TechLH.com Status Updates

cPanel and WHM Upgrades

2009-01-22T05:28:00.000-08:00

cPanel have released the latest stable version of their control panel software. This new release has been engineered to substantially increase performance and stability of the cPanel/WHM interfaces, as well as greatly enhance end-user experience.

Over the coming 1 - 2 weeks we will be upgrading our servers to the latest release. During upgrades, there may be brief periods when access to the WHM/cPanel interfaces is interrupted as the new version is installed and configured.

We do not anticipate any issues during this upgrade, as test upgrades we have performed have all gone smoothly.

If you have any questions regarding this upgrade, please let us know.

Server Load Spike

2009-01-12T13:47:00.000-08:00

There has been a server load spike on lucky, we are currently working on analyzing the problem.

Spring Cleaning in November

2008-11-26T09:06:00.000-08:00

Resellers: Did you know that you can terminate multiple accounts one one page of your WHM?

If you are low on space, or would just like to free up some space for potential future clients, why not use this great feature to get rid of those long-forgotten clients and projects that never came to fruition? Use the new search bar in the upper right of your WHM and look for 'terminate'. You'll see a link to 'Terminate Multiple Accounts'. Click on that and check off the ones you no longer host and the WHM will clean it all up for you.

Be careful not to terminate an account that is still active, you may upset someone!

Email Bounces

2008-11-18T06:07:00.001-08:00

Seeing some odd email bounce messages, this will be fixed shortly.

Update: It appears that about 50% of the messages are going through, others are bouncing back immediately. We are investigating this problem and will keep everyone up to date as we press on.

UPDATE: All email problems should now be fixed. If you experience any future problems, please don't hesitate to contact us. Thank you for your patience in this matter.

Back online

2008-11-17T12:18:00.001-08:00

We are back online with 'lucky'. We will continue to monitor this server closely.

Intermittent Downtime

2008-11-17T11:36:00.000-08:00

The server 'lucky' is experiencing above normal load and as a result is showing short spurts of down/up time. We are working to resolve this at this time.

Setting up Outlook for Email Accounts

2008-10-13T08:22:00.000-07:00

This tutorial shows you how to set up Microsoft Outlook to work with your e-mail account. This tutorial focuses on setting up Microsoft Outlook 2003, but these settings are similar in other versions of Microsoft Outlook. You can set up previous versions of Microsoft Outlook by using the settings in this tutorial.

To Set Up Your E-mail Account in Microsoft Outlook

In Microsoft Outlook, select Tools > E-mail Accounts.

On the E-mail Accounts wizard window, select "Add a new e-mail account" and click Next.

For your server type, select "POP3" and click Next.

On the Internet E-mail Settings (POP3) window, enter your information as follows:

Your Name: Enter your first and last name.
E-mail Address: Enter your e-mail address.
User Name: Enter your e-mail address, again.
Password: Enter the password you set up for your e-mail account.
Incoming mail server (POP3): Enter mail.techlh.com for your incoming mail server.
Outgoing mail server (SMTP): Enter mail.techlh.com for your outgoing mail server.

Click "More Settings."

On the Internet E-mail Settings window, select the "Outgoing Server" tab.

Select "My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication."

On the Email Settings page, select "Log onto incoming mail server before sending mail"

Select the "Advanced" tab and change the "Outgoing server (SMTP)" port to 25 or 26.

Click OK.

Click Test Account Settings" button. If it all works, click Next. If not, go back and double check all your settings.

Click Finish.

Do You Need register_globals ON?

2008-10-09T07:22:00.000-07:00

Many third party programs suggest that you have the register_globals option in PHP turned on. If you need this turned on for your website, here's a very easy way to do it.

Open or create a file named .htaccess. Most likely you already have this file, it should be in the root of your directory (public_html)

Add this line of code to the file, and you're all set!

php_value register_globals on

That's it, you're done!

Recompiling PHP

2008-10-01T05:56:00.000-07:00

Folks,

We are currently recompiling PHP5 to add some newer features. Server impact will be at a very minimum. If you do see any problems, please let us know, however we do not see any at this time.

The recompile also prompted an upgrade of cPanel, so watch for a newer version of that today too!

Server Load High

2008-08-27T08:25:00.000-07:00

The server 'LUCKY' is experiencing a very high load. We are working to pinpoint the cause.

Update: We have found the problem and fixed it. If you see any more issues please feel free to contact the support team.

Router Maintenance

2008-08-25T08:47:00.001-07:00

We will be performing maintenance on one of our primary routers during the course of today (Monday 25th August). This will involve it being taken offline for approximately 30 minutes for our engineers to work on.

This maintenance should not affect any services, as our redundant network infrastructure will route around the router in question during the maintenance window until it is brought back online again.

If you have any queries regarding this, please do not hesitate to let us know.

Upcoming SEO Seminar

2008-07-30T07:49:00.000-07:00

For our clients located in the Saint Louis Missouri area, we'd like to pass along this announcement.

There will be a free SEO seminar on August 21st in Arnold, MO. Details at

http://www.whereismybusiness.com/seo-seminars.php

Server Slowdown

2008-07-24T13:50:00.000-07:00

There has been a sudden surge in process time on Lucky. We are checking into it now.
UPDATE: This was a temporary overload on the server. Problem script was located and killed.

Web Hosting Package Changes

2008-07-22T06:08:00.000-07:00

Customers,

Effective August 1, Lighthouse Technologies will no longer be taking payments for hosting packages less than one year in length.

All renewals and new accounts will be required to purchase a yearly hosting package. We will not offer monthly or 6 month contracts any longer.

