Blog

April 18, 2017 – It seems that Alabama Power has lost an electrical phase in the downtown area Gadsden.  This is having an adverse affect on computers and internet service in the area.  Many buildings are experiencing “half on half off” power.   The power that is functioning is below normal voltage (around 95 volts).   Computers do NOT like this, so we do recommend turning off any non-essential machines.  If they are on battery backup units, this will help, but those will also die eventually, so we recommend shutting down equipment connected to UPS units which are beeping or clicking.

This is an update from Alabama Power:

Estimated Restoration Time:
3:00PM CST on 04/18/2017
Last Updated: April 18, 2017, 12:58 PM
A crew has been assigned to locate and repair the problem reported in your area. Power to most customers should be restored by 3:00PM CST on 04/18/2017.

Currently, our office has manually switched to generator power to insure that our servers and service stay online.   We will continue to post updates as we get them.

Update- 3:15pm –  Utility power has been restored.  Our systems have also switched back over to normal line power.  If you are still experiencing issues, please call us at 256-547-6817 or email support@internetpro.net.

April 15, 2017 – We are performing updates on a few remaining servers which have not been updated from the LTS (long term support) version of Ubuntu 12.04.   Support for this operating system ends this month, so for security reasons, we must move to the next distribution level.   We are moving these servers to the next LTS release known as 14.04 which will have support until April of 2019.  During this upgrade process there will be an interruption of web services provided by these hosts.  The impact will be minimal and is expected to only be 15-20 minutes in total.

There is a risk that some websites may be adversely affected by this update as the version of PHP will also be upgraded.  Websites with old, deprecated code may stop working or produce errors.  Our staff will be trying to isolate and correct the majority of these issues.  If your website begins to have problems, please let us know so we can check the cause.    We are performing this update on the holiday weekend to minimize impact to businesses.   We will post an update here when the work is completed.    Please note that this update affects a very minority set of customers.

Update – We have completed the server upgrades.  We have identified a few sites with problems but it is a very small amount of sites.  We will be reaching out to the owners of sites which we cannot quickly fix because of the need of major redesign/overhaul work.   However, it is possible that we did not spot an issue with some sites that have them.  If you encounter problems, please let us know and we will work to assist you in any way we can.

 
If you have any questions or notice issues with your website, please contact us at support@internetpro.net.

March 10, 2017 – Our office will be closed today from 1:00 – 2:30pm for a company wide meeting.  Phone messages left during the meeting will be returned as quickly as possible when we return.  We apologize for the inconvenience.

March 7, 2017 – We will be performing emergency maintenance tonight to address a critical security flaw which has been found in all Linux kernels.  The issue is detailed here: https://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2017-6074

Normally, we try to give more notice for maintenance which affects service, but due to the seriousness of this flaw, we deemed it necessary to address the issue as quickly as possible.  The maintenance window will begin at 8:00pm tonight (March 7, 2017) and will continue until the issue is resolved.   The expected time is three hours, and we will be posting updates on this page as the work is completed.    During the maintenance, all services will be affected, although not simultaneously.   Customer websites (including this site) and email services will be offline at some time while the work is being performed.   Email interruption will be brief and no emails will be lost.  Virtual Private Servers (VPS) will have the longest outage as each VPS will experience the maintenance as well as our VPS hosts and shared storage systems.  Some offsite backups may not complete normally this evening as those servers will also be affected.

Thank you for your understanding.  If you have any questions or concerns about the work being performed, please contact us at support@internetpro.net or 256-547-6817.

Clarification – The three hour expected window is the total we expect for the maintenance, not the expected downtime of each service.  Individual servers, sites, and email will be down less time during the window.

Update – A workaround has been found which will allow us to mitigate this attack without the maintenance we announced earlier.   There will be no shutdown or interruption in service as previously planned.  We are sorry for the confusion/inconvenience.

January 11, 2017 – Comcast in the Gadsden area is experiencing an outage.  Currently, the estimated time to repair is 8:00am Central time.

Update – 7:30am – It looks like most customers in the area are now back online.  If you are still experiencing trouble, please try power cycling  your cable modem.  If problems persist, please call us at 256-547-6817.

January 6, 2017 – We have had to close our office due to the inclement weather.  We plan on resuming office operations on Monday at 8:00am.   In the mean time, we do have technicians available if needed.   Just call 256-547-6817 and hit option 8 or email support@internetpro.net.   We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.

