I'm not able to reach my site via http. FTP works for me.
Does anyone have the same problem, or is there a sheduled webserver downtime for today ?

Regards,

Peter M.

Looks as if the http daemon may need to be restarted. Traces and pings are fine, and since you can connect via FTP, connectivity doesn't seem to be an issue.

I can't send or receive my e-mail nor reach my site, I can FTP in though. I can't even reach HostRocket.com

Hmmmmm..... I can ping, but I can't get into the site.

Annette, the HTTP request I put through isn't getting through - my MSIE shows it's getting to their IP address (connecting to 64.176.*.*) but not resolving. Looks like httpd needs to be restarted alright...

Hope it will be fixed soon and they will not be down too often in the future.
A friend of mine plans to move a redirection service with more than 80k redirects per day to their server.

So just so I know.......how does something like that happen in the first place?

Yes, can't access it either ... :(


61 to go

*chuckles @ CRego*

Occasionally some tech staff may fail to remember to restart the httpd daemon (in plain language, Apache) after making modifications to their DNS, virtual host list, Sendmail, or any other 500 features on Apache that requires restarting of Apache. Restarting is required for all the changes to go through and of course, we can see the result of failure to restarting.

I ought to know - back about 9 months ago when I was working as sysadmin at a company and forgot to restart httpd, I immediately received 4 phone calls complaining about the web site being unavailable. It can be embarrassing, it's a simple oversight, and it can happen quite constantly.

<edit> I just thought of something else - I just checked other Alabanza-based sites and they all seem to be fine, but something's nagging me - could it be the Alabanza router leading to Hostrocket having troubles again? (it was having trouble earlier last week)</edit>

Alabanza is not supposed to be doing any modifications until thursday........so is there some other way for http to go down without the techs doing anything at all?

Can a router affect just http requests?


I'm just trying to gain knowledge for when this happens to me.

BC, I don't see any routing issues using traceroute.org. Like you, I get the name resolution ok, but no page, hence my gut instinct on the httpd daemon. :)

How does it happen? Well, for the reasons BC outlined, for starters (and most commonly). Also, from time to time, the daemon will just die, simply being unable to handle requests. I've seen it once due to a request for the same single, individual page at exactly the same moment from three different requestors. That's pretty rare, though.

This is my first month of paid hosting, does this happen a lot? and is HostRocket reliable on the whole?

Hi,

We're aware of this problem now and are working to fix it. In the future, if anyone wants to help us out, send a message to emergency@hostrocket.com if you hear our server is down. We would greatly appreciate it : )

-Brendan
support@hostrocket.com

Hi,

This problem has been fixed, sorry for any inconveniece this may have caused.

-Brendan Brader
brendan@hostrocket.com
http://www.hostrocket.com

Sorry Brendan, I would have emailed you, but i assumed you had tons of clients already emailing you about it, next time i will :)

Its always better to email us and make sure we know : ) Id much rather get 500 emails about it than none.

-Brendan
support@hostrocket.com

If you want, I'd be happy to send you 500 e-mails... lol. (Actualy, I sent one at 6:41 p.m. ET, Brendan, letting you know HostRocket.com had alread been down quite a while.)

More to the point, that 64. block on Alabanza still looks rocky on the last rollover. I've also heard -- from another Alabanza provider -- that there's a continuing switching problem with that block, going back several weeks.

Now, these fellows (Alabanza) claim to be 24/7 monitoring, 99.5% up-time, etc., carry oodles of spare parts, and so on. Were they out to lunch? Run out of parts? Did a rabid monkey get loose in the NOC, driving the support staff from the building?

Having a site down for two and a half hours or more makes it really tough for hardworking, responsible operations like HostRocket.com to hold up their end of things!

From what I heard when I was on the phone, my money is on the monkey theory. I dont know exactly what goes on there, but I definatly heard a monkey in the background rambling php code to the tune of mary had a little lamb.

-Brendan
brendan@hostrocket.com

Why are you blaming alabanza?

