Kicked out by Hostgator

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Posted by mtbl34c, 05-24-2005, 11:08 AM
Hostgator suspended my account yesterday, they said I used too much resources. After I check the log which was downloaded to my pc 10 days ago, I estimated the average total visitors of website are no more than 2000/day. I remember I checked my bandwidth yesterday before they did that, this month's bandwidth used is less than 1G/day. Hostgator said I used more than 20% of server load, but because I couldn't login after been suspended to see the actually server load, I can't verify that. There are no forum in my website, I wrote all the php by myself, it's database driven website, I believe they are very simple php. No more than 3-4 sql query per page. After hostgator called me and asked me to move to a dedicated server, I said I would move my website last night or this morning. However after I finished the phone, I found my account was already suspened, can't access through cpanel or ftp. Very funny, hostgator asked me to download my backup files, but I have no way to download them. After several emails, finally could download my files, but my websites have been down for 8 hours, and I am still recovering one domain. I was using hostgator baby plan,5G disk, 75G bandwidth, 9.95/month, do I have to use a dedicated server to support 2000 visitors/day ? The only choice hostgator staff mentioned in phone is dedicated server, does that mean their swamp plan(100G bandwidth) or semi dedicated plan (500 G bandwidth) also can't support the resources I am using? I moved my main website which receiving 1500 visitors/day from lunarpages to hostgator because the plan in lunarpages only allow me to use 40G/month, but they never told me I used too much resources, and the server load I see there is often very low. The server I am with hostgator is very slow, they must have put in lots of accounts. You can see my previous post: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showth...hreadid=403282 Hostgator is very unprofessional , if you want a reliable hosting company to sustain your website's growth, don't use them!
Posted by psykik, 05-24-2005, 12:52 PM
bandwidth and visitors per day have little to do with server load... or at least in your case... you say you have written all your scripts yourself have you tested them fully on a local host to see what they consume ?
Posted by Aurelian, 05-24-2005, 01:07 PM
well anyway you cant just suspend an account and tell him to buy dedicated. They could have investigated at least and tell him what exactly was causing the server load. I believe they know how to do that right? suPHP might help though.
Posted by adam, 05-24-2005, 01:20 PM
I guess you have not been in this business long. When a site is causing high server loads and degrading the performance of the other sites on the server then yes you can suspend the site right away.
Posted by psykik, 05-24-2005, 01:22 PM
I know it sucsk and it's hard to digest but I'm afraid adam is right
Posted by Aurelian, 05-24-2005, 01:27 PM
true adam. But shouldnt they give him some explications? Im not familiar with that cause either though.
Posted by coight, 05-24-2005, 02:22 PM
You don't need a lot of visitors to overload a server, one poorly written script and one visitor can make it overload.
Posted by mtbl34c, 05-24-2005, 03:23 PM
coight , I agree with that, one poorly written script could crash the server however in my case I have moved the websites out and split them into two hosting, site5.com and hostingzoom.com current server load: site5 Server Load 0.49 (4 cpus) Memory Used 19 % hostingzoom Server Load 0.29 (4 cpus) Memory Used 18.1 % If my script is not good, shouldn't they consume lots of resources on the new server? why the server load are so low now?
Posted by BrentOfHG, 05-24-2005, 04:14 PM
As I told you on the phone your shopping cart had 100's of open sql connections. The server load went very high 60+ I logged in to investigate and saw your database slamming sql with 100's of connections. I told you everything including the shopping cart and the site with the problem. I do find it a little bit odd we determined your site to be the problem without even remembering you were the one complaining about intermittent issues. This leads me to believe the slowness may be brought on by some type of action you were doing each time? Maybe some type of update? The reason I say this is because most people would not notice slowness that only lasts a few minutes every day nor would they complain unless of course the slowness occurred every time they tried doing something on the box. It would be very hypocritical to criticize us for correcting the problem on the server when that is what you wanted us to do to begin with. I hope you can respect us for our decision and wish you the best of luck with your new host.
Posted by 2Grumpy, 05-24-2005, 04:55 PM
Bad code leaving stale mysql's open are bad, here's a couple hints that you may find helpful: set-variable = wait_timeout=60 set-variable = max_user_connections=40 The go into your typical /etc/my.cnf First one says "kill any connection after 60 seconds idle time" (or is it 60 seconds period, either way works good for me) Second one says "no more than 40 mysql connections per user", I have this set to 20 on some servers, but once in a blue moon 20 isn't enough and it really isn't the customer's fault but I've yet to see 40 not suffice. I prefer to try and help someone fix their problem, even if it is their problem, than running off a customer, but sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do I know.