January 5, 2017 – We have been  dealing with a spam issue for our Hosted Exchange customers.   The problem arose a couple of days ago when our anti-spam software (Panda Antivirus) updated their “engine”.   The new engine stopped working on the server.   We have been working with Panda to resolve the issue, and think we are getting close to a resolution.   However, if we do not reach one soon, we will be changing to a new anti-spam software/provider.  This will take a bit of time to make the transition and we will keep you informed of our progress here.   We apologize for the inconvenience.

Update – It looks like the spam subsystem is working again.  Spam emails are correctly being tagged with [SPAM].    This allows for easy rule creation in your email client to automatically filter those emails.

Questions or concerns should be directed to support@internetpro.net.

January 4, 2017 – 9:00am – There is an ongoing issue with a virtual server host which is causing some virtual private servers (VPS) to have performance problems.  We are aware of the issue and are working to resolve it as quickly as possible.  We will post updates as we have them.

9:30am – We are still experiencing some issues but have been restoring non-responsive VPS machines onto redundant hosts.  Most services are already back online and we will be migrating those back to the original host when we have resolved the problem.

9:50am – We are experiencing issues with Hosted Exchange services which are related to this issue.

10:15am – We have identified a memory problem with the problem host and are working to resolve it.

10:30am – All hosts are up and running although we do still have an issue with hosted Exchange which may cause some authentication issues.  If you are connected to Exchange with Outlook or on the web interface, please do not close it.  If you are authenticated, everything will work, but  you will not be able to reauthenticate until this issue is resolved.  Currently, there is not an estimated time to repair.

11:30am – We have repaired the hardware issue and are now working on migrating all VPS machines from the redundant hosts to their normal host.   We have also resolved the Hosted Exchange authentication issue.

11:50am – All issues have been cleared and all services should be back to normal.  If you are still experiencing issues, please contact us.

If you have any immediate questions, please email us at support@internetpro.net or call 256-547-6817.

October 24, 2016 – We will be performing some emergency maintenance on Thursday, October 27, 2016 to address a critical Linux kernel vulnerability (CVE-2016-5195).  The bug is actively being exploited in the wild so we need to get the patch in place as soon as possible.  As a result, we will be operating in a maintenace window outside of our normal maintenance hours.   Maintenance will begin at 5:00pm on Thursday, October 27th.   We will do our best to minimize downtime for each host and all hosts will not be down at the same time.  However, all hosts will be affected at some point during the maintenance window.  This particular fix will require a reboot of each affected server including virtual private servers (VPS).

During the maintenance window, we will also be taking the opportunity to upgrade hardware on a limited number of servers.  This will result in a slightly longer downtime for those machines, but this will be a subset of the hosts affected by this vulnerability.

October 27 Update 6:40pm – Our website that you are currently reading was down for a bit while the upgrade was being performed.  As you can see, it is now up and we don’t expect any further interruptions on this site.  Many servers have been updated successfully, but there are still many more to go.  We will keep you posted as progress is made.

Update 8:25pm  – We encountered an unanticipated hardware failure on reboot of one of the servers.  We are working to correct it.

Update 9:55pm  – Things are still progressing.  We’ve handled the hardware failure and taken the opportunity to upgrade some virtual server hardware.  Many customers with VPS machines should notice a significant improvement in responsiveness.  We still have some machines to go and are working to test systems to make sure nothing is missed.

Update 11:00pm – We have completed the upgrades and patches.  All services should be working normally or better.  If you have an issue, please contact us at 256-547-6817 or support@internetpro.net.

If you have any questions or concerns about the maintenance being performed or the scheduling, please call 256-547-6817 or email us at support@internetpro.net.  We will be posting updates here as the maintenance progresses.

October 19, 2016 – Yahoo has adjusted the default security settings controlling sign in access to accounts. This change disables the ability of Outlook, Mail.app, and other desktop email clients as well as mobile email clients for Android and iOS, etc., from being able to sign in.
To fix this, sign in to your Yahoo account via http://account.yahoo.com. Then  choose ‘Account Security’ from the left-hand menu. Then enable the option ‘Allow apps that use less secure sign in’. Once you change this setting, you should be able to sign in via Outlook or your phone, etc.