Various services moved around

brong · 30 Jun 2005, 03:43 PM

We've moved a few services around to reduce the load on our main server. This has meant shutting down some services on IPs where they had been for years. In particular if you used:

* smtp to 66.111.4.3 or 66.111.4.20 (old DNS for old mail names)
* any service on 66.111.4.60-62 (had been out of DNS for a while, but old mail.messagingengine.com and www.fastmail.fm)
* authenticated SMTP through any server other than mail.messagingengine.com

Then you may have noticed that the service went away in the past 24 hours. The main reason for removing these services was that the machine hosting them is also used for outbound email, and by allowing SMTP there a particularly clever spammer managed to bypass our rate controls for one spamming run (we noticed the increased load in the daily report that evening and shut down the technique they had used).

For the vast majority of users: nothing has changed. For the few who were doing something tricky, you can use the IP address 66.111.4.160-162 in place of .60-.62 if you need to. If you have put explicit IP addresses rather than CNAMEs in your DNS and you're not hosting with us, then tough - you're doing something naughty and things break when you do that - fix the entries!

I've added a link from the blog entry to discuss things here in this thread.

luminosity · 1 Jul 2005, 01:00 AM

This must be the reason why I cannot log in and FastCheck cannot connect to my Inbox. This is the error message I get:

Failed to create screen: Mailbox, Failed inbox select for luminosity, can't go back to inbox

JRobert · 1 Jul 2005, 01:01 AM

I'm getting

Code:

Failed to create screen: Mailbox, Failed inbox select for <MyUsername>, can't go back to inbox

error when I try to log in (secure) via the web, at 11:58 EDT. Fastcheck fails to log in and gets the same error.

I can get the log-in screen; it's the login process accepting my username/password that seems to fail.
Related?

-jeff-

luminosity · 1 Jul 2005, 01:02 AM

Welcome to the club, JRobert!

luminosity · 1 Jul 2005, 01:03 AM

I have tried logging in "securely" and not securely and both give me that error.

jjm · 1 Jul 2005, 01:06 AM

Could this move be the reason for the SMTP proxy to not accept my connections any longer?

Thunderbird is configured as :
smtps.proxy.fastmail.fm
port 80
SSL

Sending messages through the proxy worked until mid-afternoon (CET time).

JJ.

JRobert · 1 Jul 2005, 01:10 AM

It's back now - Fastcheck just loudly announced "You have mail".

-jeff-

luminosity · 1 Jul 2005, 01:17 AM

Lucky you.. it's still not back for me.

lateplate · 1 Jul 2005, 01:18 AM

smtp is definitely screwed. worked this morning, now rejecting my password.

luminosity · 1 Jul 2005, 01:20 AM

I wonder if any techs are working on it right now.

aurelio · 1 Jul 2005, 01:32 AM

I cannot send mails for hours now, means, my business is down. Worst case. I seriously wonder what for I pay US$39.95 per-year - and then, when a problem occurs, nobody is available. Anybody know what to do or anybody knows alternatives to FastMail?

luminosity · 1 Jul 2005, 02:58 AM

Looks like all is well again!

Rook · 1 Jul 2005, 03:12 AM

I wonder if this failure SMTP Down? is related to the move. A number of us using authenticated (SSL) SMTP on mail.messagingengine.com are unable to authenticate and send email and the problem now appears to be moving from "minutes" of downtime to "hours."

waynenf · 1 Jul 2005, 05:35 AM

You guys bring up 2 very important issues:

1. Why did it take so long for this to be corrected? For some of us it was a 2 hour outage.

2. Why do we pay for a service in which the response time to problems is sometimes rather long?

Why no apology from the folks at Fastmail. The non-chalant attitude of "well, we fixed it, carry on" without any apology to the paying customers for this type of failure is rather alarming. Maybe it is time to find another more reliable email service that cares for it's customer base.

brong · 1 Jul 2005, 02:43 PM

The problem doesn't seem to be related to the changes. We're not sure what caused it yet, but we are looking into it.

Why it took 2 hours: it happened in the middle of the night Australian time, and because we weren't checking that specific service, we weren't aware that there was a problem. We would have been paged within two minutes if we had been checking it.

As the highest priority this morning, we fixed that oversight and wrote a checker for the authentication component of incoming mail and installed it on all machines which accept authenticated emails.

We do apologise for any perceived terseness of comments posted on the forum, and hope you understand that nobody is at their best at 4am having spent hours trying to track down a problem.

Regards,

Bron.

