PHP 5.3.27 and 5.4.17

The PHP developers recently announced the release of versions 5.3.27 and 5.4.17 that fix several bugs. We’ve upgraded PHP 5.3 and 5.4 on our servers.

In addition, we’ve updated the obsolete PHP version 5.2.17 on our servers to include the fix for a security bug that the updated 5.3 and 5.4 versions solve. (This bug wouldn’t normally be fixed because the PHP 5.2 series is no longer supported by the PHP developers, but we consider it important enough to manually backport the fix.)

These changes should be transparent to customers. In the unlikely event you experience any issues, don’t hesitate to let us know.

PHP 5.3.26 and 5.4.16

Earlier this month, the PHP developers announced the release of versions 5.3.26 and 5.4.16 that fix several bugs. We’ve upgraded PHP 5.3 and 5.4 on our servers as a result.

In addition, the developers of Zen Guard Loader for PHP (previously known as “Zend Optimizer”) have released a version with PHP 5.4 compatibility, so our copies of PHP 5.4.16 now support that feature, too.

Finally, we’ve also updated the ionCube Loader PHP extension (which most of our customers don’t use) from version 4.4.0 to version 4.4.1.

These changes should be transparent to customers. In the unlikely event you experience any issues, don’t hesitate to let us know.

Brief scheduled maintenance June 8, 2013 (completed)

Between 10:00 PM Pacific time on Saturday, June 8 and 5:00 AM on June 9, each of our hosting servers will be restarted. This will cause a brief interruption of service (less than 10 minutes) for each site at some point during this 7 hour period.

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PHP 5.3.25 and 5.4.15

The PHP developers have announced the release of versions 5.3.25 and 5.4.15 that fix several bugs. We’ve upgraded PHP 5.3 and 5.4 on our servers as a result.

We’ve also updated the ionCube Loader PHP extension (which most of our customers don’t use) from version 4.2.2 to version 4.4.0.

These changes should be transparent to customers. In the unlikely event you experience any issues, don’t hesitate to let us know.

Outage on web12 server April 9, 2013 (resolved)

Between 12:50 and 1:23 PM Pacific time, service was intermittently unavailable or slow for sites and e-mail on the web12 server. In addition, customers on other servers may have seen brief delays or high load for about two minutes during this period.

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Network outage March 23 2013 (resolved)

Between 11:04 PM and 11:44 PM March 23, our network was either slow to respond due to high packet loss or completely unavailable to some customers.

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PHP 5.3 upgraded to 5.3.22; PHP 5.4.12 also available

The PHP developers have announced the release of version 5.3.22 that fixes several bugs. We’ve upgraded PHP 5.3.21 to version 5.3.22 on our servers as a result.

In addition, we now offer PHP version 5.4.12 as an optional choice in our control panel. For now, the PHP 5.4 series is recommended only for customers who need to test “cutting edge” features. Most customers should stick with the PHP 5.3 series, which is compatible with a wider variety of scripts.

Brief scheduled maintenance February 26 2013 (completed)

Between 11:00 PM and 11:59 PM Pacific time February 26, 2013, each of our servers will be restarted for a “kernel upgrade”. This will cause an approximately four minute interruption of service for each customer at some point during this hour.

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Denial of service attack February 5, 2013 (resolved)

Beginning at 3:00 PM Pacific time February 5, a server on our network was the target of an extremely high volume DNS amplification denial of service attack. The inbound network data exceeded 11.6 Gbps, which is an extremely large amount — large enough to exceed the 10 Gpbs capacity of our upstream Ethernet switches and cause our entire network to slow down dramatically.

This affected all servers for about 19 minutes, until we and our network partners began discarding (“null routing”) all traffic targeted at that server. This fixed the problem for the rest of our network, but still left sites on the “web11” server unavailable.

To solve that, the IP addresses of all sites on the web11 server have been changed to new IP addresses that are working correctly and are not under attack. This was completed by 3:44 PM, and all sites on all servers are now working properly.

If the attackers target another IP address, we’re ready to immediately block that one, too. If that does happen, the way we’ve redistributed the IP addresses, in combination with previous analysis we’ve done on this attack, will allow us to immediately know which site is under attack. (It’s otherwise hard to determine which IP address is involved, because the type of attack we’re seeing targets only an IP address and not a specific Web site name.) That site will then be moved off our main network to prevent a recurrence.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this caused our customers; we know you count on us for reliable service, and we’re committed to doing everything possible to avoid problems.

PHP 5.3 upgraded to 5.3.21

The PHP developers have announced the release of version 5.3.21 that fixes several bugs.

We’ve upgraded PHP 5.3.20 to PHP 5.3.21 on our servers as a result.