A week of problems with EuroVPS

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Posted by rgsuk, 08-05-2005, 06:55 AM
Last Friday my shared hosting service was one of those hit by the denial of service attack at EuroVPS. With the result that I experienced the most downtime I have had for more than two years. I had only been a EuroVPS customer for five weeks and ended up spending many hours last weekend trying to resolve the problems. But I thought, fair enough, it was beyond their control. My income comes from about three websites. One of which has never been at EuroVPS and one of which I moved back to the old hosting elsewhere last weekend which, fortunately, I had kept going as a back up. To complicate matters I am temporarily on dial up while I wait for ADSL to be installed. With sites that are 150Mb+, it took me five hours of uploading just to bring one site back up to date from where I had left it on the old server five weeks ago. Over the last week, on the EuroVPS hosting I have had increasing problems with 404's, pages timing-out, images partially-loading, CGI scripts failing... At first I thought this could be by dial up connection. But no, friends on broadband told me they were also getting pages hanging and 404s. So last night I talked with EuroVPS, they said they had just closed a site that was using too many resources and they moved all my content (about 400Mb) to a different server with Plesk, promising no downtime, as both servers would remain up. I changed the DNS. I woke up to find only one out of about 20 sites is up ('could not locate remote server' on the others) and it has remained that way all morning. I don't know what the problem is. I don't know Plesk well. The domains are there in Plesk. Should the content for each site be in /subdomains/whatever/httpdocs ? If so, I get a permissions error in ftp when I try to access that folder. Almost two hours after putting in a ticket to support and asking them to contact me on ICQ, I am still waiting. Two other people on shared hosting have told me they have had similar problems with sluggish service this week. This is turning into my worst-ever hosting experience in 8 years in this business. I should be working on content. Another morning wasted. I am getting *absolutely desperate* to get things back to normal and I am an hour from switching the DNS for all my sites away somewhere else.
Posted by anon-e-mouse, 08-05-2005, 07:09 AM
Moved to VPS Forum.
Posted by EuroVPS, 08-05-2005, 07:14 AM
We will respond to this shortly in detail, with details. *BTW this is not a VPS customer, it's a cPanel Reseller account with 20 odd subdomains,
Posted by ldcdc, 08-05-2005, 08:52 AM
Moved to the Reseller Hosting forum then. The name of your company can cause some confusion.
Posted by rgsuk, 08-05-2005, 12:03 PM
My site was originally standard shared hosting. Whether it is now reseller after being moved to Plesk. I don't know. They contacted me a few minutes after I posted on here. I was told they no longer want me as a customer due to me posting on here. I didn't ask for a refund. They have refunded everything I have paid, plus quite a bit more if I would go away and cease being a customer. My sites are all down except for one and it now looks like they will be down until the DNS change goes through as I have been unable to get them up on EuroVPS. I have had to scrap all my plans for today and instead have worked solidly for seven hours now on a 56k dial up connection to get content back in place on my previous hosting, change DNS, scripts and email. I really don't know what to say about this. I feel bruised and disturbed by the whole experience. I have had some friendly chats with the guys there. But, at the end of the day, this is my longterm business and the last week has not been acceptable. It is not a question of money. It is about my sites being up.