Posted by < ! --, 05-24-2005, 06:06 PM
Isn't this the very thing (scam) hostgator warns its prospective customers to beware of from other hosting companies? -- i just looked. they warn against companies offering UNLIMITED stuff, not actually kicking you for cpu usage. my mistake. they still could have given you a few mins to grab your stuff but maybe other ppl were complaining and they had to terminate quickly? in any case, what's going on with your new hosting? have they found anything wrong with your sites/code? have you changed anything; what was the effect? -- >
Posted by BrentOfHG, 05-24-2005, 06:21 PM
We did not terminate the site. We called to discuss the problem within a few minutes of it crashing the server. We told the site owner he would need semi or dedicated server for the site with the issue. It appears he knows what the problem was so perhaps he can shed some light on what was being done each time the server slowed. If a problem is fixed we are happy to turn an account back on, if we are positive it will not happen again. We cannot turn a site back on that is having coding problems / crashing the server intermittently.
Posted by firestarter, 05-24-2005, 06:29 PM
As soon as the server load goes high the instinct of the server admins drive him to stop the causing element. In the process to stabilize the server, sometime he need to suspend the account and investigate the codes on that very account to see if that was a real threat or not. As Dixiesys has said, sometime a proper tweaking on the daemon fixes the issue. If we think from the client perpective, he may loose valuable bizness if a important site is suspended without prior notice. Both the Client and the Host can suffer in the situation. I wish, here we may get some valued sugestions or procedures that can avert the situations that both the host and the clients suffers.
Posted by mtbl34c, 05-24-2005, 07:20 PM
honestly I don't know what was going on, and after check some php today, I found I didn't use $Conn->close in some phps, would this cause many mysql connections, could be, but I thought php would reuse the connections. hostgator, can you compare the server load before I was kicked out and now? when you guys called, and told me my website cause high server load, I have no reason not to believe you since you are the people who really monitor the server, so I decided to move out of hostgator last night, however before I was able to check what was wrong and download my files, my accout was suspended and I couldn't even login in , this is the main point why I am not happy about your service, that's why I said you are not professional. Dixiesys gave an example about how to solve the mysql connection problems, I hope that works for you. what if my php is ok, but I really got a lot of traffic, will you still suspend the account no matter how import the website to the customer?
Posted by mr_wuss, 05-24-2005, 08:41 PM
They said it had nothing to do with the amount of traffic, but it was causing the server to crash. This was due to the high load you were putting on the mysql via open connections. what more of an explination do you want?
Posted by foxmen, 05-24-2005, 09:10 PM
Hi, One question for hostgator, I am a hostgator client ( reseller ) , at this moment i don`t have any problems with you... i am very happy... Question, If ONE domain/ client ( my client ) crash the server / high load etc etc What do you do? Suspend website client ? Suspend my reseller account ? and all domain in my account ? i can download backup after issues ? thanks foxmen
Posted by 01globalnet, 05-24-2005, 09:57 PM
Hi foxmen, I am a HG reseller too. I believe they just suspend the client's website.
Posted by BrentOfHG, 05-24-2005, 10:33 PM
set-variable = wait_timeout=60 our boxes are set below 60 set-variable = max_user_connections=40 if it was set to 40 and your site used hundreds mysql would not work for anyone on the server. (this would not be solving anything since sites would still go off-line) I asked our head sys admin if he remembers anything regarding your site and he says he remembers it flooding out apache on multiple occasions from different ips each time. (on each occasion, he blocked them) It is possible your site was under attack seconds before I suspended it. The server was so slow from the high load ssh did not let me in until after suspending and restarting a few services. I went to sql usage and saw hundreds of queries from within the whm. Based on the amount of connections I concluded your site was the cause of the high load so it was suspended and I called you. In our business 1 hour of downtime a month is too much and you will lose customers. If you determine a customer to be causing a lot of down time whether it is from attacks, legit traffic, poor coding or other you need to sometimes make a decision to boot them from a shared environment. We always offer a more dedicated hosting solution in these cases but due to pricing, they are not always a viable solution to the customer. This is the most information I will be able to provide you. If you have any more questions please e-mail me.
Posted by BrentOfHG, 05-25-2005, 12:53 AM
We usually move the site to a tmp server without suspending for one week. In extreme cases we will suspend just the problem site and a full backup will be provided upon request. They will remain suspended until the problem is solved or the reseller terminates the site.
