UPDATE 22 March 2024: Email, DNS, and certificate issuance are all restored. User-facing services are fully available at this time.
UPDATE 4 March 2024: We are in contact with the domain owner and are in the process of updating the glue records and deploying a new DNS server.
Espernet issues:
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Virtually no staff, those that remain don't have much free time to invest in the network. This is the main issue.
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No access to the domain registration to update nameservers (current nameservers have gone offline). This makes it difficult to connect without knowing the IP address of a server.
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We lost hosting for a support server that handled email (for nickserv registrations), domain and TLS certificate tooling. We have backups, but setting up a replacement takes time, see issue 1.
Efforts have been made to contact the esper.net domain owner, this may resolve issue 2.
FAQ:
Q: What went wrong? A: We lost hosting for our backend server that provided DNS, email, and TLS certificate renewal services. The provider gave us many years of free hosting but could not continue.
Q: Can you just replace the server that was lost? A: Not without access to the domain registration, which we currently don't have.
Q: Is this definitely the end of EsperNet, for good? A: Not necessarily. If we regain access to the domain registration and enough motivated people donate their time to help us restore services, then we may be able to continue to operate.
Q: Why can't you replace the DNS server? A: We do not have access to the domain registration to update the DNS information. All other services that are down depend on DNS as well.
Q: Do you have backups? A: Yes, but without access to the domain registration, restoring them is pointless. Additionally, restoring the backups will be a long a difficult process as the backend server hosted many, many manually-configured services.
Q: Have you considered a new domain? A: This is basically setting up a completely new IRC network. We don't think it's worth it nowadays.
Q: Is there a way I can help? A: If we can gain access to the domain registration, possibly. Until then, not really.
Q: The DNS isn't working, can I have the server IPs? A: The IRC server IPs are: 139.99.136.176, 51.255.119.242, 188.240.145.50. The IPv6 IPs are 2001:6b0:78::50, 2001:41d0:304:200::e1e0, 2402:1f00:8100:400::1570. Webchat's IP is 51.81.82.143.
Want to offer any help with hosting needs or administrative type tasks that you're willing to entrust to a stranger online. nick is Lady on espernet or this username @gmail.com.