Posted by EuroVPS, 08-05-2005, 12:05 PM
Greetings, As stated earlier, this is my response. If Vasili wishes to respond in the future to this customer, that will be his choice (he spoke with him via ICQ), although I doubt he will. This week server 83.149.123.100/110 which hosts cPanel shared customers experienced a DOS attack. In attempting to slow this attack we installed dos_evasive as well as several other counter-measures meant solely at keeping sites up. We also increased max clients in httpd.conf, as well as several other settings with one goal: Site uptime. This apparently created issues as several customers' sites are extremely popular, and even this server with 4 Xeon processors and 4GB physical RAM could not deal with the added maxclients settings. In addition to this, we had customers (yes, customers) trying to hack the box through a series of nice /tmp hacks, all in a week's time. In any event, to keep this professional, I will state that as EuroVPS does care about our customers, we are all in the datacenter today in SBP adding servers. Our action today to resolve this specific problem of 404's etc is to add: IBM xSeries 350 Quad Intel Xeon Processors 2GB Physical RAM 6 x 73GB Ultra320 SCSI RAID 5EE CentOS 4.1 / WHM.cPanel We will migrate cPanel/WHM Shared customers off of the affected machine and onto this new server over the weekend, beginning tonight. Unlike some hosts that will sit idle in face of damages to servers & configurations, we acted proactively on Monday by ordering additional servers to be shipped to the datacenter. We are installing this server & storage array now, as I write this. I know that this is a demanding industry, and keeping our customers as well as potential customers advised of our intentions & actions is of paramount importance. We will have to probably bring the existing 83.149.123.110 server down and reformat it, as the /tmp hacks brought this to an entirely new level this week. Now, in the future, it is important to realize that a company as large as ours has dozens of shared servers, and it is extremely possible that 1 server can have tremendous problems thanks to DDOS or hacks, this can happen (and has happened) to many companies. The action is what counts. We have added a fresh IBM xSeries cPanel server. We will be working with affected customers to move them off the existing machine and onto the new box beginning in one to two hours. Further inquiries can be directed to me directly, posted on this forum, or whatever you prefer. Igor -- As I see that the individual has responded, we do not wish to host his sites any longer. He was given a full refund of 100.00 Euros. I believe his initial payment of 9.95 was not refunded, however that will be handled by Billing shortly. We recommend that he transfer to another provider more willing to work with him. We have chosen not to work with him for reasons which we CANNOT go into due to our privacy policy.
Posted by rgsuk, 08-05-2005, 12:12 PM
Fine words but I have had the most down time since I first became a webmaster in 1996/97. That is the bottom line. I would ask why my low-traffic sites were put onto a server which couldn't cope? Wasn't the dos bad enough for customers? E-V ADMIN: I see that you are fighting with Igor on the forums Geoff g7uk: I feel fed up E-V ADMIN: Well we're done dealing with you Geoff g7uk: seven hours here wasted E-V ADMIN: Please find another provider E-V ADMIN: And do not contact us again Oh and I'm now also being called a liar in private chat. I signed up for CPanel hosting. I assumed there would be some basic help getting me back up as they moved me onto Plesk, which I had never used. I asked EuroVPS about five times this morning where the content was in FTP as the folders I suspected it was in were permission denied. I never got an answer. I asked on here too. The sites are down as far as I am concerned and I am unable to get in with FTP. Don'tbe fooled by the comment about the privacy policy. There is no big sinister reason why they don't want to host me anymore. They just don't want to sort out the problem, they are tired of my fully-justified complaints about my service being unacceptable for the last week and I am just a 11 euro pm customer. Last edited by rgsuk; 08-05-2005 at 12:25 PM.
Posted by EuroVPS, 08-05-2005, 12:29 PM
And total disk used, since all the data is not there.. We are sorry that our relationship did not work out.
Posted by rgsuk, 08-05-2005, 12:37 PM
Except for one, the sites on EuroVps have been down all day. I have no idea why they are down. I never used Plesk before and my questions in the ICQ chat this morning were not answered. Vasili just ignored them because he got into such a rage. Vasili transferred all the content from one server to another last night as there was no way I could transfer almost 400Mb of content on a dial up connection. The content should all be there. I have no idea what that data you have posted shows. I could not find any folder on FTP that I could get into which showed the content for my add-on domains. I have two different shared IP addresses and an individual IP, I have two different passwords, the individual IP address I paid for was not added to the plesk server for reasons connected with your work in the data centre. I am not a hosting expert. I am an ordinary person who runs websites on shared hosting. Normally I wouldn't expect help with learning how to use Plesk or whatever. I would sit down and learn. However I have just been dumped into that situation today, with sites not working. Last night Vasili assured me there would be no downtime. I wake up and almost all sites are not working. How can you all be in the datacentre with no one on support? Despite that, I notice there is always someone to reply on this forum which, frankly, is one of the reason I posted on here after waiting two hourswithout a response from support. Within a couple of minutes of posting on here lo-and-behold Vasili ICQs me... Last edited by rgsuk; 08-05-2005 at 12:45 PM.
