Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : Createspace - my experience

[lvzardoz]

There have been quite a few positive reports on Createspace, which was one of the reasons I opened a reseller account there.

My experience, however, has been far from positive and I am cancelling my account because of inexcusably poor support and lack of corrective action to a big mistake they made.

After many emails to various folks at Createspace using three different email accounts, I finally got an answer by using a PM here on this message board. Most of the reply is obvious BS, especially this:

I have tried multiple times over the last week to email you however every time followed up by a reply from you to say you haven't received anything.

This is laughable because it is just so totally unbelievable. I used three separate email accounts to make inquiries to Createspace. After the first non-response, I checked each one with incoming and outgoing test messages. All three worked fine.

Here was the last email I sent:

This is the most recent of many emails I have sent from different accounts to you, robert, accounts, support, info and billing:

----------------

This is my last try to elicit ANY response from you folks. It is just unbelievable that noone there will respond. I even thought maybe it's my email but I've thoroughly checked my email for bounces, etc. but everything is fine. However, I'll go even further by sending this message from yet another email account.

Reference: reseller account uniqon.com

Dan,

I signed up with Createspace for three major reasons, (1) the great price/feature ratio, (2) what appeared to be good technical knowledge and (3) your personal attention to others shown on webhostingtalk.com

I don't need much tech hand holding and I wasn't expecting a great deal of support from a new, small hosting company. Little did I know, however, that support would essentially be non-existent and, worse than that, my accounts could be suspended without any justification before or after the fact.

Although I have written several emails after the bogus suspension of the itvfan.com account, I have not even received one courtesy response from info@ accounts@ support@ or robert@ In fact, other than automated messages about nameserver IPs ns1.uniqon.com (that, while unimportant, still doesn't work) and the move to PEER1, I have not received any response to any of my email messages since April 3rd.

The account itvfan.com was suspended without email notification. From WHM I found this note:

> Using over 90% of Dual Xeon 2.4GHz system resources

This would appear extemely unlikely since the itvfan website is a still unfinished and unannounced website for viewing EXTERNAL TV feeds from American and international hosts.

Because all video feeds are EXTERNAL, it should use MINIMAL system resources, particularly so since it is an unannounced site.

I decided to leave my previous host because of excessive downtime. However, there is no worse downtime than a bogus suspension without subsequent corrective action.

I realize that you guys are still probably working on fixing some problems from your move to PEER1, but a complete absence of email response to customer concerns can't be justified.

I'd certainly like to hear your side of the story. I hope that my
original decision to try Createspace.net was not a misjudgement but I am having increasing doubts about that.

Bob Carroll
President
Vegas Beltway Digital Services

[CreateSpace]

Mr. Carroll,

With multiple replies both from Robert and I to multiple email addresses and WebHostTalk PM system - I think it is you who does not want to address the extreme system CPU usage.

Please view: http://www.createworld.net/itvfan.pdf

It has been like this day-in day-out, it was not a one-off and the system does not lie. We are not running a low system P3 or Celeron... this is a dual xeon 2.4 GHz. at almost 200% CPU usage in total from the running script this is not tolerated.

Further too this pornography was found on this account, 'naked news' files or links to files will not be tolerated - createspace does not want any association with adult material.

Please review these emails openly from Robert and myself addressing the CPU situation.

*****

(This was sent the second we suspended the account)

Reseller account - uniqon

Hi there.

One of your customers has been abusing the server with a massive 98.2% system resources from run away scripts.
Please notify this user:
itvfan (itvfan.com) [uniqon_highband]

Please see this uploaded screen shot of the server CPU load:
http://www.createworld.net/itvfan.pdf

I would ask that you notify the user and terminate the account.

Please let me know the outcome.

Regards,
Daniel Hewitt
CreateSpace.net

*****

(With a follow-up)

Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2003 7:55 AM
To: Bob Carroll
Subject: RE: Account Suspended? What is going on?

Good morning Mr. Carroll.

This website was in fact suspended due to using >90% of system resources.
This has been caused by some scripts run on the website.

Please visit http://www.createworld.net/itvfan.pdf for reference.

Please contact Dan about the suspension to see about getting the account resolved.

Take care,

Robert Donaldson

*****

(After your complaint)

With all do respect Mr. Carroll, I replied to your email and suggested that
you contact dan@createspace.net to have the problem looked into/resolved, as
I am only the systems administrator. Dan then replied to you with the
following email:

Bob Carroll,

We suspended the account due to extremely high CPU levels from itvfan. We
followed up by notifying you immediately with a follow-up to this by Robert.
If we can have a good explanation for the extreme levels of CPU usage and a
note stating this will not occur again we can take the account out of
suspension. However if the high CPU levels do continue we will have to
suspend the account again followed up by termination.

As I am sure you can understand 98.2% + 96.6% CPU levels are extraordinary
and will not be tolerated. CPU usage at this volume will cause the server
to function slow and incorrectly.

Daniel Hewitt
CreateSpace.net

Once again, I urge you to contact Dan to have this situation taken care of.
I have forwarded him an email informing him that he should be contacting you
ASAP.

I have included my initial email for reference purposes.

Robert Donaldson

***

I cannot stress how many times we have emailed you and replied to your emails to us - with prompt reply times.

All I have asked for is an explanation - one we have never received. Our email replies have been overlooked and not once replied too.

We cannot allow users to abuse the server in this manner as well as disregard our terms-of-service for what is and isn't allowed.

Regrettably it has come down to this Mr. Carroll, we do not want to loose you - however if you do decide to leave I would advice your new host to be running something a lot more power than a dual Xeon 2.4GHz to cope with your extreme levels of CPU usage.

