11-28-2007 - 3:00 PM EST Server Maintenance

The main Railfan.net server is undergoing maintenance and upgrades. During this time FTP access has been disabled to maintain filesystem integrity. We expect full access to available within a couple of hours.

4-20-2007 - 4:45 AM to 11:00 AM EDT Server Maintenance

The main Railfan.net server had a power supply failure early this morning so we decided to a complete overhaul, which had been scheduled for later in the month anyway. We replaced the power supply, a CPU fan and a hard drive cooling fan and removed and cleaned all the server components. We apologize for any inconvenience the downtime may have caused.

4-11-2006 - 12:00 PM to 5:00 PM EDT Major Hard Disk Upgrades

The main Railfan.net server is receiving an upgrade to 80% of its disks and replacement of one of its CPU fans. There will only be a couple of short periods of downtime for the web server, but FTP access will be unavailable until all filesystems are in their final configuration so that nobody experiences any file loss. We are also taking this opportunity to do a full cleaning of the server.

1-18-2006 - Unplanned Filesystem Maintenance

The main Railfan.net server suffered a filesystem problem at 6:36 AM EST. It required wiping a filesystem and then copying the contents of a backup filesystem to the failed filesystem. No data was lost and the downtime was approximately 3 hours. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

10-04-2005 - Hard Drive Maintenance

We will be replacing a hard drive in the main Railfan.net hosting server so FTP access to your site may be unavailable for most of the day. We expect all the backup and restore operations to be complete by 4:00 PM EDT. The web sites themselves will only be down for two short periods of time between reboots. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

4-27-2005 - Backbone Outage

We have been experiencing problems with our internet backbone circuit with Cogent. They tried to blame our equipment so we hooked it up to a backup router and it experienced the same problems. Our Wil-Tel circuit is picking up the slack while Cogent and Verizon figure out their problem. Because this temporarily cuts our bandwidth in half browsing may be a little sluggish until the problem is resolved.

1-15-2005 12:15 PM to 1:30 PM EST - Backbone Outage

A maintenance man inadvertantly severed power from a multiplexer which handles both of our internet circuits causing a lack of connectivity to the internet. We are taking steps to see that this doesn't happen again. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.


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Niagara Mohawk has a power failure in our area which exhausted our uninterruptable power supplies. We have one of our backup generators powering the network until Niagara Mohawk repairs the problem.


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9-27-2004 Noon to 2:30 EDT - Hard Drive Maintenance

I am upgrading a hard drive so FTP will be unavailable until approximately 2:30 PM EDT. FTP must be disabled during the drive backup process so that no files change or are added until the new drive is in place. Site downtime will be restricted to only a about 1 minute between the server reboots during this process. I apologize for any incovenience this may cause.

8-5-2004 Afternoon EDT - Hard Drive Maintenance

The server has been up and down while we do hard disk maintenance. Two spare drives were found to be defective which is causing numerous reboots as we get everything reconfigured.

8-5-2004 12:00 AM EDT - Hard Drive Failure

Another Seagate hard drive failed on the main Railfan.net hosting server. We will be replacing it with an August 1 backup as soon as Will reaches the NOC. We expect the server to be back online at approximately 2 AM. Any files updated since 6 AM EDT August 1 will need to be replaced. We apologize for any inconvenience.

7-15-2004 6:00 PM EDT - Server Maintenance

There will be a short period of downtime while we replace a CPU fan and hard disk on the main Railfan.net hosting server. We expect the downtime to be no more than 45 minutes and possibly as little as 20 minutes.

We detected problems with another hard disk in that server and decided to swap it out during this maintenance window. This puts us about an hour behind schedule as has added some server downtime. We expect to have everything back to normal by approcimately 6 PM EDT.

4-16-2004 - Hard Drive Maintenance

Friday we will be replacing one of the hard drives on the main hosting server, starting around 11 AM EDT. This will require locking out FTP access while the filesystems are being copied back and forth so updates aren't lost. We expect the server to be down for 10 to 15 minutes while the disks are physically changed after the first round of copying and then copying will continue as several filesystems are re-ordered for best use of disk space. This is a planned upgrade to increase available disk storage on that server. We expect to have normal FTP access restored by the end of the afternoon. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

3-26-2004 - Hard Drive Failure UPDATE

The drive swap was completed yesterday and everythind has been re-backed up. We also identified a memory "swap space" issue which caused occasional problems with the web server processes. That issue has been resolved. We have also invested in more backup hardware which, ironically, arrived yesterday.

3-25-2004 4:45 PM- Hard Drive Failure

One of the Seagate 60 Gig drives in the main hosting server went belly up this afternoon. We are changing it out for a backup and the server should be up within a short period of time. The data was backed up Tuesday so few files should be lost.

1-14-2004 - Server Maintenance

We are upgrading the Apache web server for most Railfan.net customers. This may cause short periods of downtime in the morning. As a side benefit PHP4 will now be installed and both PHP3 and PHP4 may be used. PHP3 pages should have a filename suffix of .php3 and PHP4 pages should use .php4 or .php4

11-28-2003 - Network Maintenance

We will be setting up a new internet backbone connection on Friday morning which may result in some short service interruptions and/or slowdowns any time during the period from around 9am to 3pm.

Also, the drive for Railfan.net donations has unnecessarily worried a few customers that there was trouble in Dodge City. There isn't anything for customers to worry about, the Fund Drive is solely to support all the pro-bono Railfan.net services which we offer such as The Railfan.net Forums, The ABPR and the wide variety of free hosted hobbyist websites.

7-29-2003 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM EDT - Hard Disk Maintenance

The main Railfan.net hosting server will be offline for up to 30 minutes during this period to swap out two failed hard disks. No data was lost as current mirrored data was available.