Is the site acting odd

A spot to talk website specific issues
Post Reply
User avatar
GAM
Verified User
Verified User
Posts: 5402
Joined: Wed May 18, 2011 2:50 pm
Name: Sandy MacNeil
Location: North End HFX

Is the site acting odd

Post by GAM » Sun Nov 02, 2014 9:37 am

Last night I could not connect to the site. It has happed befor as well.

Sandy

User avatar
Bluefin 774
Verified User
Verified User
Posts: 154
Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2014 8:34 pm
Name: Mike
Location: Mount Pearl, Newfoundland

Re: Is the site acting odd

Post by Bluefin 774 » Sun Nov 02, 2014 9:40 am

I couldn't get on the site last night...it works now, :cheers2:
Take care, Bluefin.

Tap # 1: Apple Cider
Tap # 2: Kolsch

Fermenting: Bluefin's Hefeweisen
Fermenting:

Up Next: ?

User avatar
Keith
Award Winner 6
Award Winner 6
Posts: 6479
Joined: Mon Sep 02, 2013 3:55 pm
Name: Keith
Location: Lower Sackville, NS

Re: Is the site acting odd

Post by Keith » Sun Nov 02, 2014 9:42 am

Rob and drunk and tripped over the power cord
Brewer, Owner & Operator @ Ol' Biddy's Brew House
:cheers2:

User avatar
Keith
Award Winner 6
Award Winner 6
Posts: 6479
Joined: Mon Sep 02, 2013 3:55 pm
Name: Keith
Location: Lower Sackville, NS

Re: Is the site acting odd

Post by Keith » Sun Nov 02, 2014 9:42 am

Got* not and. Damn phone
Brewer, Owner & Operator @ Ol' Biddy's Brew House
:cheers2:

User avatar
RubberToe
Award Winner 13
Award Winner 13
Posts: 3743
Joined: Mon Mar 14, 2011 9:47 am
Name: Rob
Location: Dartmouth
Contact:

Re: Is the site acting odd

Post by RubberToe » Sun Nov 02, 2014 9:48 am

Yeah couldn't connect last night at all. I put in a support request asking WTF was going on. No response. I rebooted the virtual machine this morning and it came back up. I've seen network blips before but nothing like this.
Electric Brewery Build
On tap at RubberToe's:
Sometimes on a Sunday Belgian Dubbel, Oaked Old Ale, Ordinary Bitter

User avatar
jeffsmith
Verified User
Verified User
Posts: 4922
Joined: Tue Apr 26, 2011 4:18 pm
Name: Jeff Smith
Location: Amherst, NS
Contact:

Re: Is the site acting odd

Post by jeffsmith » Sun Nov 02, 2014 9:50 am

Anything in the server logs that might indicate why?

User avatar
mumblecrunch
Award Winner 2
Award Winner 2
Posts: 1197
Joined: Sun Oct 06, 2013 7:01 pm
Name: Aaron
Location: Halifax

Re: Is the site acting odd

Post by mumblecrunch » Sun Nov 02, 2014 10:51 am

jeffsmith wrote:Anything in the server logs that might indicate why?
You don't figure that would have been the first thing he checked? ;)

I have had one such outage on my CloudAtCost server and it was a week or two before this site moved over. It suddenly stopped responding one night, I tried rebooting and that appeared to hang, so I submitted a support ticket and it was back the next morning. It's a toy for me, so I didn't care that much. I will mention that since that happened I haven't even had a blip nor have I experienced nearly as much lag and packet loss. I will also say that there wasn't a thing in the logs afterwards; from inside the VM it looked pretty much like a sudden loss of power.

Rob, has the package been changed at all in the last two weeks? For instance did you upgrade from Dev2 to Dev3 or switch from monthly payments to the one-time fee? They recently instituted an automatic 10-day shut-off on all (or at least all Dev-level) servers. This was apparently to combat the scenario where someone signs up for a cheapo Dev box to do something, forgets about it, it gets hacked and turned into a botnet node. They claim this was happening a lot and contributing to all sorts of issues (network latency, disk latency, etc.). Anyway, I took advantage of their 50% off sale the other day to upgrade mine from a Dev2 to a Dev3 and the upgrade process re-engaged the 10-day auto shut-off and I had to go in and turn that off.

I've experienced nothing but increased performance, especially with Tapatalk, since the site move (which I should also say was impressively smooth, BTW). Hopefully we don't see this happen again or support can provide a reasonable explanation for why it happened.

User avatar
jeffsmith
Verified User
Verified User
Posts: 4922
Joined: Tue Apr 26, 2011 4:18 pm
Name: Jeff Smith
Location: Amherst, NS
Contact:

Re: Is the site acting odd

Post by jeffsmith » Sun Nov 02, 2014 11:13 am

mumblecrunch wrote:
jeffsmith wrote:Anything in the server logs that might indicate why?
You don't figure that would have been the first thing he checked? ;)
Being a systems admin myself that question was curiosity, not ignorance.

User avatar
RubberToe
Award Winner 13
Award Winner 13
Posts: 3743
Joined: Mon Mar 14, 2011 9:47 am
Name: Rob
Location: Dartmouth
Contact:

Re: Is the site acting odd

Post by RubberToe » Sun Nov 02, 2014 11:43 am

Hah actually guys I didn't bother with the logs, I doubt they'd be helpful but I should just for due dilligence.

