My goodness! I got my first RaQ 4i last week hosted on RackShack. I have been having so many problems in the last week it's not funny anymore. :bawling:

In the last 72 hours, the server has crashed three times - had to get RackShack support to restart the server urgently each time.

48 hours ago, MySQL corrupted one of its own database files and I had to restore the database manually.

SMTP screwed itself over 12 hours ago and could receive mails but could not deliver them to the specified mailboxes.

Webalizer 2 runs everyday but does absolutely nothing (stats don't update).

Now, I consider myself a pretty half-competent server admin. I've administered some pretty heavily used boxes in my day. This is my first ever experience with a Cobalt box and I am completely and utterly frustrated. My question to you all is - has any of you had much problems with Cobalts before?

The uptime on my server has never exceeded 30 hours because of all these problems. We get about 7000 unique visitors to the main site daily moving about 1GB a day (which isn't actually that much).

:bawling: /* pulls at hair */ :bawling:

Leonard

You need to remember, Sun markets the RAQ as an "appliance" and not a server. Big difference.

If you run it as it came, you will not have any trouble. Start adding things, and trouble can start.

Ill agree with you on some difficulties but we havent had that kind of outages as of yet through them.

Its been a pain in the cazoo though to get all the different options available to customers....

Aloha

well I have had some probs but boy I feel better now
first off as UmbillyCord said it is not a server in hte sense you are used to
stick to packages that are form cobalt site to stick wiht less probs have heard pros cons to webalizer 2 I stuck with 1.3

just curious how loaded was MySQL ???
that sucks though ??
was it a standard install or anything else added to the box
wonder if ya got a box that was not restored proper ???

best of luck keep us posted

Yeah Honu, I'm pretty suspicious that the server wasn't reloaded correctly too. Cuz I've got logfiles dating back to April when I only got the box over 1 week ago.

Another thing that I'm VERY suspicious about is that the box did a hard-crash THREE TIMES. i.e it just crashed for no apparant reason. On top of that, Sendmail was seg-faulting all of last night - reboot and it's okay. I'm starting to wonder if it could be a hardware problem rather than software??


MySQL has an average of 2.268 queries a second. I don't think this is really pounding the server.

The only thing which I installed that wasn't a PKG was PHP4.0.6, which I had to compile in myself - but that works perfectly. All my problems has been other crap like SMTP seg-faulting, or the server admin website just not loading, mysql corrupting its own databases, etc, etc. *bang head*

Let's see, what did I install?
MySQL PKG http://pkg.nl.cobalt.com/
Webalizer 2 PKG http://cobalt-aid.sourceforge.net/files/
PHP with GD

I'm gonna give the box another week and if it blows up again I'm getting it re-installed and only stick with stock standard stuff. It'll be a complete bastard getting all the data off the box and back on again though. Not only that, but after hearing of some of the experiences with RackShack support staff, I'm a little worried. I haven't had any problems with them as of yet, but I also haven't put any complex questions or requests to them.

Like I said before, the box hasn't even had an uptime longer than 30 hours. Heck, my workstation has uptimes better than that!

Leo

Aha! The plot thickens! I just checked and my box only has 128MB memory installed, when I ordered 256. Sucks huh?

leonardteo,

I would request that they give you new box, or at least one that has been given the OS restore. OS restores are a pain because of all the patches that need to be applied, so techs do not like doing them.

From experience, if you are having trouble now with a RAQ, it won't get better latter.

Originally posted by UmBillyCord
...
From experience, if you are having trouble now with a RAQ, it won't get better latter.
I can, from experience, second that.

You should have them do a full OS reinstall whether or not the RaQ "gets better." If it wasn't wiped completely before you got it, for all you know there could be a root kit installed on the server and the problems you're having could be caused by a "vistor" you're not aware of.

Aloha
Leonardo
hmmm April yeah I would get em to do a reinstall the OS

yeah support can suck if ya read some of my posts and others they are scary but price is right
are you doing your onw dns on the box this is the biggest beef I have with em

They've actually fixed up all their DNS issues Honu, they're now using an automated system, so you just fill out a form, submit it and the DNS updates all automatically. Very cool and saves me the hassle of setting up my own DNS.

I'm demanding a new box after they not only didn't OS flush the box, but gave me 128MB when charging me for 256MB all along.

Bah!

Leonard

Aloha
did they change there dns system as of a couple days ago ???

you can still not reach there system for around 6-8 hours a day as they bring it down for maintenance ???
a big hassle
think the dns issues are when there human touches it
I have had some horror stories including them disconecting my server and taking it outt of dns completely without even double checking I did not cancel or anything the ticket was messed up by one of there techs and he wasnt sure what to do so he disconected it ????

Update: Rackshack decided to reinstall the OS on my box along with the 256MB RAM. But they pulled my raq without giving me notice and were just about to nuke the machine when I noticed that my site was offline, called them and made damn sure that they backed it up. They didn't even provide a temporary site saying "sorry the server is down for maintenance". :angry:

I can tell you this right now: RackShack have some of the best deals anywhere, and they're pretty good when everything works properly - but the service does leave more to be desired. I could have lost everything on my server if I hadn't contacted them on time.

So yeah. Good deals, great when everything works. But if something goes wrong - GOOD LUCK.

Leonard

Aloha

bummed ya had to experience what I have

yeah they cut my server off because of there own bad spelling and wrong dns ## so they just took my raq off and pulled all dns out
they had the ball$ to tell me glad you caught it before we restored your machine ??
I was like great when were you going to tell me you disconected my machine (morons)

again sorry about hte probs now ya can agree there service sucks and is quite scary to boot
but figure I am going to use it as a bandwith machine
later

Well the latest is that their support pulled the server, brought it back to the office for reinstallation, but have gone home. They now tell me that the server will be back up in about 24 hours time, when it takes 15 minutes to reinstall without patching (I told them that I'll do the patching).

So now I have absolutely no web presence whatsoever. My clients are asking why the server is down and why no contigency was in place, bla bla bla bla.

After this whole mess, I just can't recommend RackShack anymore. Not when my business is on the line. The price may be right, but it's become clear that you just can't depend on them.

Leonard

Well guys, this is my final update as a RackShack customer.

So the support guys pull the server off without telling me. Then I catch the just in time to back it up. So they do. While backing it up, they realise that the filesystem or the harddisk was screwed.

They gave me a new raq, and dumped all the data onto the new server. I bring the new server back up to speed, but before long - the files all screwed over because they were corrupted. After rebooting several times, I found that I couldn't access the /home/sites/home/ directory as it was corrupted. HTTPD wouldn't start, MySQL databases corrupted themselves and the entire website (and business) was gone.

If RackShack had given me notification of pulling the server, I might have been able to backup the entire website and contents on another server to restore, as the site was accessible and running fine just before they pulled it.

I don't think it's completely RackShack's fault. A lot of bad luck was involved as well. But ever since we moved our site to RackShack, there has been nothing but problems, and we almost lost everything in the end.

The good news is that we have a one week old backup of the site and contents on another service provider - whom we're returning to. But we're no longer Rack Shack customers. It's a shame - because their deals were actually very attractive.

Leo