Posted by EuroVPS, 08-05-2005, 12:42 PM
Greetings WHT: Why did you not just switch the nameservers back to the cPanel machine, since you're having trouble configuring your subdomains on the Plesk server? Please be advised, that we are under absolutely no obligation to be forced to host your sites. I personally do not wish to host your sites, I find them offensive and absolutely unworthy of hosting on my disk space. Please find another host. You can use some of the 100.00 extra that was given to you, to have another host transfer the data for you such that you are not stuck doing it manually. Of course then, you will have the added "issue" of the host actually seeing the data being transferred. Good day. Igor
Posted by rgsuk, 08-05-2005, 12:47 PM
Disgusting remarks. You host adult sites. My content is all 100% legal. What is your problem? I think the word you are actually looking for Igor is 'homophobia', as a lot of content is gay. That doesn't embarrass me. I am openly gay and I run mainstream gay-themed sites and gay adult sites and general mainstream sites. Vasili told me legal adult content was perfectly OK. I was most careful to ask before I signed up and I have the email to prove it. Please keep your remarks about my content to yourself. I don't care what you think. It has taken me several hours to change the nameservers on all the domains etc using 56k dial up. Should I change the nameservers back to your sluggish Cpanel hosting after Vasili has closed my account? Or should I change them to my old hosting company? Hmmm tough one... Last edited by rgsuk; 08-05-2005 at 01:00 PM.
Posted by EuroVPS, 08-05-2005, 12:55 PM
You have been given your refund + 100.00 for your time and trouble. Please find another host, I believe there is a Host Quote feature which you can use. I am sure dozens are lining up right now happy to have you as a customer. We are done responding to this thread.
Posted by rgsuk, 08-05-2005, 01:05 PM
Fortunately I kept my other hosting in case you let me down. A customer with constant relatively low traffic, who uses a fraction of his disc space and bandwidth allowance, who pays within a few minutes of the invoice arriving. Yes these days many companies would be glad of a customer like that and would do everything to keep him. I was foolish enough to move from my previous host because I was tempted by the extra and cheaper bandwith and disc space. I was a fool. Last edited by rgsuk; 08-05-2005 at 01:10 PM.
Posted by n1z, 08-05-2005, 01:10 PM
Id like to pickup on your comments about waiting for support for a long time via the ticket system and ICQ. I didn't actually know there was an ICQ support option available, so I cannot comment on this, but we have been with EuroVPS for a good amount of months, there have been the odd problems, but isn't there always with any hosting company. The difference being with EuroVPS is that they have the best support I have come across. No matter what time of the day I get extremely fast support and the guys, which I assume are European too speak very good English and are able to understand you well. And what I am most impressed about is their level of politeness and the way that they will work for you, and in most cases exceed your expectations. So I think it is unfair to comment on slow support from them in this way. As with these DDoS attacks, I thankfully was unaffected, but as you can see they did install measure to prevent as many sites being down as possible, and this is one thing they are good at! We have had a few limits raised because we kept hitting them, and at no charge because they know a happy customer is a loyal one.
Posted by rgsuk, 08-05-2005, 01:15 PM
n1z, yes under normal circumstances. These were not exactly normal circumstances. A week of problems and almost all sites completely down today after being promised no downtime if I moved to the plesk server last night. I have lost two working days this week due to the DOS and then having been put on an overloaded server and finally having to drop everything today and move because Vasili throws a fit because I dare to post on here. I was called a liar on ICQ and my account was closed because I posted my message on here. Last edited by rgsuk; 08-05-2005 at 01:20 PM.
Posted by EuroVPS, 08-05-2005, 01:18 PM
Overloaded? Sorry, I had to respond to that. Don't post things that are not true.
Posted by n1z, 08-05-2005, 01:23 PM
Well as they say: The customer is always right. And as I am the only customer here, I guess I am right From reading the posts it does seem as if the guys did what was required, and as a server was being DDoS'd it could be that maybe the guys were busy with that and you were impaitent to get what you wanted.
Posted by rgsuk, 08-05-2005, 01:40 PM
Some quotes from the ICQ chat last night. Proving that you did have an overloaded server and it is you who is not telling the truth: (00:26:20) E-V ADMIN: We had a sight www.xxxxxx*********** on this server, we just suspended it (00:26:22) E-V ADMIN: maybe an hour ago ... (00:28:29) E-V ADMIN: But we did just suspend a site not even 2 houurs ago that was overloading this server ... (00:30:48) E-V ADMIN: Every customer on this certain server has been affected sir. ... (00:32:11) E-V ADMIN: I have offered to move your sites to another completely peaceful server which hosts no aggressive sites ... (00:34:21) E-V ADMIN: Yes, you need to realize that one bad site can cause this (00:34:30) E-V ADMIN: One bad site, can be the cause of an entire shared server having issues Last edited by rgsuk; 08-05-2005 at 01:48 PM.