Aaron, I disabled the shot off thing when they enabled it. Also the dashboard said it was running. I did go from monthly to one-time earlier in the month.

At any rate, for what it costs us I don't expect a perfect host, nor is this a mission critical application. I do semi regular backups in case things go sideways. There's a few items on my todo list such as actually scheduling the backups and monitoring the system.
Electric Brewery Build
On tap at RubberToe's:
Sometimes on a Sunday Belgian Dubbel, Oaked Old Ale, Ordinary Bitter

User avatar
Keith
Award Winner 6
Award Winner 6
Posts: 6479
Joined: Mon Sep 02, 2013 3:55 pm
Name: Keith
Location: Lower Sackville, NS

Re: Is the site acting odd

Post by Keith » Sun Nov 02, 2014 11:46 am

Rob,
Let me know if I can help. Maybe a few of us could get a support structure in place so it's not just on you.
Brewer, Owner & Operator @ Ol' Biddy's Brew House
:cheers2:

User avatar
jeffsmith
Verified User
Verified User
Posts: 4922
Joined: Tue Apr 26, 2011 4:18 pm
Name: Jeff Smith
Location: Amherst, NS
Contact:

Re: Is the site acting odd

Post by jeffsmith » Sun Nov 02, 2014 11:49 am

RubberToe wrote:Hah actually guys I didn't bother with the logs, I doubt they'd be helpful but I should just for due dilligence.

Aaron, I disabled the shot off thing when they enabled it. Also the dashboard said it was running. I did go from monthly to one-time earlier in the month.

At any rate, for what it costs us I don't expect a perfect host, nor is this a mission critical application. I do semi regular backups in case things go sideways. There's a few items on my todo list such as actually scheduling the backups and monitoring the system.
I've got a pretty solid shell script that I use for doing daily backups from my servers to an Amazon S3 account. I'll send it along to you when I'm back at my desk for work tomorrow.

User avatar
RubberToe
Award Winner 13
Award Winner 13
Posts: 3743
Joined: Mon Mar 14, 2011 9:47 am
Name: Rob
Location: Dartmouth
Contact:

Re: Is the site acting odd

Post by RubberToe » Sun Nov 02, 2014 11:51 am

Already scripted db dumps and rsync to another host. :)

Just some minor tweaks and crontab entry.
Electric Brewery Build
On tap at RubberToe's:
Sometimes on a Sunday Belgian Dubbel, Oaked Old Ale, Ordinary Bitter

User avatar
jeffsmith
Verified User
Verified User
Posts: 4922
Joined: Tue Apr 26, 2011 4:18 pm
Name: Jeff Smith
Location: Amherst, NS
Contact:

Re: Is the site acting odd

Post by jeffsmith » Sun Nov 02, 2014 12:07 pm

Gotcha, perfect.

User avatar
mumblecrunch
Award Winner 2
Award Winner 2
Posts: 1197
Joined: Sun Oct 06, 2013 7:01 pm
Name: Aaron
Location: Halifax

Re: Is the site acting odd

Post by mumblecrunch » Sun Nov 02, 2014 12:07 pm

jeffsmith wrote:
mumblecrunch wrote:
jeffsmith wrote:Anything in the server logs that might indicate why?
You don't figure that would have been the first thing he checked? ;)
Being a systems admin myself that question was curiosity, not ignorance.
And if I hadn't had pretty much exactly the same problem once before with this host it's the first question I would have asked too, hence the wink. Also, he didn't check the logs after all, so...uh...yeah :shifty: :D
RubberToe wrote:Aaron, I disabled the shot off thing when they enabled it. Also the dashboard said it was running. I did go from monthly to one-time earlier in the month.
Just making sure you were aware they re-enable the 10-day thing when you change your package (not sure about switching from monthly to one-time because theoretically that's just billing and there's no reprovisioning there). Also that's exactly what happened to me: dashboard said "up," all real-life experience said, "not up."
RubberToe wrote:At any rate, for what it costs us I don't expect a perfect host, nor is this a mission critical application. I do semi regular backups in case things go sideways. There's a few items on my todo list such as actually scheduling the backups and monitoring the system.
For what it's worth I have a couple places where I could run a Nagios (or whatever) agent if you wanted redundant monitoring, but knowing you have another CaC box yourself and having seen the rack in your basement I suspect you have it covered :D It'd be cool if the monitoring could, say, send a tweet to the Brewnosers Twitter in the case of an outage like last night so that folks have a way of knowing it's not just them and the site is actually having some issues.

User avatar
jeffsmith
Verified User
Verified User
Posts: 4922
Joined: Tue Apr 26, 2011 4:18 pm
Name: Jeff Smith
Location: Amherst, NS
Contact:

Is the site acting odd

Post by jeffsmith » Sun Nov 02, 2014 12:12 pm

I use Uptime Robot for simple monitoring. It's free and gives you the ability to send a text or email to multiple people in the event of an outage.

It's definitely not a perfect solution (will sometimes give false positives) but works pretty well for the most part.

Post Reply

Return to “Site Discussion”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 17 guests