Increased no response issues from hosted sites?

[PhilW]

Within the last few weeks, I have gotten an increasing number of page unavailables from my shared hosting domains.

Anyone else seeing this, do I need to file a support ticket?

[NickCatal]

I would submit a ticket

Although which web server are you on? I am on web1 (the original shared web server) and have not had this problem.

[PhilW]

Web4 I believe...

Yeah, I can still ping the server when this happens, just not get to the site, it almost like httpd service stops responding.

[NickCatal]

Does

http://web4.nozonenet.com/

Load up when this happens?

What about http://web4.nozonenet.com/webshell4/login.php (a PHP script running on Web4)

[PhilW]

I'll try that next time... maybe it's someone sucking up PHP resources or MySQL resources.

Gah, I hope not, it's why I moved to SF to begin with.

[NickCatal]

Yup... it just went down then back up for me

Mark that as 2:19-2:21 AM CST Web4

The problem with shared hosting is that sometimes you end up sharing the server with idiots...

[Karl]

Yes, in any shared hosting environment you are going to have some run-away processes which can cause resource issues and/or force a restart of Apache. There is really no way to prevent this without locking things down to the point of not being able to do much of anything. That is just a part of shared hosting.

Note: THe load on web4 is very low for the most part, but I will keep an eye on it and see if we can tie the issue to any specific user.

[PhilW]

Yep the site just went down, just tried, all those links, all dead.

This only started happening pretty recently. Can you guys please track down the offending account/process/site and shake the naughty stick? With my host monitoring, it's dropping below the 99.9% uptime.

[spuriousmonkey]

I have a bit of a similar experience.

I moved to steadfast not too long ago from startlogic, because I wasn't quite happy with their service.

I have one family blog, a daily cartoon blog and a phpbb forum.

The move to steadfast did increase immediately the forum speeds compared to startlogic and the loading speeds of the blogs. But I have the dreaded timeout several times a day. And what's worse, the members of the forum have them too and complained about it.

I was wondering if it was normal or if I should submit a ticket.

I must say it is slightly annoying.

[dvsteadfast]

Hi,

I also have a similar experience on web4. In addition, sending/receiving mails are also delayed by a few hours. These 2 issues have been bugging me for the past few weeks. They would be resolved temporarily, but the same thing would happen again within the next few days.

I was then moved to web3, which resolved the mail delivery delay problem, but the server restarts quite frequently ( I noticed my website wasn't available on several occasions when i try to access it, although it could be happening more often since i don't access my website all the time).

I was then shifted back to web4, so now i am faced with the same 2 issues again :(

But I have to say that steadfast's support is superb, my tickets are attended to within minutes! :)

[ManagerJosh]

Is everyone getting HTTP 404 error or HTTP 403 errors?

404 - Page Unavailable
403 - Cannot find server.

Or simply a blank page?

[PhilW]

Pretty sure a 404 for any of my sites (i'll pay more attention next time it happens, and the two main web4 urls of web4.nozonenet.com and http://web4.nozonenet.com/webshell4/login.php

When this does happen, I do a quick check, the server is available, it responds to pings when this happens, just not web services.

[Jon124]

My site has also had this problem ever since I signed up with steadfast (about 4 days ago)


getting kind of annoying.

[spuriousmonkey]

I get a page like this:

Unable to connect


Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at *************.

* The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few
moments.

* If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network
connection.

* If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure
that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.

[larry]

I noticed the same thing with my site.. definitely strange occurances

I setup host-tracker to watch it to track down the times:

http://host-tracker.com/event_list/?task_id=708462

[Karl]

How often is this happening for everyone?

[Jon124]

How often is this happening for everyone?



seems to be about 20% of the time I go to my site I get a 404

[Kevin]

A 404 error occurs when a page isn't there. If you're getting a 404 error it's because you're requesting a file that doesn't exist or using a script which returns one upon a bad request.

Additionally, there's no possible way that any of the servers are working incorrectly in general 20% of the time. Either you're very unlucky with the times you pick to visit your site or you're seeing a different issue. If you can reproduce problem with 404 errors, please open a support ticket so we can see what's going wrong.

[larry]

Ive only noticed with the site monitors, so I put my own script up on my own server else ware to pull a text file every 5 minutes to see if its up or down.

However from the previous instances the connection was simply refused so no 404 would come up.

[Jon124]

A 404 error occurs when a page isn't there. If you're getting a 404 error it's because you're requesting a file that doesn't exist or using a script which returns one upon a bad request.

Additionally, there's no possible way that any of the servers are working incorrectly in general 20% of the time. Either you're very unlucky with the times you pick to visit your site or you're seeing a different issue. If you can reproduce problem with 404 errors, please open a support ticket so we can see what's going wrong.

sorry not a 404, the connection refused. whatever error code that is. and yes, it is about 20% of the time. I check other sites and such to make sure its not my internet connection. next time Ill try to do a traceroute. sometimes when it happens steadfast.net will also be down.


ps-it was just inaccessible for about 10 seconds

[larry]

Actually just as I posted that I got the connection refused from my other server. (the.endof.org) if that helps any

larry@the:~/sitecheck$ more status.log
Failed at Fri Jan 11 23:21:47 EST 2008
Recovered at Fri Jan 11 23:23:01 EST 2008

larry@the:~/sitecheck$ telnet larryscott.org 80
Trying 216.86.146.13...
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused

[Jon124]

yea, if you didn't catch my post on the last page, I also got a connection refused at about the exact same time you did, So it's pretty safe to say the problem isn't on our end.

[larry]

Yup, and this was both from my home connection, and a server @ razor servers

I didn't loose my SSH connection during this issue. So it appears to be isolated to the httpd service only.

[larry]

Ok here is the latest from last night after 12:00am EST

larry@the:~/sitecheck$ more status.log
Failed at Fri Jan 11 23:21:47 EST 2008
Recovered at Fri Jan 11 23:23:01 EST 2008
Failed at Sat Jan 12 01:21:47 EST 2008
Recovered at Sat Jan 12 01:23:01 EST 2008
Failed at Sat Jan 12 03:04:46 EST 2008
Recovered at Sat Jan 12 03:06:01 EST 2008
Failed at Sat Jan 12 05:03:02 EST 2008
Recovered at Sat Jan 12 05:04:01 EST 2008
Failed at Sat Jan 12 10:01:01 EST 2008
Recovered at Sat Jan 12 10:02:01 EST 2008
Failed at Sat Jan 12 11:21:46 EST 2008
Recovered at Sat Jan 12 11:23:01 EST 2008

[spuriousmonkey]

I get the error about 5 times a day on average.

That is, it probably happens more than that.

[PhilW]

I can't verify the error code, hehe, the new ver of FF doesn't show it.

For me, it's quite a few times throughout the day. I'm not on the sites I have here constantly, but there is an increase in the occurance. As I had stated before, the pages won't show for a brief period of time, but I can still get ping responses (using both IP and DNS names).

[Jon124]

was happening again last night, for a few minutes straight. is anybody working on this issue?

[Karl]

OK, with the information we have been provided we have been able to determine that this is largely an issue with the way the Apache restart programs have been operating. One of the scripts, present with H-Sphere, has been running a log related script along with the restarts and was then greatly slowing down the restart time of Apache. We have made some changes to work around that, so any future reboots should be much quicker, a matter of seconds, no more of these 1-2 minute downtimes.

Please provide any additional information about these issues here and if they persist we will continue looking into the problems.

[Jon124]

sweet! haven't had any more problems

[spuriousmonkey]

I have.

Nothing has changed for me.

[Jon124]

:(


one thing I have noticed is that the flash video on my homepage - http://fohdeesha.com/ will not play anymore until you refresh the page. (it seems to play sometimes now, but still not like it used to)

[Karl]

If you are still having problems please list times this issues are occurring so we can look into them further or contact our support department. From our findings, most of the issues have been fixed.

As a note though, web1 was down for about 45 minutes earlier today due to a hardware failure, but that was unrelated.

Also, nothing on our web servers would affect how Flash operates. Flash operates almost entirely user-side. It also seems to be working fine for me.

[Jon124]

sites down right now, been down for atleast a couple minutes

[spuriousmonkey]

down again. Right now. 12.04 local time Helsinki. Otherwise see post time. which seems to be 4.05AM approx 1 minute

[spuriousmonkey]

down again. Local time 13.08. Forum time 5.08AM. about 1 minute.

[spuriousmonkey]

down again 13.10 local. 5.10AM forum time. approx 30 sec.

[Karl]

spuriousmonkey, which of our web servers are you on, or what is your account ID?

[spuriousmonkey]

20.10 again

12.10pm forum time

account: tummers
dunno which server
IP 216.86.146.13

[jrstark]

I have also been having brief outages, members have mentioned blank screens and posts/PMs not going through on my SMF forum.

Not sure which server, account ID is 476177.

The last SMF error I received was 1/17/2008 10:36 AM. Most of the outages are too short, it either takes forever to load or gives a blank screen, works eventually when you keep clicking reload.

[spuriousmonkey]

Once again. 22:22 Helsinki time. 2.22PM forum time.


And once more down at 03:22PM

[PhilW]

Outage, 9:23pm EST.

About 2-3 minutes.

[spuriousmonkey]

down. 18.22 helsinki time. 10.22am forum time

[jrstark]

Down now, 10:22 CST

Network Timeout

The operation timed out when attempting to contact wwwbarntowirecom.

The requested site did not respond to a connection request and the browser has stopped waiting for a reply.

* Could the server be experiencing high demand or a temporary outage? Try again later.
* Are you unable to browse other sites? Check the computer's network connection.
* Is your computer or network protected by a firewall or proxy? Incorrect settings can interfere with Web browsing.
* Still having trouble? Consult your network administrator or Internet provider for assistance.

Failed to Connect

The connection was refused when attempting to contact wwwbarntowirecom.


Though the site seems valid, the browser was unable to establish a connection.

* Could the site be temporarily unavailable? Try again later.
* Are you unable to browse other sites? Check the computer's network connection.
* Is your computer or network protected by a firewall or proxy? Incorrect settings can interfere with Web browsing.

Back at 10:24

[ManagerJosh]

I wonder if its an Apache issue and the server is resetting too early.

[spuriousmonkey]

once again. 12:22Pm forum time

[spuriousmonkey]

Down again at 3:31AM forum time

btw, my server is web4

[spuriousmonkey]

and down again at 5:53Am forum time.

[Jon124]

its getting pretty annoying, I think it is effecting ftp also. I cannot upload big files overnight anymore because the connection keeps resetting.


site is fohdeesha.com

[Jon124]

down right now, has been for a couple minutes

[Jon124]

confirming it does effect ftp. cannot login with filezilla right now as the sites down

[spuriousmonkey]

10:23AM down again.

[Jon124]

wow, just had a solid 15 minutes of downtime :o

[champel]

i am also experiencing the same issues along with the others in this thread. also can not login to ftp either. web4 as well.

account: cabcollection
IP: 216.86.146.13

just started working right before finishing this reply. but was down for approx 30 mins prior.

[Jon124]

remember I love you steadfast!

[spuriousmonkey]

another one at approx 2:35PM forum time.

[PhilW]

I'm not posting all mine anymore, since most here are getting the ones I am seeing.

[spuriousmonkey]

4:03AM.

server down.

[jrstark]

It's going out off and on again.

[spuriousmonkey]

down at 12:27PM forum time.

1:17PM. down again.

[spuriousmonkey]

down again. 08:22 AM. forum time.

[jrstark]

Again here, very slow then loads a blank page.

[ManagerJosh]

Does this apply specifically to your server? Or can you load other Steadfast servers like this one?

[jrstark]

It depends for me, when I posted before, this forum was slow to load. I just had another freeze on my site, but when this forum loaded quickly I checked mine, and it was back.

[Jon124]

when my servers down steadfast.net works fine. i believe its only effecting the server its on (dedicated ip - 208.100.18.214, web4 I think)

[Jon124]

any progress on this?

[Karl]

We've been continually making updates and there have been no prolonged outages (1 minute +) on any web servers due to this issue, that we have noted, since late on the 25th. During that time there was one incident on each web1 and web4 where a customer was using excessive resources, which caused issues, but that is unrelated to the primary issue, which seems to be largely resolved.

[Jon124]

sweet, I have realized i haven't had any real outages on my site recently



ps: it wasn't beatarod was it?

[spuriousmonkey]

I had a kind of a feeling the problem disappeared mostly.

thanks for looking into the matter.

[PhilW]

So far, so good!

:clap:

[spuriousmonkey]

I had now in the last hour several failures to connect.

last one 4.44PM

[Karl]

That was unrelated, it was someone with an insecure script. It wouldn't have affected much, it didn't st off any CPU usage alarms, etc., except it was somehow exploited to congest the full network link. We're working on putting measures in place to prevent that in the future.

[jrstark]

Down again, for several minutes this time.

HTTP is still down, FTP and email seem fine. (12:44)

Back up now.

[champel]

down again. 10:55 EST.

[Karl]

The issue this was regarding has been resolved, any additional reports, etc. are likely just issues with Apache load, etc. that are bound to happen on a shared server. We do our best to monitor usage and keep things up, but it is a shared environment, there will always be abusive users, poorly written scripts, etc. As the issue has been resolved, I am closing this thread.