service is a critical problem), I would think it is important to look at all options, even if it means scrapping "the way we always have done it", and starting over. I did not say that the current DSPAM has to be thrown out, but the OPTION of having it replaced with brightmail (or other) should at least be considered and discussed; 2. The current situation with spam is only going to get worse; 3. To take then any option "off the table" before it is seriously considered is simply short-sighted. P.S.: You raised the cost of runbox substantially this year, and you are concerned about charging $4 more for brightmail ?!? What are you willing to pay, then, to be considered a "premium service" ? If you want to be considered a "premium service", then do what is necessary to truly be a "premium service". Last edited by net14 : 6 Dec 2006 at 05:55 AM.

5 Dec 2006, 05:44 PM	#19
b_ariela Member Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: new york city Posts: 66	up and running indeed! however, this is the first we've ever had a nearly 3-hour downtime with not a single word and/or heads-up from runbox. personally, not the kinda record i'm looking forward to... ariela

5 Dec 2006, 11:58 PM	#23
Geir The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: Oslo, Norway Posts: 2,938 Representative of: Runbox.com	Let me clarify that this downtime was not caused by a generic lack of resources or capacity, but an attempted improvement that put excessive load on system far beyond what our tests showed. I implemented the modification at 23:00 CET last night, and monitored the system for several hours afterwards without registering anything abnormal. Apparently the load accumulated over time until the database server became unresponsive. Once we stopped the whitelist update script and restarted the database, performance returned to normal. We're now looking at alternative ways of creating the whitelists. We are also taking steps to improve overall spam filter performance by making SpamAssassin and Dspam work smarter and better together. - Geir

6 Dec 2006, 03:29 AM	#25
carverrn Intergalactic Postmaster Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Chicago, IL Posts: 5,606 Representative of: Runbox.com	At this time there are no plans to replace the SpamAssassin and DSPAM spam filters. Regards, Rich

6 Dec 2006, 04:30 AM	#26
Geir The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: Oslo, Norway Posts: 2,938 Representative of: Runbox.com	We're not tied to the current solution, and I've read good things about for instance Brightmail. However, it's very expensive (estimated USD 4 per mailbox) and although some users would probably be happy to pay that amount for better spam filtering I'm sure many would not. Brightmail also appars to use Bayesian statistical analysis (similar to Dspam), and it's difficult to predict how it would perform on the Runbox system. Therefore I think we need to look at open source alternatives -- there might be better alternatives than the SpamAssassin/Dspam combination we're currently running. - Geir

6 Dec 2006, 06:44 AM	#28
carverrn Intergalactic Postmaster Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Chicago, IL Posts: 5,606 Representative of: Runbox.com	Neither Geir nor I said anything about taking any options "off-the-table". I said there were no plans to change from SpamAssassin and DPSAM at this time. And there isn't. That doesn't mean that options aren't being discussed. As Geir said, there are a number of alternatives to SpamAssassin and DSPAM, both paid and open-source. Before any change can be implemented the spam filters would have to be installed, configured and tested on the development systems. All this requires time, planning and money. The immediate plans for Runbox spam filtering include better understanding of the performance problems with the current spam filtering setup and making changes towards improving the performance. Regards, Rich

7 Dec 2006, 12:41 AM	#30
itsme Member Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: London, U.K. Posts: 60	How do the guys at Dreamhost.com manage? If the assumption of cost versus reliability holds, their uptime would be non-existant given the low cost and enormous feature set on offer. Runbox works most of the time, and is cheaper than my previous provider. The previous provider's uptime was much better, too, but I paid more than twice as much. RB renewal is up for March. Time to start considering the options.