Best of luck and take care,

Kind regards,
Daniel Hewitt
CreateSpace.net

[lvzardoz]

You, sir, are a frigging liar. There was NO pornography of any kind on my web site. Among the many international news sites, there was also a LINK to Naked News of Canada. This is certainly NOT on my site and, in any case, is NOT pornographic.

I simply do NOT believe that you responded to my email at all. When I get email without problem every day to the three email accounts I used and still nothing from you or Createspace, despite your protestations, it rings exceptionally hollow and false.

Finally, today you show me your PDF file. Did you notice the processes you found to be using 90+% of your CPUs was entitled 'VIM'.

Any beginning unix programmer would recognize that as the standard VI editor. Since I seldom edit any files over 10k in size, it is obvious to me that YOU have installed or misconfigured something terribly wrong in order to cause that much CPU usage. What beginner crap. Clean your own house before blaming your (ex) customers.

Bob Carroll

[CreateSpace]

Mr. Carroll,

We are well aware of VI and understand it is used as an editor, but it was strongly believed that account 'itvfan' was abusing the use of it as several other clients including myself use it on a daily basis and do not cause any loads on the server.

We have no need to cause false allegations and suspend accounts without any good reason. The process in the screenshot was running 1400+ minutes (almost 24 hours at the time) This is of some concern.

Daniel Hewitt

[lvzardoz]

So, let me see. Somehow, the low resource VI editor is running at 90+% and you think that is normal? It is running over 24 hours and you think that is normal?

What kind of analytical skills do you folks possess? Sounds to me like some sort of runaway zombie process, dontchathink? Do you think a person is going to sit in the VI editor for 24 hours? I can guarantee I have a lot better things to do.

Again, it is asinine to think that a normal VI process is going to use huge resources. The whole point of VI is to be a low-resource alternative to EMACS, etc.

Your excuses are sounding lamer and lamer. Just come clean and admit it, you guys really blew it.

BTW, you can check with JagaurPC since I still have an active account there. I am not some wild eyed hacker and I participate actively in their forums helping others. Your fantastic accusations just make you even less credible to potential customers.

[lvzardoz]

Originally posted by sprintserve
I had a look at the Pdf... the 2 process in question seems to be vim. vim has a bug that will do exactly that... using up more and more of the resources until it's almost 100%. Are you not aware of that Daniel ?

When it comes to running away, Vi and Vim are the worst offenders. Any time Vi or Vim are closed without using the :q command, they ignore the standard kill signal and run forever. This happens whenever a bash window is closed without Vi being exited first, or whenever an ssh session is interrupted while using Vi.

[Aussie Bob]

lvzardoz, just curious, where in this thread did sprintserve make that above reply that you quited?

[lvzardoz]

Aussie Bob,

Actually it's a response to the same posting as above by Createspace to a comment I made yesterday here:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showth...5&pagenumber=2

[rusko]

createspace,

i may be able to help with the technical side of the matter. here is what happens with vi:

1. user logs in, starts vi
2. users does not close vi properly, but logs out
3. at this point, vi should exit since the session leader process is gone, but it does not (dont ask me why)
4. vi continues to select() on the tty which no longer exists, which results in this hang

in short: there was no abuse on the side of the user, it is a (weird) technical malfunction. once again, the user did nothing wrong - please reinstate their account.

here is a script you should put in your crontab to run every few minutes:

#!/bin/bash

IFS='{'

for moo in $( ps aux | grep vim | tr '\n' '{' );
do
user=$( echo $moo | awk '{print $1}' )
# echo "user: $user"

who | grep $user &>/dev/null
res=$?

if [ $res -ne 0 ]; then
procid=$( echo $moo | awk '{print $2 }' )
# echo "pid: $procid"
kill -9 $procid
fi
echo "$moo"
done

IFS=" "

i just typed it in here, so test it before you use it, but it should work. redirect output to /dev/null of course, otherwise you are gonna get a lot of email =]

good luck to you both,
paul

[lvzardoz]

They might also just use /usr/bin/ulimit

[Toolz]

Originally posted by lvzardoz
BTW, you can check with JagaurPC since I still have an active account there. I am not some wild eyed hacker and I participate actively in their forums helping others. Your fantastic accusations just make you even less credible to potential customers.

I don't think JaguarPC would like to get involved because you seem to be referring to them here:

I decided to leave my previous host because of excessive downtime. However, there is no worse downtime than a bogus suspension without subsequent corrective action.

?

[Vestirse]

So how does this story end?

[rusko]

Originally posted by Vestirse
So how does this story end?

i dont think we know yet. the folks at createspace happened to not know about this quirk in vi, the client is a bit ticked off at the whole thing. big mess =]

paul

[sprintserve]

Personally, I think reinstating the account, making some compensation may solve the issue. At the same time, it seems that it was some php scripts that seems to call vim. Therefore those scripts should not be allowed to run.

Both sides should compromise, and it should end well I think

[lvzardoz]

rusko,

I've already stated that I'm leaving Createspace. Making a mistake like not having the intuitive analytical skills to sense that the VI thing was a system fault and not the a client fault can be overlooked. We all make mistakes.

However, the total lack of communication (and yes, despite the denial, I truly believe they never responded even once to my emails) is far beyond anything I'm willing to tolerate. Then, for them to attack the customer with spurious claims about pornography and some sort of evil intent is just so over the top that I wouldn't do business with them in a million years.

The bottom line is (1) first get the facts (2) make sure you maintain good communication (3) if you think you might have goofed, be a man and 'fess up' and (4) take corrective action and finally (5) analyze how to do things better next time.

I think Createspace shot themselves in the foot but they could have made it a lot better by just using a little bit more courtesy and less defensiveness.

I also might suggest that they publish a fax number as an alternate method of communication unless they want to maintain a Nixonian 'deniability'. Their WHOIS record and contact web page list neither a telephone nor fax number.