Archive changelog

All dates DD.MM.YY@HHMM CEST (Europe/Zurich)


Date: 16.16.2023@1757 CEST
From 1600 CEST yesterday, all name resolutions for theswissbay.ch are handled by our own authoritative server. This effectively solves the glue record issue from 23.05.2023. The Swiss Bay is therefore 100% self-hosted and free from its previous CloudFlare dependency.

Date: 23.05.2023@2033 CEST
An off-site monitoring site has been setup using GitHub Actions for some time now. It is readily accessible here: https://theswissbay.github.io/status/.

Any and all issues regarding the following services can now also be tracked in real time on the issues page in addition to this page:


Date: 23.05.2023@2025 CEST
The DNS records for theswissbay.ch were hosted on CloudFlare until today 1600 CEST, at which time the registrar proceeded with the following changes:

For some obscure reason, the glue record actually points to 84.72.152.153, an IP that has not been used for years. As a result, no DNS query makes it to the actual resolver and all services on theswissbay.ch are unavailable. The registrar has been notified of this issue and a fix is due.

In the mean time, theswissbay.ch may be manually set to 81.6.2.165 in your hosts file or recursive DNS resolver.


Date: 08.04.2023@2145 CEST
From 06.01.2021, a paranoid endpoint was available to access The Swiss Bay, using no public PKI but our own CA instead. Because it sets no limit with respect to what domains for which it can issue certificates, one could argue that it can turn rogue any try to steal legitimate connections to sites other than theswissbay.ch or even get leaked with a similar effect in the hands of threat actors.

To help clear fear and mistrust, an intermediate CA will be deployed starting from next month. This new CA uses Name Constraints from RFC 5280 so that only theswissbay.ch and its subdomains can be subjected. You can already download and install it from here to be ready for the change, just don't forget to remove the old CA which won't be used publicly afterwards.


Date: 10.03.2023@1100 CEST
The current storage pool is based on 8x2TB disks with over 60'000 80'000 work hours, and reliability issues start to appear. With size becoming a limiting factor, time has come for an upgrade. A maintenance window will be put up to migrate existing data to the new pool of 4x18TB. The usable space will go from 8TB to 36TB, allowing much more content to be hosted in the future. The post will be updated accordingly.

Update 12.03.2023@2039 CEST: new disks are ready for install and a short downtime period is to be expected between 2200 and 0100 CEST.
Update 13.03.2023@1227 CEST: migration was completed around 0200 CEST, some minor downtime is to be expected in the next 24 hours.

Date: 23.09.2022@2347 CEST
Periodic upstream link loss have been observed in the last 24 hours, with an unknown cause. A hardware change is due early next week. In the mean time, the site may be unreachable at times.

Update 04.10.2022@1600 CEST: the hardware change did not resolve the issue, which appears to be located elsewhere and not in our infrastructure. Troubleshooting goes on.
Update 30.03.2023@1357 CEST: test hardware from another brand just arrived and testing will take place today. Expect connectivity issues during the day.
Date: 16.08.2022@0225 CEST
According to official and press sources in Switzerland, the country will face issues importing enough electricity this winter due to the current geopolitical situation in Europe. In the worst case scenario, if consumption still exceeds availability despite advisories on power savings, rolling blackouts lasting multiple hours (most likely between 4 and 8) may be implemented to prevent a total grid collapse.

In order to mitigate this situation, the existing backup power system has been upgraded so as to provide double the previous uptime (from ~2.5 to ~5 hours). While IT equipment under direct control of The Swiss Bay will continue to operate, other upstream devices may or may not be kept powered on. Therefore, because it is difficult to predict if and when outages will occur, it is just as hard to say if this website will remain accessible.

While efforts are made to secure the reliability of The Swiss Bay despite the uncertainty of current times, information integrity remains the number one priority, because bad information is worse than no information. If circumstances require it, servers may be shut down for an undefined amount of time to preserve them in a fully working state. In such cases, uptime may be greatly reduced so as to prevent frequent start-stop cycles.

If you want to host a copy of any or all parts of The Swiss Bay's PDF archive, and if you have storage space with a decent Internet connection to spare, you may reach out to theswissguy at theswissbay dot ch. If you prefer to help in another way, for instance by donating hardware or money, you can use the same address. Your generosity is greatly appreciated.

