To improve our coverage in North America and Europe, we have accepted test links for downtown.tx.us.synirc.net in Texas, USA, donated by Asus, and nightmare.uk.eu.synirc.net in the United Kingdom, donated by Shadows.

Due to issues with the provider, nightmare.ca.us.synirc.net has failed the test link process and will be delinked within the next few days.

To improve our quality of service in North America, we have accepted nightmare.ca.us.synirc.net as a test link, graciously donated by Shadows. This server is based in California, USA.

moonlight.se.eu.synirc.net, donated by Kottizen, has passed the test link process and has become our newest full link. Congratulations!

We will be conducting maintenance on network services around 11am EDT on Saturday, 06 November to improve security. Services will be offline for up to (but no more than) five to ten minutes. No registrations should be affected.

As a result of these changes, /ns sendpass (and the associated staff-only command /ns getpass) will no longer work. If you have forgotten your password, you will instead use /ns resetpass to have a reset code emailed to you.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me personally via the private message function of our forums. You can also speak with network staff in our #help channel.

(Note: This was originally scheduled for 30 October but did not happen as planned.)

Regretfully, CuttingEdge will be resigning from staff at the end of October. His server, aurora.uk.eu.synirc.net, will be delinking at that time as well. We would like to thank him for being part of our community and wish him well in his future endeavors.

To continue improving our quality of service for our European users, we have accepted the test link for moonlight.se.eu.synirc.net graciously provided by Kottizen.

Services were offline for almost eight hours this morning, from 2:02am to 9:46am EDT. Please accept my personal apologies for the outage being that long.

What happened?
The dedicated server hosting network services experienced a kernel panic.

Why was the outage so long?
Three things:

1. The dedicated server's provider does not automatically restart servers when they go offline.
2. The server monitor worked correctly but I did not receive the notice in a timely fashion.
3. The server froze when it was rebooted.

How are we going to fix it?
I am working with the dedicated server provider to see if they can automatically restart the server if it goes offline again.

I am also working to refine the notification process to ensure that I receive and acknowledge any alerts in a timely fashion.

Finally, the dedicated server provider will be doing hardware diagnostics on the server starting at 11 am EDT on Thursday, 08 July. During this time, network services will be moved to another server so the outage will be kept to a minimum. There will be brief outages while services are moved to the other server and then when they are moved back after the diagnostics have completed.

We will be upgrading network services to version 1.8.4 of Anope during the morning (around 11am EDT) of Sunday, 11 July 2010. The upgrade is being done to ensure that we have the latest version of services and the bug fixes that includes. This is also being done in preparation for planned future changes to network services.

During the upgrade process, services will be offline for a few minutes. We will keep this downtime to a minimum. No registrations or other information stored in services will be changed as part of this upgrade.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me personally via the private message function of our forums. You can also speak with network staff in our #help channel.

Due to ongoing issues with the provider, venom.pa.us.synirc.net, donated by geoff, has failed the test link process and will be delinked within the next few days.