Isn't it Hostrockets responsibility to monitor and make sure that HTTPD is running and if it's not should'nt they be responsible for restarting it?

This is twice is one month that my site has been down with hostrocket, I sure don't blame alabanza for this.

I wasnt really blaming alabanza. That was pretty much a joke. I thought I made that apparent but I guess not.

-Brendan
brendan@hostrocket.com

I beg to differ. It was definitely Perl 6 (the monkey is clearly prescient), and the ugly little beast was playing "Proud Mary" on an accordian -- not singing "Mary Had a Little Lamb".

hey guys,

Im planning on getting a d-server soon.

And if i even get into situation like this, can someone please explain what httpd is?

And what to do restart it.

Thank you for your help.

httpd = Apache - essentially it's the daemon (or engine) which runs the Apache web server. As you can probably tell from this thread, if httpd goes down you'll notice it (through customers or yourself noticing the web sites hosted on your server suddenly 'down').

To restart Apache, most of the time you'll telnet into your server, go to the *nix command line and type something like......

/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd restart

On NT/Win2K there is a GUI for you to start/stop/restart Apache, but why would you run Apache if you already have IIS on NT/Win2K?

(actually I already know the answer to that anyway ;))

(The part of apache that serves the web pages). Now this is only my opinion, but if you don't know what that is, you just might want to do s'more reading or load linux on that ol' 486 you have in the basement before you get that server.

[Edited by Chicken on 10-23-2000 at 10:52 PM]

I think it is alabanza's fault...they state to us that they do monitor the servers and are alerted when it's down...so you think we should just disregard the monitoring that we pay for, and pay for some more monitoring somewhere else......or get alabanza to do what we pay them to do??

Nyah nyah, I beat Chicken :stickout

(j/k Chicken, keep the posts around since you added some important info)

<edit>I see Chicken's edited his post already, so I'll re-iterate what he originally said : before you get a d-server, get some books on Linux system administration and learn the ins and outs of Linux before you buy one. Better still, build a Linux system at home, break it then learn to re-build it. There are plenty of threads in the Dedicated forum pointing you in the best direction (in terms of books, info, etc.)</edit>

heh heh, grrrrrrrrrrrr - I'll get ya'

grrrrrrrrrrrr this is impossible Chicken - stop it! :D

on the alabanza servers, we just call the script that reboots it, which is httpd.reload.....so if you call it from the root of the root, it would be /usr/local/bin/httpd.reload typed in at the command line.

LOL @ BC & Chicken!!!!

Sorry BC, it's like a chat room? -You beat me, I did a edit on my post and saw you asked to have it left there, so I put it back in. Gotta keep up man!

Hehehehheehheehhe. Wellllll....... It's fun ;)

How long does it take for apache to restart?

Once you type in the pre-requisite command to restart Apache, you should get a msg within about 5-10 seconds confirming that 'httpd restarted'.

Thanks :)

Hi,

There was a little more involved with our situation than just restarting apache. Restarting apache alone only takes a few seconds.

-Brendan
brendan@hostrocket.com

Brendan,

It was a general question.

I did not mean to refer to your service, sorry. :)

Originally posted by Greg
I think it is alabanza's fault...they state to us that they do monitor the servers and are alerted when it's down...so you think we should just disregard the monitoring that we pay for, and pay for some more monitoring somewhere else......Well... no offense meant, but: yes, in my opinion. I guess I wouldn't say disregard it, but I would say "don't rely on it." And if you want to be really sure that you're providing good service to your customers it wouldn't be a bad idea to have more than one service monitoring your server(s). You can be sure that more than one of your customers has some service monitoring it -- and if the server goes down they will blame you, not Alabanza, so if you don't want to be the last to know... "yes."

Can someone check for me. I can seem to get anything to load up from hostrocket right now.

There down again i just emailed them about it like they asked :).

Looks like they're down from here. We carry their ads, as well, and they're not serving, either.