30 Jun 2005, 03:43 PM	#1
brong The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Melbourne, Australia Posts: 2,696 Representative of: Fastmail.fm	Various services moved around We've moved a few services around to reduce the load on our main server. This has meant shutting down some services on IPs where they had been for years. In particular if you used: * smtp to 66.111.4.3 or 66.111.4.20 (old DNS for old mail names) * any service on 66.111.4.60-62 (had been out of DNS for a while, but old mail.messagingengine.com and www.fastmail.fm) * authenticated SMTP through any server other than mail.messagingengine.com Then you may have noticed that the service went away in the past 24 hours. The main reason for removing these services was that the machine hosting them is also used for outbound email, and by allowing SMTP there a particularly clever spammer managed to bypass our rate controls for one spamming run (we noticed the increased load in the daily report that evening and shut down the technique they had used). For the vast majority of users: nothing has changed. For the few who were doing something tricky, you can use the IP address 66.111.4.160-162 in place of .60-.62 if you need to. If you have put explicit IP addresses rather than CNAMEs in your DNS and you're not hosting with us, then tough - you're doing something naughty and things break when you do that - fix the entries! I've added a link from the blog entry to discuss things here in this thread.

1 Jul 2005, 01:01 AM	#3
JRobert Master of the @ Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: New Hampshire, USA Posts: 1,561	I'm getting Code: Failed to create screen: Mailbox, Failed inbox select for <MyUsername>, can't go back to inbox error when I try to log in (secure) via the web, at 11:58 EDT. Fastcheck fails to log in and gets the same error. I can get the log-in screen; it's the login process accepting my username/password that seems to fail. Related? -jeff-

1 Jul 2005, 01:32 AM	#11
aurelio Junior Member Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 1	Cannot send Mails = cannot make Business I cannot send mails for hours now, means, my business is down. Worst case. I seriously wonder what for I pay US$39.95 per-year - and then, when a problem occurs, nobody is available. Anybody know what to do or anybody knows alternatives to FastMail?

1 Jul 2005, 01:00 AM	#2
luminosity Member Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 82	This must be the reason why I cannot log in and FastCheck cannot connect to my Inbox. This is the error message I get: Failed to create screen: Mailbox, Failed inbox select for luminosity, can't go back to inbox

1 Jul 2005, 01:02 AM	#4
luminosity Member Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 82	Welcome to the club, JRobert!

1 Jul 2005, 01:03 AM	#5
luminosity Member Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 82	I have tried logging in "securely" and not securely and both give me that error.

1 Jul 2005, 01:06 AM	#6
jjm Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2004 Posts: 6	Could this move be the reason for the SMTP proxy to not accept my connections any longer? Thunderbird is configured as : smtps.proxy.fastmail.fm port 80 SSL Sending messages through the proxy worked until mid-afternoon (CET time). JJ.

1 Jul 2005, 01:10 AM	#7
JRobert Master of the @ Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: New Hampshire, USA Posts: 1,561	It's back now - Fastcheck just loudly announced "You have mail". -jeff-

1 Jul 2005, 01:17 AM	#8
luminosity Member Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 82	Lucky you.. it's still not back for me.

1 Jul 2005, 01:18 AM	#9
lateplate Member Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 40	smtp is definitely screwed. worked this morning, now rejecting my password.

1 Jul 2005, 01:20 AM	#10
luminosity Member Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 82	I wonder if any techs are working on it right now.

1 Jul 2005, 02:58 AM	#12
luminosity Member Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 82	Looks like all is well again!

1 Jul 2005, 03:12 AM	#13
Rook Junior Member Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Austin, TX Posts: 26	I wonder if this failure SMTP Down? is related to the move. A number of us using authenticated (SSL) SMTP on mail.messagingengine.com are unable to authenticate and send email and the problem now appears to be moving from "minutes" of downtime to "hours."

1 Jul 2005, 05:35 AM	#14
waynenf Member Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 61	You guys bring up 2 very important issues: 1. Why did it take so long for this to be corrected? For some of us it was a 2 hour outage. 2. Why do we pay for a service in which the response time to problems is sometimes rather long? Why no apology from the folks at Fastmail. The non-chalant attitude of "well, we fixed it, carry on" without any apology to the paying customers for this type of failure is rather alarming. Maybe it is time to find another more reliable email service that cares for it's customer base.

1 Jul 2005, 02:43 PM	#15
brong The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Melbourne, Australia Posts: 2,696 Representative of: Fastmail.fm	The problem doesn't seem to be related to the changes. We're not sure what caused it yet, but we are looking into it. Why it took 2 hours: it happened in the middle of the night Australian time, and because we weren't checking that specific service, we weren't aware that there was a problem. We would have been paged within two minutes if we had been checking it. As the highest priority this morning, we fixed that oversight and wrote a checker for the authentication component of incoming mail and installed it on all machines which accept authenticated emails. We do apologise for any perceived terseness of comments posted on the forum, and hope you understand that nobody is at their best at 4am having spent hours trying to track down a problem. Regards, Bron.