Posted by coight, 05-25-2005, 01:00 AM
I would suggest you read the variable information in the mysql documentation. As Gary said earlier, setting the above variable will limit the USER to 40 connections, it's not a serverwide setting The server wide variable is: set-variable = max_connections
Posted by mtbl34c, 05-25-2005, 02:29 AM
This is what I am hoping for , if you could do this, I won't not have to disclose my terrible experiences in public forum
Posted by < ! --, 05-25-2005, 09:29 AM
Well you stopped it from doing whatever it was doing. That's what I meant. That is was necessary for you to do right then, because the server was crashing and it's a shared environment. Act now, talk later I think this is a very decent way of handling things. Knowing this, I definitely feel more confident about going with HG sometime in the future. -- >
Posted by foxmen, 05-25-2005, 12:01 PM
Thanks HG, i am very good for this explanation !!! In several "post" in WHT read: HG terminate my account without talk with me ... etc etc etc i can`t download my files... etc etc
Posted by Jag, 06-03-2005, 07:45 PM
Im impressed you can recall a specific phone conversation from someone you ran into on wht. Im not being sarcastic, you must have the mind of an elephant. I on the other hand dont remember writing this post ....hehe
Posted by lynette11, 06-21-2005, 08:54 AM
Hey, I was in the same situation with Hostgator several weeks ago and was getting the same blurred signals from them. They didn't like two of my sites and moved them to dedicated servers as they were apparently using too much cpu/ram, or so they say. I moved my 20 + accounts to a new host. Strange. My new host reports no problems with the websites that Hostgator had issues with and says that their resource usage is low. So, what is happening here? I go along with the popular consensus that Hostgator are jamming too many accounts onto a server and look out if one of your sites has the potential to use up some resources at a later date. Sounds like a hosting company in its death throes. Just do a WHT search on Hostgator and you will understand what I am talking about. Lyn
Posted by jmweb, 06-22-2005, 11:17 AM
The thing about shared hosting is that it is exactly that. Shared amoungest other users. So if Hostgator has for example 100 users per server then that server is shared by the 100 users. All using the same processor, same memory, same o/s, same mysql software. When 1 of them users has a script that is causing issues to the server, it affects every user on the server. For instance, the downtime caused by your script, it would not just but your site that is down. It would be other shared users website as well. Other people's website would be down simply because of your script. Now reverse the situation. Say your another customer and their script caused the server to go down on a regular basis. Would you be willing to wait for an hour of intermetient (one minute your website works, next it doesn't) service while the person who developed the script figure's out what was wrong with it? Then add in the possibility that this takes more then an hour to resolve. As another customer, what would you want? The other site suspended and then the issues stop while the problem customer tries to figure out what is wrong, or would you want your website having issues just so the other account can stay enabled? To us, problem scripts are the big reason for any downtime we've ever had. On our test server (that no clients were on) I caused the server to crash within a minute. I didn't even have to bring up the website. I setup a cron job. Therefore, in this example it took 1 minute for a script to bring down a server without anyone actually visiting the website. I hope you understand whats happening a bit more, as well as anyone else reading this.
Posted by Interkey JeffG, 06-23-2005, 09:10 AM
You may want to consider using PAM to provide soft or hard limits on each of your hosting users so no one user can use this much CPU if it presents this much of an issue to you. On Red Hat/CentOS systems, the configuration file is located in /etc/security/limits.conf; I'm unsure about other Linuxes or the BSDs. Presumably, in the interests of security, you are running scripts through some form of suexec, right?
Posted by michael09091, 06-23-2005, 12:14 PM
I agree with Hostgater on this one. It does not seem fair to the other customers on the same server who might be suffering because this. I dont think its the hosts responsibility to insure your code is written properly.
Posted by Restriction, 06-24-2005, 07:12 AM
Hostgater is entirally in the right in my opinion.
Posted by kuja, 06-24-2005, 12:45 PM
In any case, suspending an account, explaning to the client the problem through a phone discussion, was entirely the moral and necessary thing for the host to do. To me this sounds like a standard procedure (any contact method perhaps would suffice). The client may have bad/vulnerable code and other clients shouldn't be victim to this.
Posted by tenfourstudios, 06-24-2005, 02:43 PM
I also have to agree HostGator didn't do anything wrong here. They have other customers to worry about and I'm sure you agreed to some type of TOS that mentioned this.
Posted by swflnetworks, 06-25-2005, 09:41 AM
Yeah! We all know about how you whined and complained. Seems to me like all you do on this forum anymore is Seek and Destroy all topics related to HostGator! You need to order a big plate of humble-pie.