We've finally figured out exactly what has been causing these problems the past two days. Java Servlets will not be available on our system for a few days starting now. We're working to fix what has been done again, and will be back up soon.

-Brendan
brendan@hostrocket.com

This really isn't instilling confidence. Maybe you need to get different monkeys.

wots the use in java servlets anyway?.

The Java Servlets have the task of keeping plenty of fresh coffee on hand. This way the server technicians are always bright and alert, assuring the best possible percentage of uptime...

Hmmmmmmm.......i can't get to http://www.hostrocket.com BUT i can get to http://hostrocket.com


Doesn't that mean Apache is not configured properly?

i can't get to either.

Nor my site or my friends site.

have you tried it wiothout the www? works for me!


try http://hostrocket.com

It doesn't seem like you can even get in with the IP number -- hostrocket.com or my sites... Looks like httpd is vacationing in the far islands again.

If http doesn't work, then how come i can reach http://hostrocket.com ? That makes no sense at all!

Dunno... can't get it from here -- unless you have a copy stuck in your cache... lol. Hmmmm... with something like three or four hours of downtime in the last twenty-five hours, that may not be a bad idea -- just keep the site cached.

Hi,

We have got things back up. We found out the exact problem that has been causing this, and it wont be happening again. We are very sorry for any inconvenience this has caused to any of our customers.

-Brendan
support@hostrocket.com

The first thing i checked was to make sure it wasn't a cached copy.

I wonder if being down so much affects HostRocket's support email. Could any of them have gotten lost because of this?

Hi,

The mail server was up the whole time, so any mail sent or received would not have been lost.

-Brendan
brendan@hostrocket.com

Is HostRocket down again? I'm even showing dead on a tracert this time.

7 16 ms 18 ms 10 ms gbr3-p80.cb1ma.ip.att.net [12.122.5.61]
8 20 ms 17 ms 16 ms gbr4-p80.n54ny.ip.att.net [12.122.2.190]
9 14 ms 15 ms 16 ms gbr3-p60.n54ny.ip.att.net [12.122.1.121]
10 29 ms 22 ms 21 ms gbr3-p30.wswdc.ip.att.net [12.122.2.166]
11 20 ms 18 ms 19 ms gbr5-p60.wswdc.ip.att.net [12.122.5.193]
12 21 ms 22 ms 22 ms gar2-p360.wswdc.ip.att.net [12.123.9.57]
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.

etc., ad infinitum...

I can get through alright....

Stranger and strangerer. Maybe it's the switch at Alabanza off that att.net roll -- I was told there were ongoing problems with it. What routing do you see on the last roll into Alabanza?

Looks like it might be the att.net router alright. I'm bouncing through bbnplanet.net -

============================================================
11 324 ms 455 ms 335 ms Pos1-0.paix1.PaloAlto.telstra.net [203.50.126.30
]
12 455 ms 430 ms 358 ms p4-2.paloalto-cr2.bbnplanet.net [4.0.26.25]
13 350 ms 318 ms 284 ms p7-1.paloalto-nbr2.bbnplanet.net [4.0.6.77]
14 439 ms 314 ms 327 ms p5-0.lsanca1-br1.bbnplanet.net [4.24.5.209]
15 430 ms 462 ms 339 ms p2-0.lsanca1-br2.bbnplanet.net [4.24.4.14]
16 405 ms 423 ms 544 ms p1-0.crtntx1-ba1.bbnplanet.net [4.24.6.78]
17 441 ms 439 ms 414 ms p7-0.atlnga1-ba1.bbnplanet.net [4.24.6.41]
18 429 ms 463 ms 444 ms p1-0.atlnga1-ba2.bbnplanet.net [4.24.7.218]
19 394 ms 538 ms 427 ms so-4-0-0.washdc3-nbr2.bbnplanet.net [4.24.6.37]

20 399 ms 491 ms 422 ms so-7-0-0.washdc3-nbr1.bbnplanet.net [4.24.10.29]

21 423 ms 423 ms 481 ms p1-0.washdc3-cr9.bbnplanet.net [4.24.8.118]
22 753 ms 605 ms 399 ms s0-1-0.baltimore1-cr1.bbnplanet.net [4.0.250.73]

23 442 ms 476 ms 427 ms 4.1.25.238
24 598 ms 454 ms 477 ms unassigned.alabanza.com [64.176.255.249]
25 879 ms 569 ms 451 ms http://www.hostrocket.com [64.176.69.121]

Trace complete.
============================================================

Alabanza's reputation for unbelievable reliability keeps going further down the gurgler...