This page will be updated accordingly, following situational changes in the coming months.

Update 18.08.2022@1601 CEST: a short period of downtime is to be expected due to modifications to the electrical system which require de-energizing all devices. A follow-up will also take place next week, with a slightly longer duration to allow for other maintenance tasks to take place.
Update 13.09.2022@0013 CEST: follow-up will take place this morning, expect downtime until mid-day.


Date: 11.07.2022@1454 CEST
Our public IP address is now static: 81.6.2.165. Services were unreachable from roughly 1000 to 1430 CEST.
Date: 20.04.2022@1802 CEST
Following some cabling work, our public IP has unfortunately expired. The new one is 81.221.211.37.
Date: 09.03.2022@1355 CEST
A software error on our edge router broke TLS, which was not functional from around 1820 CEST yesterday until now. A reboot fixed the issue.
Date: 18.11.21@1127 CEST
A DMCA removal request was sent to us on 06.11.21 demanding the removal of two works from the Gentoomen Library:
Wishing to stay as transparent as possible, you may find a screenshot of the complaint and our reply.

Date: 11.11.2021@1741 CEST
Due to networking issues, the website was unavailable from roughly 1530 CEST yesterday until 1230 CEST today. Measures have been taken so as to avoid such problems in the future.

Date: 10.10.2021@1425 CEST
Notice: a maintenance task in planned for tonight at 2300 CEST with an estimated duration of 30 minutes during which the site won't be available. This post will be updated upon completion.

Update 11.11.2021@1745 CEST: the maintenance task was finished at 0200 CEST the following day.

Date: 29.09.2021@1016 CEST
Notice: a new IP is used - 194.191.227.25. Moreover, the uplink is now symmetrical 2.5Gb/s which will provide for faster downloads, for your convenience.

Date: 09.02.2021@2243 CEST
Notice: the upstream ISP will change on 01.03.21. This notice will be updated once the new IP address is delivered.

Update 01.03.2021@2126 CEST: the new IP is 81.221.198.85 81.221.147.41.

Date: 19.01.2021@1104 CEST
Notice: unplanned maintenance had to be carried out, partly due to disk errors. All services were down from 0230 CEST until now. No data lost.

Date: 06.01.2021@0033 CEST
Changes:
Added:

Academia Articles Books

Over 260 books on:

Ancient history

Linguistics

Mental health

Survival

Datasheet Manuals and documentation NSA & US NRO Presentations

Crypto

Hacking

Infosec

Networking

Networking (MikroTik)

Sysops

Politics Reports Whitepaper

Android

Crypto

Hacking

Hardware

Health & medicine

Infosec

Network

Probability theory

Side channels

Software engineering


Date: 6.1.2021@0030 CEST
Notice: The Swiss Bay is now also accessible via Tor at swissbaync5d7ykaz7dh7v4qjrb4gmen5aj3bogxrcgbb43ij34bjuyd.onion.

Date: 15.08.20@0141 CEST
Notice: maintenance work will take place during the morning (approx. 1000 CEST), during which the website will not be available.

Date: 29.7.20@2027 CEST
Notice: due to ISP connectivity issues, the website was unavailable from roughly last midnight to now. The IP was subsequently changed to 77.56.129.162.
Notice 2: now stable on 80.218.59.16.

Date: 7.5.20@1203 CEST
Notice: due to the previous complaint, the ISP had cut the Internet access until the situation was resolved. To prevent future censorship from any party, The Swiss Bay will slowly be transitioning to more resilient networks.

Detailed information about this change will arrive in due time.

Date: 7.5.20@1200 CEST
Notice: due to a complaint, 4 PDFs from the Gentoomen Library have been removed:

Wishing to stay as transparent as possible, you may find a screenshot of the complaint here.

Date: 25.11.19@1647 CEST
Notice: maintenance work will take place soon, during which the website will not be available

Date: 17.10.19@1225 CEST
Notice: maintenance work will take place soon, during which the website will not be available

Update 17.10.19@1738 CEST: maintenance work is done and the site is operational again.

Date: 5.10.19@1752 CEST
Notice: Let's Encrypt certificates were previously installed by hand in the Web stack upon each renewal. This is now an automated task, so there should no longer be certificate expiry issues.