Posted by layer0, 06-25-2005, 10:05 AM
Lyn, Just quit it with bashing HostGator as that is all you seem to do on this message board. Thanks,
Posted by lynette11, 06-25-2005, 10:12 AM
Hey Screaming Eagle, I don't need to eat humble pie...I am humble pie. Now, for a taste of pudding for all you Hostgator goody two shoes, why don't you go to the last Hostgator thread and read slowly. If not clear on how bad Hostgator is, read slowly again and you will understand. Just in case, you missed my whining, ask yourself after the bagging I gave Hostgator, why the following happened: 1. My visa account was deducted after the account was cancelled. Amazing that this would happened after the dumping they got. Their excuse...I didn't give the right password on the cancellation form...absolute buff. 2. When another excuse was brought to my attention about the account cancellation was that my hosting account was still pointing to Hostgator. Yeah...it was. Do you really want to know why. When I joined Hostgator, they put the registration of the domain name in their name instead of mine. Now, why would they do that. They went quiet after that one and called for a moderator. 3. Check the professionalism of their cancellation procedure. I posted the emails for all to see. 4. To do the right thing with my new host, I ate humble pie and advised him of the Hostgator mess and asked him to monitor the two sites in question as they are on a shared server. Guess what, it is now the 25th of June, (they were transferred on the 8th of June, by my caculations Screaming Eagle that is 17 days) and the two sites in question are functioning beautifully. Not any downtime or any high demand on cpu/ram that was used as an excuse by Hostgator. Screaming Eagle I can go on for ages, but I was prepared to give Brent a rest. I have noticed that several thousand wht members have viewed the threads. It is very hard to buy that much bad publicity in one go. Now, you keep perpetuating the disaster for him by accusing me of whining. Screaming Eagle, I have only been dealing in facts here on WHT. You interprate this as whining. I will let the silent lookers in these threads judge these facts carefully when they next have to consider a new host. Isn't this why WHT was created. An update to the Visa Card unauthorised deduction. Brent of Hostgator has advised me that the amount has been posted to my Visa Card. I shall check on Monday. I'm waiting to see what Hostgator do with the transfer back to my name of trubluhosting.com (check the 'whois' to see who's name it is registered in). Thank you Screaming Eagle...I rest my case. Lyn
Posted by vaisg, 06-25-2005, 10:14 AM
Seems to be it is always the client's fault for their server's load problem. Why don't hostgator just admit that they are overloading their own servers by putting too many clients on a single machine. For the pass few months, it is always hostgator terminating their client's account because "THEY USE TOO MUCH RESOURCES", and it is ALWAYS THE CLIENT"S FAULT. GET REAL!
Posted by layer0, 06-25-2005, 10:17 AM
It's actually quite common but, lots of sites use a ton of resources considering the price that they pay. Thanks,
Posted by swflnetworks, 06-25-2005, 10:27 AM
1. I've been a repeat customer with both hostgator and hostingzoom. BOTH very good companies 2. Maybe I shouldn't have said whining.. I should have said, by definition from websters dictionary, HARRASSING! 3. You ever stop to think maybe you DID give the wrong password at the cancelation page? 4. Many many many hosts order domain names in their name and are in ownership of those domains, and will usually give the domain to the owner when or if they move. That's NOT uncommon at all. It's actually, in most host's cases, labelled in one of their legal pages. All I am saying is you've made your point. Over and over and over and over again! Give it a freakin rest and stop going on your damned "Bashing Tour". You're making yourself look rediculous.
Posted by lynette11, 06-25-2005, 10:50 AM
Thank you Screaming Eagle for your wisdom. For the record. I entered this thread because of you and several others attacking the thread creater because he dared to make a stand against Hostgator. I made a comment in this thread because you accused me of whining. I am pleased in certain that you are with Hostgator. I will sit back and relish any problems that you will have. I also thank WHT for the opportunity to have my say. That is why I have dealt with facts and not seen as trashing threads without anything positive to say or contribute. Your contribution Screaming Eagle is to trash comments. One must question the motive behind your puritanical approach. At the risk of repeating myself, you are perpetuating this problem for Hostgator yourself by accusing us aggrieved former account holders of attacking Hostgator for no reason. Did you really read my point on how I got my new host to monitor the two sites in question. Screaming Eagle, I didn't get him to do this so that I could bash Hostgator, I did it in fairness to him incase Hostgator were correct. As it turned out...they weren't. Lyn Last edited by lynette11; 06-25-2005 at 11:02 AM.
Posted by swflnetworks, 06-25-2005, 12:52 PM
Whatever floats your boat.
Posted by Billiam Gates, 06-25-2005, 01:41 PM
you broke down server, they kick out. sounds very, very good to me. Billiam
Posted by 2Grumpy, 06-25-2005, 02:02 PM
That's a pretty poor customer service attitude there, I'm sure you'd be real appreciative if your forum/etc got popular and your host "kick out" you rather than working with you to make sure you're happy and everyone else is happy too...