I show it up and running via the MAE-WEST looking glass, too.



1 sjc2-core1-pos1-0.atlas.icix.net (165.117.59.29) 4 msec
sjc2-core4-fa4-1-0.atlas.icix.net (165.117.50.134) 0 msec
sjc2-core1-pos1-0.atlas.icix.net (165.117.59.29) 0 msec
2 sjc2-core2-pos1-0.atlas.icix.net (165.117.59.33) 4 msec
sjc2-core2-pos5-0.atlas.icix.net (165.117.60.122) 4 msec
sjc2-core2-pos1-0.atlas.icix.net (165.117.59.33) 0 msec
3 sjc3-core4-pos6-3.atlas.icix.net (165.117.67.138) 0 msec 0 msec 0 msec
4 p3-2.paix-bi2.bbnplanet.net (4.24.7.77) 0 msec 4 msec 0 msec
5 p7-0.paix-bi1.bbnplanet.net (4.0.3.141) [AS 1] 4 msec 0 msec 0 msec
6 p6-0.paloalto-nbr2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.6.101) [AS 1] 0 msec 0 msec 4 msec
7 p5-0.lsanca1-br1.bbnplanet.net (4.24.5.209) [AS 1] 16 msec 16 msec 16 msec
8 p2-0.lsanca1-br2.bbnplanet.net (4.24.4.14) [AS 1] 16 msec 16 msec 16 msec
9 p1-0.crtntx1-ba1.bbnplanet.net (4.24.6.78) [AS 1] 76 msec 76 msec 72 msec
10 p7-0.atlnga1-ba1.bbnplanet.net (4.24.6.41) [AS 1] 112 msec 108 msec 108 msec
11 p1-0.atlnga1-ba2.bbnplanet.net (4.24.7.218) [AS 1] 108 msec 108 msec 112 msec
12 so-4-0-0.washdc3-nbr2.bbnplanet.net (4.24.6.37) [AS 1] 108 msec 112 msec 108 msec
13 so-7-0-0.washdc3-nbr1.bbnplanet.net (4.24.10.29) [AS 1] 112 msec 112 msec 108 msec
14 p1-0.washdc3-cr9.bbnplanet.net (4.24.8.118) [AS 1] 112 msec 108 msec 112 msec
15 s1-0-0.baltimore1-cr1.bbnplanet.net (4.0.2.54) [AS 1] 112 msec
s4-0-0.baltimore1-cr1.bbnplanet.net (4.1.25.241) [AS 1] 112 msec
s1-0-0.baltimore1-cr1.bbnplanet.net (4.0.2.54) [AS 1] 116 msec
16 4.1.25.238 [AS 1] 100 msec 100 msec 100 msec
17 unassigned.alabanza.com (64.176.255.249) [AS 11022] 100 msec 112 msec 112 msec
18 hostrocket.com (64.176.69.121) [AS 11022] 112 msec 100 msec 116 msec

Many are unaware of this valuable link, via which you can use external tracert servers... might wanna write it down somewhere:


http://www.ispworld.com/Find_Backbone.htm



[Edited by etLux on 10-25-2000 at 05:56 AM]

Bookmarked! Thanks - very useful indeed.

BC, as moderator, may I suggest posting that somewhere obvious? New here, so I don't know the drill on such things -- but I suspect it would be of great help to many.

