Idnet, the popular Letchworth based ISP, have been suffering e-mail woes for the last two days with users who have e-mail addresses that end @idnet.com being unable to receive e-mail. Other hosted e-mail addresses such as those using non idnet.com domains are unaffected.
The problem manifested itself on Wednesday with e-mail arriving slowly following a huge influx of spam which hit the e-mail platform hard. A server restart was performed to restore service back to normal which resulted in a routine disk check being performed across the RAID filesystem. 50 hours later, and the disk check is still running, with no indication of when it will complete. Idnet initially thought the check would take just a short while to run, but due to the amount of files present on the server due to how e-mail is stored, it has taken much longer than expected.
Any inbound e-mail is thankfully not being lost, but queued awaiting delivery to the POP3/IMAP server that delivers it to end users. Unsure if the check is at 20% of completion or 99%, Idnet have chosen to implement backup hardware to restore service and help users get back in touch with their e-mails, although teething problems have also occurred with this. Idnet will be looking into implementing hot-spare systems that can be failed over to in a matter of minutes should a similar problem affect the service in the future.
Updates on the issue are available on the Idnet Status Page, with further details posted in our forums and at the Idnetters community forums.
Shame IDnet one of the better ISPs out there lets hope they solve the problem soon