Posted by davidaus, 06-28-2005, 04:04 PM
Out of my curiosity, how many clients are there in a single machine in host gator? One machine could hold approximately 200 + user if every account have a disk space of 400Mb. It could be HostGator is placing too much client on the server which eventually will increase downtime when every client use too much resources. If that is the case, then HostGator maybe expecting clients not to use too much resources. Then, they could add more to it! Im sorry here, im not trying to crash HostGator, but i just try figuring out my own thought. If a client is using any resources within his own account limit, that should not be a problem. They pay for that limit, right? Correct me if im wrong.. im very curios abotu this! Thanks
Posted by BrentOfHG, 06-28-2005, 05:23 PM
In our shared environment we stop filling them at about 200 accounts on a dual xeon server with 4 gigs of ram. The amount of sites we have a problem with is less than half a percent, but over half of that percent run to WHT to bash. Most do not wish to pay for more than a few dollar a month shared account. We are happy to provide a more dedicated solution to anyone, but it's not cheap. If half a percent that were happy posted good things about us we would be praised in every thread on wht.
Posted by davidaus, 06-28-2005, 05:39 PM
Hi .. HG im still have not get my answer. If you wont mind explaning a bit, would it be a problem if someone use 90% of their own bandwidth and disk space limit? As i know, every package has their own bandwidth and space limit. Thus, every client has their right to eat up those limitation even if it takes 100%. As i following this thread, i notice that this guy eat up only 92% of his limitation. But his account was suspended. Shouldn't they have the right to use it? Thanks David
Posted by BrentOfHG, 06-28-2005, 05:50 PM
We don't care about bandwidth or disk space at all. We have never had a server run out of disk space or bandwidth that is available/already paid for. Most boxes use half the bandwidth we pay for, and half the disk space used. When we have a problem with a site we have no idea how much disk space or bandwidth they are using. We could check easily but we don't care. All we care about is if a server is having downtime or load is high enough to cause any type of delay. When this is the case we check the server for the heaviest user as far as cpu and ram usage goes and move them to a tmp server. We than notify them that they will need to upgrade from a shared environment, cut back cpu/ ram usage, or find a new host. In some cases it's a single script causing problem and we will usually disable it in other its one script after another and we just can't afford any more downtime from the same person causing issues. I hope that clarifies things for you, if you have any more questions please pm me. Last edited by BrentOfHG; 06-28-2005 at 05:57 PM.
Posted by acmcginley.com, 08-04-2005, 03:28 PM
I am a interested in seting up many carts and using Hostgator. Was this related to OSCommerce and possibly one of its contributions?
Posted by swflnetworks, 08-04-2005, 03:56 PM
If you don't act a-fool like these folks were, and try and put high-load traffic on a shared environment, you should be fine. Look for their reseller package. It'd be a nice less performance hit.
Posted by Froggy, 08-04-2005, 07:17 PM
I think I'll join in on the HG bashing. I have hostgator right now...and I'm not particularly happy with them. I got it initially because they have JSP support on some accounts...buts its a total joke and they obviously have no idea what they are doing as far as jsp/servlet hosting goes. Also, it seems odd that they keep stating that their policy is to put people on a temp server for a week, when many posts indicate they don't do that (but maybe I'm not understanding them?). Having a bug in a script is something even seasoned programmer will do, it seems bad to cut someone off from the server totally for it. In this case it seems that the issue would've been solved by having their servers configured better, but obviously the code was writen badly.....and very obviously so. Lastly, their costumer service is just annoying. It often takes 3+ e-mails to get an answer to a rather basic questions, I get the feeling the "first responders" to the e-mails have absolutely no idea what they are talking about...and they also assume you are doing something really stupid (but maybe they have a reason for assuming that?). Anyhow I'm too worried about getting a site shut down from HG to stay with them I think I'm going to go with a VPS this time.
Posted by page-zone, 08-04-2005, 09:03 PM
Level one support is good for nothing but losing every customer that they touch. I know from experience with outsourced support. You are lucky if they can even choose a predefined reply that has anything remotely to do with the question.
Posted by linuxredux, 08-04-2005, 10:11 PM
Hostgator is actually correct on this response. Source: dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/user-resources.html - MySQL Reference Manual Before MySQL 4.0.2, the only available method for limiting use of MySQL server resources is to set the max_user_connections system variable to a non-zero value. But that method is strictly global. It does not allow for management of individual accounts. Also, it limits only the number of simultaneous connections made using a single account, not what a client can do once connected. Both types of control are interest to many MySQL administrators, particularly those for Internet Service Providers.

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