Okay, now I'm completely mystified. http://www.HostRocket.com is showing dead in tracerts (actually http://krunch.hostrocket.com ) IP 64.176.69.121

If I move down a note to 64.176.69.120 -- that site, same routing, is live.

My site in the 64.177.xxx.xxx block is also live (same routing).

How can this occur -- if BC is also showing HostRocket up via bbn?

etLux,

I've long considered putting up a 'useful URLs' page for those sites posted on WHT which would be of wonderful use to ppl, but I've never gotten around to it because of a lack of time. That won't be the case in two weeks time when I finish my university exams, and I'll try and get some sort of WHT 'FAQ' page up then on my site.

Thanks for the suggestion - remind me in two weeks (Nov 10th onwards) won't ya? ;)

Will do on the reminder, presuming my aging cranium remembers... lol. Tap me when you do. I've been at this a while, have quite a store of where-to-get-what's.

Hi,

I dont know for sure but I think the problem was with AT&T. It was very strange though as it only seemed to be affecting like 2-3 of the sites on our server, one of which was ours, and only through AT&T.

-Brendan
brendan@hostrocket.com

Brendan, I'm not sure what the problem is over there, or upon whose head the rain should fall -- HostRocket or Alabanza.

If it's Alabanza, you ought to be screaming your fool head off.

If it's HostRocket -- I really want to stay with you guys, but I'm sure you understand that reliability is one of the paramount characteristics of a good host.

Hi,

The problems with the Java Servlets were in ours and alabanzas court, have been resolved and will not happen again. The AT&T problem is more out of our control. I assure you that alabanza gets more phone calls / emails / pages when our server goes down than anyone elses. Downtime is really not regular with them at all, or we would not stay with them, just as I wouldn't expect anyone to stay with us if downtime was a regular thing. We have a fairly strong reputation for being a good host (we did anyways) because we work hard to keep the sites up and everyone happy.

-Brendan Brader
brendan@hostrocket.com
http://www.hostrocket.com

Is HostRocket itself (not Alabanza) directly staffed by live, on-site personnel, 24/7?

etLux, this type of business doesn't really require sales staff to be on call 24/7. I don't want to assume anything, but it would surprise me if hosckrocket, and most of the hosts, had this type of support. I want to make it clear that this is a general comment, and not regarding hostrocket specifically.

I pay to have my server monitored. So does Brendan, if that's what you're concerned about. I do have external monitors as well that will alert me if the server goes down, but my provider is at least the first line of defense.

I wasn't talking about sales staff, of course, Chicken; but some manner of living thing abiding in a support capacity. (Monkeys are often acceptable... lol.)

This is just a general comment, as well, and not specific to HostRocket; but of the fifty or sixty hosting firms I've dealt with, the ones who managed downtime and catastrophes best were invariably those who had a live body watching the store around the clock.

The way we have things set up right now, we really do have just about 24/7 monitoring of servers. All of our staff have the capability to be told and fix any server downtime, in their pocket at any given time. If we get a message to emergency@hostrocket.com, I can assure you that all of our staff, and our guys at alabanza will know about it and within minutes be working on fixing it. I'm not making excuses but the only reason our server was down for any signifigant amount of time the first time was because we wern't aware of it because we hadn't made the emergency@hostrocket.com contact info public yet. The 2nd downtime was elongated because we were taking steps to make sure it wouldnt happen again before we put things back up. This involved disabling java servlets for all the accounts, and making it so people cant install them from the CP for the time being. I realize that you dont want to hear excuses any more than you want to hear your site is down, but we do as much as we can to help us monitor whether the server is down or not. We're also adding a feature over the next few days that will contact us if the server is unreachable, even if noone has contacted emergency@hostrocket.com If you have any more ideas that you think would help us make the service better, we would be glad to hear them.

-Brendan
brendan@hostrocket.com
http://www.hostrocket.com

Actually, Brendan, I think you've taken it between the eyes (like a gentleman, I might add) quite enough for this go-round -- including from me.