Posted by n1z, 08-05-2005, 01:44 PM

Posted by rgsuk, 08-05-2005, 01:45 PM
The DOS was a week ago. The problem was that, after that, I was then apparently sharing a server with some high traffic sites which were having an extremely negative impact on anyone who tried to access my pages.
Posted by rgsuk, 08-05-2005, 01:48 PM
No offence n1z, but I don't think you have quite grasped all the details. I was only moved to the quiet server at about 3am this morning. The plesk server which I have mentioned and the one on which almost all the sites were down when I woke this morning.
Posted by dkitchen, 08-05-2005, 02:07 PM
It's a shame to see you seem to have been caught up in such a series of unfortunate event. I was majorly involved in trying to migitate the massive DDoS EuroVPS suffered last week, personally I'd say you were lucky to be with a host that had such good servers, had this been anyone else with a P4 3Ghz and 1GB of RAM, the server wouldn't have even survived, this was a massive attack. Time to move on, EuroVPS don't wish to do business with you anymore. Nor do they have to give you your data, if you really cared that much you should have your own backups.
Posted by rgsuk, 08-05-2005, 02:21 PM
I think you got the wrong end of the stick there. I do have full completely up-to-date back ups and always do. Like I said this is a business for me and I approach it in a professional manner. I also had my old hosting service as back up, with mirrors of the two main sites, which I had brought right up to date after the DOS last weekend. So I didn't even need to upload everything there today. Don't worry I am not asking EuroVPS to continue hosting me. You must be kidding. I just hoped things could be smoothed over as I don't like falling out with people. But when someone starts using the word 'liar' on ICQ that becomes rather difficult. Last edited by rgsuk; 08-05-2005 at 02:34 PM.
Posted by Sting13, 08-05-2005, 06:31 PM
I don't exactly know what all of the fuss is about. Like come on, if he doesn't feel confortable with the content of your site, he doesn't have to host you. This all seems pointless to me because even though he decided not to host you, you still got your money back so what are you guys argueing about?
Posted by rgsuk, 08-05-2005, 06:56 PM
They are based in Amsterdam, they offer adult hosting and I made clear before I signed up that some of my content was adult. I asked. That was the time for any objection and for them to decline to host it. The email reply I had from them said quite the opposite. They hosted it quite happily for five weeks. I am not trying to host gay adult content on hosting that doesn't allow it. I was and am completely open about my sites. That comment here was about trying to embarrass and belittle me on this forum, nothing else. It failed because, unfortunately for them, I am not ashamed either of being gay nor of being the webmaster of gay/adult sites. Last edited by rgsuk; 08-05-2005 at 07:06 PM.
Posted by Sting13, 08-05-2005, 07:05 PM
Well, i don't think he was trying to embarrass you. Maybe you didn't clearify what degree of "gay" it was going to be? All i think is you should drop it, its making you look bad and other people may not want to host you if you keep it up. He doesn't want to host you, you got your money back now just drop it, you are dragging a topic on and on. You got your money back PLUS FREE MONEY, THEY GAVE YOU 100 BUCKS FOR WHAT, FOR FREE? Last edited by Sting13; 08-05-2005 at 07:09 PM.
Posted by rgsuk, 08-05-2005, 07:12 PM
Adult content is adult content. They said adult content was fine. My sites are not particularly extreme. It is the sort of stuff that is all legally available in the UK. I'm not clear on the laws in Holland but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was illegal to discriminate and host straight but not ga. It isn't making me look bad. Sorry if the discussion of anything gay makes you uncomfotable. I just worked 14 hours for no reason moving stuff. That is money for free? I don't know how much you earn per hour? I had a video to edit this afternoon. Yes lets end it. If people would stop making incorrect comments, implying I didn't have back ups etc. I wouldn't have kept replying. Last edited by rgsuk; 08-05-2005 at 07:16 PM.
Posted by Sting13, 08-05-2005, 07:39 PM
Hmmm i think its time to request this topic to be closed? its getting a bit too personal.

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