11 Apr 2017
12:38 UTC
Steve Kemp
This unfortunate failure was caused by a Debian security update, which introduced a problem. The problematic security update of the dovecot package has now been superseded by an update from the Debian project which corrects this regression.
All hosts that were affected by the problem should be 100% functional after tomorrow morning, when the new update is automatically applied.
We've posted instructions on fixing the problem in advance of that though on our forum here:
If you're still seeing problems after following the instructions there please get in touch.
11 Apr 2017
08:15 UTC
Matthew Bloch
If you read your email at a Bytemark server, you may be seeing messages such as "Authentication Failed" or being given a prompt to retry your password when going to read your email.
We're aware that a recent security update from Debian has broken email for our Symbiosis distribution - this wlil have been automatically applied to a lot of Bytemark systems overnight, and we've received many reports of this from customers.
If you have an affected Symbiosis system, you can follow our instructions to roll back the security patch and restore your server's email functionality.
We have identified that this is due to a broken security patch in Debian. It seems likely that they will be able to issue an updated package today, but it may not be automatically installed until tomorrow night. (therefore if you do nothing, your server will fix itself, but not for another day)
We'll leave this issue open until we're certain that the Debian security update has been issued and is working correctly.