The server for 4um underwent a substantial operating system upgrade this evening. I'm now back from Ecuador and felt it safe now to do so during these wee-hours of the weekend in the event of catostrophic complications -- something that isn't likely with standard upgrades (linux upgrade programs are generally very robust and trustworthy, at least for the major packages). For that reason I pretty much didn't count on any outage actually occuring, and likewise didn't give any warning about the upgrade. Anyway, of the hundreds of packages updated, one apparently failed to upgrade properly with the existing configuration files, and that was none other than apache itself, which is the program that IS the web server (that sent you this very page you are reading to your web browser). As a result, I had to completly uninstall the old apache and install and configure the new apache, the last of these being the biggest problem mainly because I had to figure out the format changes in the configuration files.
All told the outage ran about 4 hours. On the plus side, the server is now set up with the latest stuff. Shouldn't have to pull one of these things again in the near future.
One thing that is different at the moment: You can no longer access 4um by IP address as you could previously. That may affect some bookmarks and links that use the IP address instead of the http://freedom4um.com name.
But there may be behavior differences. Please email them to the webmaster address if you encounter any you find annoying.
Thanks & sorry for the outage.