HostRocket has a dynamite set of features at a price that's extremely hard to beat. They got snagged in a techno-nightmare with a series of off-the-wall server problems that resulted in a nasty spate of downtime... which, we hope, is done with for good.

End of story, really.

Just keep the fool things running now (often easier said than done, in my own experience), and I for one won't be going anywhere.

Well, I have a question. At this link
http://hostrocket.com/controlpanel.gif

which according to Brendan is the new cp for Host Rocket, it seems that HR is moving to a VDI server. After all the crap Brendan gave people when they said they were leaving Alabanza, I'm curious as to why the sudden shift. It's a bit hypocritical, if you ask me, to slam other people for making decisions about their business and then silently follow them out the door.

Geez... I just got straightened out on HostRocket/Alabanza.

Originally posted by Brendan at HostRocket
If you have any more ideas that you think would help us make the service better, we would be glad to hear them.

You know those cool air raid sirens all the towns have from the days of the friendly atom?

Just kidding of course... sorry you guys took such a verbal beating. (Shame on the rest of you, who've never had any downtime, ever... (yeah, right))

I shipped Brendan an all-purpose, do-it-yourself klaxon kit with a 'Net interface first thing this morning.

Hi,

We are going to be offering both VDI and Alabanza solutions. We're getting more servers with Alabanza as well. We got the VDI setup mainly because that is part of what we will be offering on our dedicated servers.

-Brendan
brendan@hostrocket.com

Not a bad idea at all, really. I've got a couple of sites I know I have to move onto dedicated's in the next several months... and I think I'd be more comfortable with VDI for that than with Alabanza.

Does HR offer VDI shared hosting solutions now??!!!


Hmmm, by the looks of things, they are not offering them at the moment (36/10/00-12:33PM GMT). What is going on??

Has this got anything to do with Alabanza down time??!

Interesting....

Hi,

We are going to offer VDI shared solutions, which will use this CP http://hostrocket.com/controlpanel.gif and VDI dedicated solutions, which will use our backend software we're writing to manage hosting servers. We will also continue to offer Alabanza shared hosting. This has nothing to do with the recent downtime at Alabanza. We've been working on it for quite a while writing the CP and backend because we're using it in our dedicated package. We just figured why not give our own customers another option too, so we're setting up one of our VDI boxes for ourselves.

-Brendan
brendan@hostrocket.com

Brendan, will this result in any change of features on the existing Alabanza control panels? For instance, I have a couple of clients interested in moving to HR who have periodic opt-in mailing lists of several thousand names. The mailing list package that comes with Alabanza's panel works really great for this, with a little tinkering and a touch of custom Perl scripting to shake hands with it. I'm not sure on this, but I was under the impression that the VDI packages were somewhat more limited in this regard.

Hi,

We will not be adding removing or changing the alabanza CP's or account setups at all. We will be upgrading to PHP4 on the alabanza boxes, and already have it on the VDI ones.

-Brendan
brendan@hostrocket.com

Thank you for the clarification, Brendan.

Hey Brendan,

do you have to be a current HR customer to get a VDI account? or are you letting new customers onto the VDI server?

I dont want to get you into bother with the CDS for 'advertising' or anything, just interested, thats all.

If you want, you tell me via e-mail: stu@f2s.com

People will be able to move between servers if they like, with no charge for doing so.

-Brendan
support@hostrocket.com

Not to be insane about this or anything, but if you guys have specific questions for Brendan, why don't you email him or take it over to the rocketsupport.com forums?

I agree with Annette. This post has progressed from a complaint to what is now bordering on an advertising thread. I am sure the CDS will be here any minute now. Maybe Branden could start a thread in the Advertising forum to discuss the options that will be afforded his new and old customers given the new VDI server coming on line.

I'm sure Brendan is sick of looking at "hostrocket down" by now, too... lol... which has long since ceased to be the subject of this thread.

I agree and don't really see a point to keeping this thread open. Not locking it due to anyone doing anything wrong, but it does seem like specific questions that could be asked to Brendan directly.