Date: 5.9.19@1652 CEST
Notice: maintenance work will take place soon, during which the website will not be available

Update 6.9.19@0132 CEST: maintenance work is done and the site is operational again, but some more downtime is to be expected during the next day.

Date: 29.5.19@2329 CEST
Changes:

Date: 23.5.19@2114 CEST
Notice: maintenance work will take place soon, during which the website will not be available

Update 23.5.19@2230 CEST: maintenance work is done and the site is operational again.

Date: 15.4.19@2225 CEST
Notice: a gateway to Yggdrasil has been added under here. Here is a test link.

Date: 15.4.19@0131 CEST
Notice: a gateway to cjdns has been added under here. Here is a test link.

Date: 2.4.19@2102 CEST
Notice: due to various complaints, PDFs under Book have been removed. The Gentoomen Library remains still.

Date: 16.8.18@1159 CEST
Changes:

Date: 13.5.18@1220 CEST
Notice: maintenance work will take place some time during the day, during which the website will not be available. This notice will be appended by an update once the job is done.

Update 13.5.18@2320 CEST: maintenance work is done and the site is operational again.

Date: 5.3.18@2115 CEST
Changes:

Date: 12.12.17@1729 CEST
Notice: the maximum upload rate (i.e. download rate for users) has been set to 25Mbps globally. Our new WAN link grants us greater bandwidth.

Date: 12.12.17@1726 CEST
Notice: the upstream provider changed its IP allocation scheme without prior warning, resulting in invalid IP configuration on our side. The previous IP address (84.72.152.153) was changed to another one (77.56.134.244). This unexpected change is to be considered normal.

Date: 16.9.17@1434 CEST
Changes:

Date: 5.9.17@0055 CEST
Notice: the website will be unavailable for some time during the day because of maintenance work on electrical installations. This is planned to happen every 6 months.

Update 6.9.17@1722 CEST: all services are now available again. Many backend components were also migrated to a new infrastructure, hence the rather long downtime. In the future, this should not last more than 30 minutes.

Date: 30.8.17@0105 CEST
Notice: the maximum upload rate (i.e. download rate for users) has been set to 10Mbps globally in order to prevent the WAN link from becoming too slow or even unresponsive due to ISP throttling.

Date: 10.8.17@0120 CEST
Notice: during the last two days, there have been periods during which the website was unreachable. This is due to hardware upgrades that aim to improve the internal network with respect to stability and performance. More connectivity losses are to be expected in the near future.

Date: 16.6.17@2030 CEST
Notice: at around 1800 CEST, a power outage has occured. The UPS currently in use can provide current for a few hours, depending on the load. As the upstream issue has not been resolved yet, there is a chance the webserver will be powered off (and hence the website will be unavailable). This is expected to last a few hours, if not more. An update will be posted here when the situation changes.

Update 17.6.17@0250 CEST: input from the power company was OK but HPC fuses were blown on all phases, hence cutting power to anything. The server likely shut down around 2130 CEST. The cause of the issue remains unknown but since 0240 CEST power is back (at least for now).

Date: 24.4.17@2250 CEST
Changes:
Information:

Date: 12.3.17@1849 CEST
Changes:
Crypto whitepapers Network whitepapers Books Various whitepapers Political/legal documents Manuals

Date: 31.12.16@2125 CEST
Changes:

Date: 19.12.16@2245 CEST
Changes:

Date: 19.12.16@2218 CEST
Changes:

Date: 18.12.16@1045 CEST
Changes:

Date: 18.12.16@0044 CEST
Changes:

Date: 7.11.16@2146 CEST
Notice: the website was unavailable from the afternoon of Friday 4.11.16 until the evening of Monday 7.11.16 due to an unexpected connectivity issue with the upstream provider. NO file has been altered during the downtime.

Date: 5.10.16@2322 CEST
Changes:

Date: 16.8.16@1203 CEST
Changes:

Date: 8.7.16@1920 CEST
Changes:

Date: 16.6.16@2304 CEST
Changes:

Date: 13.6.16@1804 CEST
Changes:

Date: 10.6.16@1957 CEST
Changes:

Date: 8.6.16@1358 CEST
Changes:

Date: 8.6.16@1007 CEST
Changes:

Date: 25.5.16@1710 CEST
Changes:

Date: 18.5.16@1743 CEST
Changes: