Hi all,

I am sorry to mention them again, but I wanted to update you on my experience with jkehe and ServerHost.
(Kunal said I should make this public now as I have tried to resolve it sensibly)

On 14th August, I got a server with them through their special offer (total cost of the server was $427 inc setup fee then $199 a month there after).

The server was fine even though it never had the 512mb ram that I ordered because their ram sticks were faulty, but it was working fine.

Cpanel/PHP was causing all kinds of problems and I could not get PHP to work.

After 2 days (16th Aug) and a lot of emails back and forth, and Jeffrey asked for $175 to look at the problem, I emailed him asking for a the server to be fixed as it was not in a state that is working, or I would cancel the server and do a charge back.

Jeffrey replied by saying that it is most likely a bad install and in his words

"Be advised that if you issue a chargeback request, we will turn this matter over to a collections agency and report this as non-payment to credit agencies".

I was worried about this as I am not the kind of person who has bad credit so I opted for him to reformat and resetup the server.

18th August came - no server.
21st August - no server and no replies to my emails - I asked for a refund.
22nd August - server came up, I rebooted it and it failed to restart.
23rd August - server still down - Jeff told me to call the support number again and report it.
24th August - server still down - Jeff asks for root password which I sent him.
24th August - server is up - I try untarring a file and get a Segmentation Fault. Plus faults adding accounts in WHM.
Rebooted server - problem fixed.
31st August - Jeffrey agrees to start the payments from 24th August as compensation.
2nd September - Usually high CPU load (it was hitting 265(!) and rising!) considering Interchange was disabled and no accounts on the server. Rebooted server and it wouldn't respond to reboot requests. Eventually the reboot was done and server never came back up.
3rd September - Again, CPU load was rising and in the space of 5 mins it went from 4.99 to 15.37! Again, issuing the shutdown command wasn't being actioned.
Few hours later, load was hitting 39.99. Email sent to support at 6:30am GMT - 4:30pm GMT still no reply. Jeffrey said he would replace the CPU and HD
6th September - Server still down and still no word on the replacement parts.
7th September - Jeffrey says he is still waiting for parts.
10th September - Server down - no reply from Jeffrey.
14th September - Server down - no reply from Jeffrey - but I am understanding because of the WHT incident.
15th September - Server UP! yaaay - rebooted and it never came back up again - booo.
21st September - Jeffrey says it is his first time out of bed in a week - told he has ordered me a totally new server and will issue a credit for the 1st months rental.
30th September - I emailed Jeffrey requesting a 100% cert date when it will be installed and running as I am now in need of it because clients are wanted to come onboard.
2nd October - Reply from my 30th September email telling me he is heading down to Atlanta on Wednesday 3rd October to set it up.
4th October - no server still.
6th October - called Plusweb - Josh (I think his name was) PM'd Jeffrey who told him that on 7th October, Jeffrey would be going to Atlanta to set it up.
7th October - no reply.
8th October - I emailed him telling him I am now handing the case over to my credit card company who will be dealing with it.
I spoke to the credit card company and they agree that I have been extremely patient with them and just need the letter from me with all my email contact with Jeffrey to be sent to them.

I cannot believe that in almost 2 months, I have not had a working server (for more than 6 days) from Serverhost, and if Jeffrey tries to get me blacklisted with credit organisations I will file proceedings for deformation of character.

I also know of at least one other person who has a server with Serverhost who is also unhappy about his situation with them.

So there you have it, my saga with ServerHost.com.

--James

I wouldn't worry about someone threatening to turn you over to a collection agency. Some company's use that as a ploy to make people feel stuck and have no option but to continue. The fact of the matter is, in any and all cases, if you aren't provided with a product or service, you are not liable to pay for it or continue it. Therefore, I'd be certain you'd not have that action pursued, and if it did, well, I don't think that company would get very far and would bring their own name more harm, than what they'd be attempting to do ro you. Definitely do a charge back and I'm sure everything will be settled in that regard. Good luck!

I'll only add that *before* you do a chargeback, express your intentions and give them a chance to refund your money. While they weren't too open to it before, you have been in contact with them, and setting a deadline (for refund) is fair to both.

I had this problem with another company (non-web host related), and after a lot of bullfrog, I simply told them that if a credit was not applied by the end of the week, I'd be forced to issue a chargeback and they quickly credited the account. It works... sometimes.

Thanks chicken :)

I would love to try to get a refund, but Jeffrey isn't replying to emails - only the odd one.
I originally asked for a refund before, but he said no to it hence me not going to ask again.

He has had more than enough chances in my book, and I done what is needed to show that I have been civil about it - but now it is time to get the money back.

I have written the letter and printed out all the emails ready for submission to the credit card company - which I am not going to post it until tomorrow - if he comes back to me before then and offers me a refund or alternatively offers me a new server that day then I will not send in the letter. If he DOES offer me a new server then fails to bring it up on the date given to me, then the letter will be sent off.

James

I could have saw this coming. Jeff is getting all these customers in all various datacenters around the US. How can someone keep track of all these people? All these weekly specials and not even a website.

If you get a dedicated server from a company, it's their obligation to set everything up and make sure it's working. They have to foot the bill until it's all setup. You are not liable for any any misconfigurations or anything like that since you're paying a setup fee already. I'd say do a chargeback and provide evidence to your CC company if needed. Next time, go with a provider with a known reputation, not someone who throws out a special to gain more customers on a weekly basis.

Hmmmm Jeffrey just emailed me saying he sent me an email about it yesterday saying it was up.

Not got that email.

Tried SSHing into it and it doesn't accept the default username and password I got when I originally got the server.

Sent him an email saying I never got his email.

Gotta wait now...

--James

This, dear friends, is why there is such a thing as a "burn-in period", and why Dell/IBM/Penguin computing boxes are so expensive.

All of the problems you describe above (the hardware problems, not jkehe's unresponsiveness) sound like flaky hardware. It might be the memory; more likely I'd guess a bad motherboard. Either way, if your server was being built by a "big name server company" they would have spent at least 24 hours running hardware tests before shipping it, and this box would never have made it out the door.

Dedicated server hosts: If you build your own boxes (and there's no reason not to) then please *test* the boxes before putting them online. If that means you have to tell your customers "sorry, it will take 24 hours to get your server online because we have to run tests to make sure it is working perfectly" you may annoy some people, but you'll have far less problems than if you stick someone with untested broken hardware.

Dedicated server customers: If you have apparent hardware problems, ask to have the *complete* box swapped out. It is almost always hard to guess what is causing a problem -- I've seen people swap hard disks, memory, processors, and power supplies, before finding that a screw was intermittantly causing a motherboard short. Let your host spend time taking the server to diagnose the problems later -- you need a working server now.

I think in the original post, Jeff said they were Gateway boxes converted into 1u's or something.

But I agree - should have had a 24hr burn in period even if Jeff built them. I ALWAYS burn in PC's at work - leave them running some CPU crunching utils.

--James

Yea most people dont understand why our custom solutions take 5-7 days to get online, what they dont understand is that you have to build it and then we have to burn them in for 72 hours...

Originally posted by WildWayz
Hi all,
2nd September - Usually high CPU load (it was hitting 265(!) and rising!) considering Interchange was disabled and no accounts on the server. Rebooted server and it wouldn't respond to reboot requests. Eventually the reboot was done and server never came back up.
3rd September - Again, CPU load was rising and in the space of 5 mins it went from 4.99 to 15.37! Again, issuing the shutdown command wasn't being actioned.
Few hours later, load was hitting 39.99. Email sent to support at 6:30am GMT - 4:30pm GMT still no reply. Jeffrey said he would replace the CPU and HD


dude
your server probably was hacked
someone was probably scanning that ip class for vulnerable/default redhat installations and found your server, boom, your done..

IT is very important to secure a redhat server when it first comes online right away.

Have you got any tips for securing it?

the OS is RedHat 7.1.

As far as I know, I get the server - telnet is disabled.
Interchange is killed.
I change MySQL's root password
I change the root password

I assumed RH7.1 had most of the security fixes already in place.

Any other tips?

--James

Originally posted by WildWayz
Have you got any tips for securing it?

Yes, switch Operating Systems. (Preferably to one that contains the letters B, S, and D.

Originally posted by Planet Z


Yes, switch Operating Systems. (Preferably to one that contains the letters B, S, and D.

And ideally to one which contains the letters O, P, E, and N.

And make sure you only run applications written by someone whose name contains the letters D, J, and B. ;)

*LOL* I got a kick out of the BSD part... Good advice. However, all boxes require knowledge to secure it and any OS will pose that problem. For Redhat 7.1, just make sure that there's no services running that you shouldn't or don't need to be running. For example, any of the 'r' services, finger, talk, etc. Make sure your provider isn't stupid and sets you up with some initial account with some login information like like: user: admin password: admin or password: 123456 or something like that, because if someone scans that IP you're system has bound to it, they are in and will root your server within literally minutes of it being up.

There's really too many things to list and too many things that need to be done, so be able to explain the most basic and needed things here in this post alone. Be careful about it and look into it. A lot of providers just install default Redhat installs and just install all the options and services with it, which will almost immediately spell certain disaster. I'm not sure what to suggest though, as I can't know what those systems have installed on them, of course, or how they are installed, etc. Good luck.

Thanks Tim and co - I think the server is not perfectly secured, but it does have a lot of the services disabled like telnet/finger/talk as you suggested.

I have also changed the root password to something different - mixture of upper/lower/numbers and be sure to change it frequently.

MySQL is set up so that only localhost can access it - and then only with the domain.
I have also changed that root password too.

How do I disable public_ftp in WHM? I am not going to be offering clients their own anonymous FTP accounts.

Also, to stop directory browsing and restrict people to only dirs/files which they own, how would I do that?

I know on one shared host I had a friend who also hosted there, and I could literally do
pico /home/theirdir/public_html/forums/admin/config.php
and view his vBulletin details from my account.

Regards,

James

Originally posted by WildWayz
Thanks Tim and co - I think the server is not perfectly secured, but it does have a lot of the services disabled like telnet/finger/talk as you suggested.

I have also changed the root password to something different - mixture of upper/lower/numbers and be sure to change it frequently.

MySQL is set up so that only localhost can access it - and then only with the domain.
I have also changed that root password too.

How do I disable public_ftp in WHM? I am not going to be offering clients their own anonymous FTP accounts.

Also, to stop directory browsing and restrict people to only dirs/files which they own, how would I do that?

I know on one shared host I had a friend who also hosted there, and I could literally do
pico /home/theirdir/public_html/forums/admin/config.php
and view his vBulletin details from my account.

Regards,

James

You simply can not possibly stop user's on a Cpanel server from viewing other user's files in shell like you gave above for an example, nor from a user creating or downloading a CGI or PHP script to do the same. Sorry.

Thanks Tim - I think I know why - its to do with all the other 3rd party scripts. If I was to restrict the permissions then things like MySQL, MailMan etc will stop working.

Thanks for the help :)

--James

WildWayz: If it was a CPanel box, let me know your email address and i can tell you what happened to it - at least with the server load at 250+.

hi

My email is wildwayz@clara.co.uk - yes it was a CPanel box.

named + exim had loads of processes running at once.

--James

I'm not going to comment on all of this, but I feel like James took what I said out of context. This is the actual content of the e-mail message:

From: "Jeffrey Kehe" <jkehe@serverhost.com>
To: "James Kapherr" <wildwayz@clara.co.uk>
References: <NFBBLLHPOLEIEODANBMMGEMBCDAA.wildwayz@clara.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Still a server that isn't working
Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2001 04:19:44 -0400
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4133.2400
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400

James:

Threatening a chargeback is not the way to get things done. All you needed
to do is say that you think that it was a problem of ours from the beginning
(a bad kernel would certainly qualify) and we would have taken care of it.
Be advised that if you issue a chargeback request, we will turn the matter
over to a collections agency and report this non-payment to credit agencies.
We are willing to work with you, but not if you threaten us.