Migration Success

2008-06-18T08:08:00.000-07:00

The server migration last week went off without a glitch. A big thank you to all the TechLH customers for your continued support!

Major Migration Tuesday

2008-06-04T06:19:00.000-07:00

Dear Customer,

This notification is to inform you of the details of the scheduled migration to a new network and facility in Tampa of lucky.wcrada.com

Please read this notification in full, and respond via email should you have any queries.

=======================================
MIGRATION SCHEDULE
=======================================

The migration window starts at 7PM EST through to 5AM EST on Tuesday 10th June 2008 (through to the AM of Wednesday 11th). We anticipate that the total downtime that you may experience will be no more than three hours, barring any extraordinary circumstances.

Should any unexpected circumstances prevent us from completing the transfer in the allotted window, we will use our backup schedule set for 7PM EST through to 5AM EST on Wednesday 11th June 2008.

Should we be in a position to perform your migration before your allotted window, we may choose to do so. In this case the "early window" for this migration is scheduled as 7PM EST through to 5AM EST on Monday 9th June 2008.

=======================================
IP ADDRESS CHANGES
=======================================

As part of the migration, we will be migrating to new IP ranges as the migration also involves moving to our new network. This means that the IP addresses that you use will change.

Since it is not possible to run both networks on one physical server at the same time, it would not normally be possible for both IP ranges to work simultaneously to serve your sites. We understand, however, that in reality it will take time for you to make the changes outlined above, and so we could not possibly just have an instant cutover to the new network with no period of parallel running.

As such, we have developed a system which will route all requests from the old IPs directly through to the corresponding new IPs allocated to you. So, if you access via the old IP address your data will load in the same way it did before. This will allow your nameservers and websites to function in the exact same way as they did previously whilst you make the change to the new IP addresses, and minimises service disruption to an absolute minimum.

The only traffic that we will not be routing is SMTP traffic since this is not possible to do, and you may also experience problems connecting to the old IP addresses using FTP. If you have your DNS hosted externally, we advise updating your external DNS to the new IP addresses as soon as possible after we notify you that the migration has been completed.

We will be keep your IP routing information in our migration system for a period of two months to allow you to make all the necessary changes. The old IPs will stop routing from August 15th 2008. Importantly, you will need to update any private nameservers that you or your clients may have registered with the new IP details. As always, please feel free to ask us if you've any questions whatsoever!

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OBTAINING YOUR NEW IP ADDRESSES
=======================================

To help you to determine your new IP addresses, notify us directly.

=======================================
ANY QUESTIONS?
=======================================

If you've any questions whatsoever - don't hesitate to let us know. We're happy to help.

Rebooting MySQL

2008-05-28T06:18:00.000-07:00

We are doing a graceful restart of the MySQL processes right now. Downtime should be extremely minimal.

Reboot

2008-05-20T11:09:00.001-07:00

The server is very intermittent, so we are rebooting it atm.

Delays on LUCKY

2008-05-12T15:26:00.001-07:00

We are aware of some delays on machine "lucky". We are currently working on this and will update everyone shortly.

UPDATE: POP3 is back up.
UPDATE: The web server is back up.
UPDATE: MySQL is up

We are now working to resolve the cause of this downtime, and will again let you know shortly what we find.

UPDATE: The issue was due to high resource usage by mysql. The mysql server was using the primary memory in such a way that total server performance was reduced. We have repaired the database and now the server performs normally.

Network Outage

2008-03-21T08:07:00.001-07:00

We are experiencing a network outage. Details to be posted as soon as they are available.

UPDATE: The issues seem to be related to a local DNS issue here in my office. I apologize for any issues my post may have caused for you. No websites were affected and the server has not experienced any downtime.

Perl Reinstall

2008-03-20T08:39:00.001-07:00

We've found an issue with the last Perl install which is causing the server to act oddly, so we are reinstalling it now. This should fix any intermittent issues you may be noticing.

Network Issues

2008-01-21T15:40:00.001-08:00

We are experiencing some network issues. The issue is with the core routers, network engineers are assessing the issue at present.

UPDATE: The network problem has been resolved. The problem was caused by a failure in one of our primary routers. This took some time to diagnose due to its nature, but once we had done so we determined the problem to be with the management blade within the router. This was replaced using one of our emergency units, and the issue appeared to resolve. Unfortunately, approximately 15 minutes later we were once again alerted by our monitoring systems to further problems.

After further diagnosis, we determined the issue to be with the chassis of the router, hence the problem recurring after the replacement blade had been installed and configured.

We have now completely replaced the router with a spare unit we maintain should such an occasion ever occur, and the network now appears stable. We are of course continuing to monitor the situation closely, but we have every confidence that full stability should now ensue.

The failed unit will now be inspected by our network administration team to try and identify a more specific cause of the failure.

Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience that this issue has caused.

We're On Top of It

2008-01-15T07:52:00.001-08:00

We have noticed some slow response times and are currently checking on it.

Vulnerable Scripts Cause Problems

2008-01-10T08:08:00.000-08:00

I've posted this before, but I believe with the recent events it needs repeating.

It is very important that you keep your PHP scripts and programs updated to the latest versions. This means any third party program that you've installed on your website. Here are some examples:

Joomla
Gallery
phpList
phpBB
Drupal
Coppermine
WebCal

There are plenty more, but these are pretty common. If you have any of these applications running, please verify with the 'home website' for the program that you're running the latest version. This will help keep your server running smoothly.

Server Slow

2008-01-03T06:46:00.001-08:00

Server 'Lucky' is currently running very slow, and we are checking into it at the moment...

UPDATE: The server has been rebooted. We are currently examining the logs to find the cause of the slowdown. In the meantime, everything should be running fine. If you have any issues, please let us know.