Server News

News about my server and the website 3-5-5.de

As you might have noticed, there was some downtime of almost all services (excluding email) today. The reason lies in an announcement made by PHP last evening, about an update scheduled for today, that would fix two critical vulnerabilities. There were bugs in PHP potentially allowing remote code execution on the server. Not wanting to take any risks, I decided to turn most of my services off after a quick announcement. This was overkill, as not everything actually used PHP, but it is important to act quickly in these moments. As of writing this most services are up and running again. Some less critical services will follow soon, after receiving their PHP updates. I will try to avoid long, large scale shutdowns like this in the future, but security will always take precedence over availability.

If you want more information about the vulnerability please visit php.net.

// 3_5_5

There will be some downtime of all services today for important security updates. See https://www.php.net/archive/2026.php#2026-10-20-1 for more information.

// 3_5_5

Recently I've been starting to adopt Authentik as a central place to login. You can already see it as an alternative login method here and as the only login method in Mailu. The long term goal is to have it as the only way to login for all services (excluding crafty for now, as it does not seem to support SSO). This is important to reduce the management burden of an increasing amount of services provided on this server.

As a Nextcloud User you will receive a login for Authentik in the coming days. Your old login will still work for a while, but it will be removed in the close future. Please migrate until then or contact me at mail@3-5-5.de if you need assistance. You will also automatically get access to all Fediverse services using this account, for example the new Mastodon Instance.

// 3_5_5

After setting up the email relay to improve the success chance of sending emails, I unfortunately forgot to update the SPF records. They're now up to date and your emails should be delivered. I apologize for any inconvenience. If you experience any other issues with email delivery, please let me know, and I will fix them whenever I have a surplus of free time. glhf with emailing!

// 3_5_5

The problem causing connectivity problems through broken records is now fixed. The server now supports IPv4. There is a new E-Mail service on the server.

Broken DNS records

The server is currently running on a dynamic IP address. This comes with its fair share of problems. One of them is having to update the DNS records regularly to adjust for new IP-addresses. The server used to update it every 5 minutes by deleting the old AAAA records and adding new ones. That was – of course – unnecessary and has caused the issue with the records. Instead, it will now only act, when the IP-address truly has changed and update the records instead of replacing them.

IPv4 Support

Support for IPv4 is something I would have preferred not having to do. Not because it is difficult, but because it is outdated. But here we are, in 2026, and we still have not transitioned. With IPv4 support email hosting is now finally a realistic option. And that's what I did.

Email

E-mail had a bit of a rough start on my server. An incorrectly configured docker caused issues with the newly established IPv4 connection, and outgoing emails were rarely delivered to major email providers. This is another problem of the dynamic IP address, but it now resolved by using an external relay. I've also fixed an issue with Nextcloud's email integration, allowing users to access their email through Nextcloud as I do currently not provide another webmail.

Future

I've been going crazy from all the accounts in my password manager, so I've been thinking about SSO. I'd also like to expand further into the Fediverse, let me know if you have any suggestions!

// 3_5_5

There's been a lot of connectivity issues recently, including outdated certificates. I have resolved them (for now).

Broken DNS records

The server connection to the outside has been very unreliable lately, which also caused the certificate renewal to fail. After quite a few days I finally found the cause:

[tea@teapot ~]$ nslookup 3-5-5.de
    Server:		100.100.100.100
    Address:	100.100.100.100#53

    Non-authoritative answer:
    Name:	3-5-5.de
    Address: 2a01:41e1:600f:9630::c73
    Name:	3-5-5.de
    Address: 2a01:41e1:6049:a130::c73
    Name:	3-5-5.de
    Address: 2a01:41e1:60d1:a400::c73

There were multiple AAAA records, even though my script should always delete the old ones. Additionally, Porkbun's GUI didn't display them; but after deleting all records the problem was gone and the certificates could be renewed. That being said the root problem may not be solved; the question remains: What is the root cause of the broken records? It is also quite possible that this has only been caused by my failed attempts to restore functionality and I might have caused more.

Please let me know if you experience any issues again!

// 3_5_5

New News

There are now Server news for 355.de. You have found them. UwU You may also start your own blog on this Write Freely instance, contact me for an account.

Instability

The Server has been crashing a lot recently. I'm working on a solution. In the meantime you can just pray everything works when you need it ;).

Security

I'm working on a custom SSO solution for my services! It should be ready in a few days to years.

// 3_5_5