Regards,

Jeffrey Kehe

----- Original Message -----
From: "James Kapherr" <wildwayz@clara.co.uk>
To: <support@serverhost.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2001 4:00 AM
Subject: Still a server that isn't working


> Jeff,
>
> Still the server is not working how it should do. It has been suggested
that
> the reason why CPanel/WHM isn't working is because RedHat 7.1 has a bad
> kernal.
>
> Since I got the server, PHP has not worked at all - and that is something
> that is essential.
>
> I tried all that Cpanel suggested - from removing Cpanel and reinstalling
it
> and each time it fails on the error below...
> ############
> gd.c: In function `php_minit_gd':
> gd.c:296: `gdPie' undeclared (first use in this function)
> gd.c:296: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
> gd.c:296: for each function it appears in.)
> gd.c:297: `gdChord' undeclared (first use in this function)
> gd.c:298: `gdNoFill' undeclared (first use in this function)
> gd.c:299: `gdEdged' undeclared (first use in this function)
> gd.c: In function `php_if_imagecreatetruecolor':
> gd.c:577: warning: assignment makes pointer from integer without a cast
> make[4]: *** [gd.lo] Error 1
> make[4]: Leaving directory `/tmp/selfgz13523/php-4.0.6/ext/gd'
> make[3]: *** [install-recursive] Error 1
> make[3]: Leaving directory `/tmp/selfgz13523/php-4.0.6/ext/gd'
> make[2]: *** [install-recursive] Error 1
> make[2]: Leaving directory `/tmp/selfgz13523/php-4.0.6/ext'
> make[1]: *** [install-recursive] Error 1
> make[1]: Leaving directory `/tmp/selfgz13523/php-4.0.6'
> ################
>
> Due to that error happing near the end of the installation of the Layer 1
> file, the rest of the installed items work ie Apache, MySQL, Perl - but
PHP
> doesn't because GD is where it dies.
>
> Another dedicated server I have, the webhost said it was due to RedHat 7.1
> and they use their own custom build of WHM/Cpanel to overcome that.
>
> When I ordered the server, I asked for RH 6.2 as it is deffinatly the most
> stable of the OS's with RH7.1 being the least favourite.
>
> If PHP can't work with the server, then there is little point me having it
> and I will have to cancel the server and do a charge back.
> I shouldn't have to fix a problem like this, as this is your
responsibility
> to install a fully working CPanel.
>
> I hate to come to this, but this issue has not been fixed since I got the
> server, and I tried everything that was adviced by the CPanel team.
>
> Please fix the problem.
>
> server = **************
> username = *******
> password = **********
> root = ***********
>
> James Kapherr
>
>
>

I believe that other than a Cpanel licensing issue with BurstNET, your issues have been resolved. If not, please use the proper channels already established, rather than posting here.

Regards,

Hi Jeffrey,

Yes that is the email.
Also, I posted this thread before I got your email saying on Monday.

Will test out Cpanel then let you know if all is well via email.

Please can you confirm what is the best email address to reach you on, as I have quite a few for you and get replies from various ones.

James

I'd like to comment. Haven't really had any major problems with Serverhost.com thus far. We ordered one of their "dedicated servers specials" and also had to wait a few days for the extra RAM (due to a shipment of faulty RAM apparently). As promised the RAM was duely upgraded later the same week as the server went online.

I pretty much know what I'm doing and very rarely need to call upon technical support so I can't comment on what their levels of service are like in regards to that. All I can say is we've had only one serious bout of downtime (which was reported on these forums) in the few months we've had this server. The server is performing very well under a pretty demanding load and we've had no complaints from our visitors. For what we're paying, I must say I'm very happy. I should also add this is a FreeBSD box not linux and therefore doesnt have Cpanel issues. :D

That's not to pour scorn on your comments. I've also been in similar situations to your WildWayz and I know it's VERY frustrating when problems aren't being resolved, or appear to be constantly "put aside" or ignored. It's unacceptable for you having to resort to airing your "dirty linen in public" on these forums in order to get a reasoned response from the company you're paying for a service. I hope serverhost does resolve your situation to your satisfaction, because, I for one am very happy with the server I have with them.