QuickFox.net news

Anathem now operational again!

Thu, 21 May 2009 03:27:19 GMT

We have brought up Anathem online again, far ahead of schedule.

Anathem struck down but will become more powerful than you can imagine!

Thu, 21 May 2009 00:16:34 GMT

Anathem today went offline after discovering numerous upon numerous issues with the system. We're currently getting the hardware upgraded and reinstalling the operating system.

Many thanks to DJ_Omnifusion and Omnifox for helping us with funding for the upgrades which will give the server a bit more processing power to handle it's tasks. We also continue to thank Todd for donating server resources (Anathem in particular) to us for keeping the network running.

We are expecting the server to be ready for software configuration in 24-72 hours.

Recent networking issues

Sun, 10 May 2009 14:41:10 GMT

Recently there has been a few networking issues on the network that have created short, but sporadic netsplits.

As such, we have rearranged the network server priority configurations to prevent further netsplits by the networking issues recently experienced on the network.

Australian users, rejoice!

Sun, 10 May 2009 14:19:32 GMT

We now have a localized Australian server called "kangaroo.irc.quickfox.net".

Australian servers have their own DNS pool called au.irc.quickfox.net. This will allow Australian users to use the network without drop out issues (due to servers being over seas), bandwidth usage for using "non-Australian" servers among other things.

If you connect from a .au domain, services will suggest that you use the Australian DNS pool for the reasons stated above.

Enjoy!

We have succesfully reclaimed theden.ws

Sun, 10 May 2009 13:40:36 GMT

After some careful tact, we have managed to reclaim our old domain, "theden.ws".

It should now point the website to ours and IRC to us as it once did.

Security upgrade: CA signed SSL certificates.

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:52:08 GMT

It is a bit disturbing to recommend users to use secure connections, but when a prompt pops up and informs the user the certificate is self-signed and they're told to ignore it. Security has broken down right there.

From today, our servers now use SSL certificates signed by Godaddy. Godaddy's certificates are recognised as valid by most modern operating systems. However, on the off chance your system doesn't approve of the Godaddy CA, the necessary root certificates are provided on:
https://certs.godaddy.com/Repository.go

Our certificates are signed for "irc.quickfox.net", so, if you connect to servers directly, you may find a warning about "irc.quickfox.net" not being.. for example "trajan.irc.quickfox.net", while everything else being valid about the certificate, in those cases, it's quite safe to ignore the warning.

For the more paranoid, the thumbprint (SHA1) for our certificates is,
‎2d a2 7b 38 8c cf 33 63 1e 88 ea 05 12 ee 24 63 10 b7 19 81

Left 4 Dead support

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:23:10 GMT

QuickFox now officially maintains a Left 4 Dead server.

The server itself is managed via the IRC channel #L4D, where by, administrators can quickly act on potential problems without the need to login or even have Left 4 Dead installed at the computer they are using (and some, of the more hardcore administrators are capable of doing this from their mobile phone).

This channel also serves a few other purposes. Regular users may join the channel and interact with users in game, set the game server to private among a few other things.
Due to the difficult nature of Left 4 Dead servers, it can get quite irritating when you want to play a game on a reliable server, and as such, QuickFox provides a method for resolving these problems.

For more information, please view:
http://www.quickfox.net/services/l4d

Interesting weekend

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 21:19:22 GMT

Well, this weekend had some interesting issues.

I decided to upgrade our mail server to a different mail server product. The conversion application tells me it may take a few minutes to convert the data -- Well, it took over a day to do so.

Suddenly the network discovers we have unwanted visitors, a Trojan botnet army moved in, so I quickly added a line of code that automatically dealt with the evils.

During this time, I do various server software upgrades on Hal-9000, which leads to some, catastrophic issues with certain libraries behaving badly. Thus, I had to roll back the system. At that point one of the secondary services start acting funny (locking up, crashing) and I fear that some library is screwed up from the upgrade which wasn't removed with the roll back.

As I start investigating this issue, Trajan determines that it's primary file system has gone bad, so it sets everything to read only. Preventing services from saving it's databases (apparently caused by a power outage we had a while back) -- This issue was quickly resolved.

After extensive debugging on Hal-9000, I determined the issue was to do with previous problems we've had with a 'mysql' library, which is usually caused by connections issues. Sure enough, after investigating a little, I find that the network cable that connects Trajan to Hal-9000 is damaged.

Needless to say, all has been resolved now.

Update: I needed to replace three network cables and a network card - Did we get cursed or something?

SecondLife gateway back online

Tue, 06 May 2008 18:28:50 GMT

The Secondlife gateway was re-activated earlier today after a downtime of approximately two days. The cause appeared to be a bug in the MySQL library that prevented the system from recovering out of an error condition.

Unfortunately, the bug is still inside and I can't say for sure if it will resurface eventually again. What I can say for sure is that problems of this type will no longer cause such a long downtime in the service in the future.

Overall, the gateway service was fully operational for several months with no maintenance of any sort and despite problems like the one we had just now, it's pretty stable.

Again, thanks for your patience and sorry for the downtime.

SecondLife gateway downtime

Sun, 04 May 2008 14:08:47 GMT

Our SecondLife gateway went down earlier at approximately 20:00 GMT (03.May.2008) due to database connectivity issue and is in progress of being repaired at the moment. I'm not sure how long will the service be down, but the sooner I can reach Ash-Fox - the sooner the service will be operational again.

On behalf of QuickFox, I apologize for the inconvenience caused to our userbase that benefit of the service. I will do all I can to get the services back up, but alone, it's not a lot unfortunately.

Thanks for your patience.

Services downtime report

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:01:00 GMT

On March 31st, at 22:45 GMT there was a connection loss between the IRC services and trajan.irc.quickfox.net due to what appeared to be a disk space outage on the main drive. Being at work at that hour, I could only analyze the problem 7 hours later and deal with it. At 06:30 GMT the services were restarted after an emergency workaround. The primary drive was still full, but the services could operate at least until the disk space issue could be completely solved.

Final solution to services was applied at 17:30 GMT after a disk cleanup with Ash-Fox over the phone and after a restart, they are now working in their normal state.

We apologize for the inconvenience the downtime might have caused and if something bad happened during the recovery procedures, please let me know.

--IceDragon

All services and servers restored to normality.

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 00:27:13 GMT

The CPU fan has been finally replaced and now the server and all services that operate through it are fully operational again.

Trajan offline due to a hardware failure

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 00:25:02 GMT

Unfortunately the server "Trajan" is currently off line due to a hardware failure, more precisely the CPU fan failed and we're trying to get this replaced ASAP.

Since the IRC-SL relay, regular services, IMServ and so on are all connected through Trajan, this means that they are also off line in the meantime.

Second life's XML-RPC working properly.

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 23:15:30 GMT

Second life's XML-RPC server is now working properly, messages are taking under a second now to transmit.

This means that the IRC<->SL relay system is now working perfectly again since Linden lab has fixed their issues.

IRseek protection

Sun, 02 Dec 2007 17:47:41 GMT

I have updated the network security services to detect and remove any IRseek bots that connect to our network. This makes us one of the few networks which are protected against these annoying bots.

We see these bots as a privacy invasion, and do not tolerate their unauthorized activites.

Alynna and Samui moving - kitsune., kparadise.

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 10:07:29 GMT

Unfortunately since Alynna and Samui are moving home, kitsune.irc.quickfox.net and kparadise.irc.quickfox.net will be temporarily unavailable for a undetermined amount of time.

Second life's XML-RPC server sort of restored

Sat, 17 Nov 2007 17:42:21 GMT

Linden lab has appeared to have restored the XML-RPC scripts on their webserver.

Unfortunately it seems to be doing a tonne of timeout errors, so it's still not very reliable.

SL<->IRC relay system - 404 on XML-RPC system from Linden lab

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 23:23:33 GMT

So, Linden lab has made the relay even worse. Now their XML-RPC system returns 404's.

Our relay system works fine on ourside. The reason why messages aren't making it to the otherside are entirely Linden lab's fault.

http://xmlrpc.secondlife.com/cgi-bin/xmlrpc.cgi

Degraded performance from the SL<->IRC relay system.

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 18:09:43 GMT

Unfortunately for the past few weeks, we have been suffering degraded performance on the SL<->IRC relay system.

This is entirely nothing to do with us, our networks and so on. This is due to the fact that Second life's XML-RPC server has been barely accepting requests the majority of the time.

As of writing this right now, it appears Second life's XML-RPC is now broken, continuously returning the HTTP error code: 500 (internal server error).

We can't fix these problems, because the problems are nothing todo with our side. Our systems continue to operate correctly and efficiently but messages likely will not make to Second life until Linden lab fixes their problems.

Thank you for understanding.

All services and servers are restored.

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 18:49:37 GMT

All services and servers are now restored to normal functionality.

We had a few troubles before with the router hardware when setting up everything in the new location in the UK. But those issues should be solved now.

Trajan, Hal-9000 pending a move to the UK

Sat, 18 Aug 2007 11:10:01 GMT

On Wednesday, 22rd of August, the servers Trajan and Hal-9000 will be taken offline pending a move to the United Kingdom.

During this time, the secondary IRC services will be unavailable (Instant Messaging service, Second life relay etc.) and will be back up approximately on Saturday, 25th of August (provided there are no big traffic issues). The standard IRC services (chanserv, nickserv etc) will be up -- but in read only mode. This means, no channel settings can be modified, no new channel or nickname registrations during this time either. The website will not be accessible either. Obviously trajan.quickfox.net will not be operational during this time period.

Recent happenings at QuickFox.net

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 17:03:49 GMT

Sphinx's hardware is no longer in use as it's too unstable, thus a new server was bought and setup -- trajan.quickfox.net.

faefox.quickfox.net has been renamed to kitsune.quickfox.net

The hosting facility kitsune.quickfox.net was sitting at seemed unable to keep the correct time. Since our network operates on time sensitive functions, this lead to kitsune being unable to relink on netsplits as the time variation was too great to-do a proper synchronization. As such, Kitsune has been moved to another location where we have absolute control over time with the server.

Ash-Fox recently moved out of Poland, returning to the UK. Trajan, Hal-9000 (Not a IRC server, but runs some of our services) and the standard services are in the meantime is still in Poland, pending being moved to the UK -- The servers would approximately be offline for 3-4 days during the move.

Since Ash-Fox isn't in Poland, if the servers suffer a powercut, there won't be a quick response to getting them turned on again.

That's all for now.

We have delinked Cygnus

Tue, 15 May 2007 13:58:30 GMT

Due to the stability issues of Cygnus, hardware related and internet connection related -- We have decided the network is better off without the server and as such we've delinked it and aliased the old Cygnus address to our normal IRC DNS pool.

QuickFox.net IRC <-> Second life relay/bridge/gateway

Tue, 15 May 2007 13:49:24 GMT

As many have been aware on the network, I've been working on a relay/bridge/gateway system for the network for a while now. Until now the system has been available for anyone who asks for it. That is changing from today.

From today anyone can pick up a relay device "in world" (on Second life), and fill in the settings for their registered channel and instantly everything will be operational. No need to ask me and so on.

The relay services are tied to the standard IRC services, setting up a relay requires that you have:

A registered channel
The channel password
A Second life account

Additionally the service now offers options through SLServ on IRC to control certain aspects of it.

For more information on the relay/bridge/gateway and where to get one.

A response, two days late.

Mon, 05 Feb 2007 21:15:40 GMT

(Ash-Fox's real name was replaced with his nickname, and the support url was snipped -- no other changes to this e-mail were made)

We are continuing to work on your issue. If you have more
information, update your question here
https://support.register.com/*snip*

Subject
---------------------------------------------------------------
theden.ws - Renewal Fee Refund Requested

Discussion Thread
---------------------------------------------------------------
Response (Marty S) - 02/05/2007 11:35 AM
Dear Ash-Fox

Thank you for contacting Register.com.

All domain name registrations and renewals are subject to the terms and conditions of our Services Agreement, which can be found at: http://www.register.com/service-agreement.cgi

Due to technical error, Register.com omitted the renewal order for the domain registration theden.ws to the Registry. The domain name registration for theden.ws expired and consequently, the name was deleted from the Registry.

Unfortunately, we are not able to renew the name on your behalf. It has been registered by another party through another Registrar and is no longer available. Register.com has just been made aware of the situation and we apologize for the delay in response.

A separate request has been sent to the appropriate department to issue a check refund in the amount of the renewal fee paid to Register.com. The domain name has been deleted from the Account Manager list of domain names. We apologize for any inconvenience.

If you have any further questions, please reply to this email or you may use the link above. You may also contact a Customer Support representative 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, at the appropriate number below.

Thank you for choosing Register.com, the First Step on the Web(TM).

Customer Support
Register.com, Inc.
http://www.register.com
Toll free in the U.S. and Canada: (800) 899-9724
Outside the U.S. and Canada: +1 (902) 749-2701
"making every call count"

Chat Transcript - 02/03/2007 01:54 AM
Thank you for visiting Register.com's Live Support. How can I help you?
Ash-Fox: Hello, I registered theden.ws through your services, and the domain expires in 2008 according to the account page. However today, I looked at the whois entry for the domain and it appears to of expired, and the domain doesn't even resolve anymore to my servers.
Steve M.: Thank you for the domain name. Can I have a few minutes while I check the records for you?
Ash-Fox: Sure
Steve M.: Please give me a few minutes more.
Steve M.: Sorry to keep you waiting.
Ash-Fox: Yes?
Steve M.: I will have to forward your issue to the appropriate department and they will contact you soon in this regard.
Ash-Fox: How long will that take?
Steve M.: It will take few hours.
Ash-Fox: Alright. Thankyou for the help Steve. :)
Steve M.: Is there anything else I can assist you with?
Ash-Fox: Nothing else, thankyou
Ash-Fox: disconnected
Steve M.: disconnected