Category: WebMastering

March 19, 2010
Max WebMastering

Getting Familiar with Homer J.

During the rebuild of cncpics.com I took a decent look at the log file.

It looks like there are a large number of robots that are attempting to harvest the images, causing huge amounts of database lookup and then eventually an invalid URL type error.

Because of the way that the gallery software works, anything that looks like a gallery URL is handled by the database.

By ‘fishing’ for images the robots are causing a lot of database reads and  log file writes. Which adds to the load on the server. Which in turn reduces the performance for the legitimate users.

To alleviate the load, we have changed the URL pattern for albums and images. All of the old links will land on the ‘404’ page.

http://cncpics.com/404

While I realize that most of the 404’s are not humans, it amuses me to think that the robots are getting familiar with Homer J.

March 19, 2010
Max Life, WebMastering

Network Violation – again

Is there no end to the stupidity that is rampant within godaddy ?

This morning while waiting for my tea to brew I checked my e-mail. Once more there was a ‘network violation’ notice from GoDaddy.

Dear Sir/Madam,

It has come to our attention that your dotdotnetdot.net hosting account is being used as a file repository. This is a direct violation of our Terms of Service. All files that are stored on a hosting account, must be used for a working traditional website. You may review the Storage and Security section of our Web Site and Virtual Dedicated Server Service Agreement for further clarification.

You have 48 hours to remove all the files not being referenced to a website. Specifically, the following are currently in violation:

cncpicsinfo.tgz 91GB

Failure to comply will result in access to the files and/or directories in question to be removed on your behalf. If you are interested in keeping file backups, you will need to purchase the Online File Folder, a Virtual Dedicated Server, or a Dedicated Server.

Obviously I am a bad boy, again.

But look a little closer and ask yourself, why would I stash a 91GB Zipped/Tar’d file on my OTHER hosting account ? The hosting account that hosts this blog and the associated files ?

It seems that GoDaddy took it upon theirselves to create an archive of the cncpics site for me, I did not ask them to do this, nor do I need this. To make matters even worse I cannot get to the file to either download it nor delete it.

Yet I am in violation, again.

GoDaddy’s tech support are telling me that they cannot remove the file without my authorization, which I have attempted to do, but they still cannot do it and their ‘senior support team’ are working on the problem.

let me give you a hint guys, you need to use the ‘rm’ command to delete it

something like this

rm cncpicsinfo.tgz

Not exactly a difficult task, yet there ‘senior tech support team’ have been working on it for an hour straight.

Just for the hell of it I just kicked off and FTP download of the file – all 91GB, if the tech support crew do not manage to master the complexities of the ‘rm’ command within the next 40hrs and 32 minutes, then the file will be resident on my PC.

*sigh

Dear Sir/Madam,

It has come to our attention that your dotdotnetdot.net hosting account is being used as a file repository. This is a direct violation of our Terms of Service. All files that are stored on a hosting account, must be used for a working traditional website. You may review the Storage and Security section of our Web Site and Virtual Dedicated Server Service Agreement for further clarification.

You have 48 hours to remove all the files not being referenced to a website. Specifically, the following are currently in violation:

cncpicsinfo.tgz 91GB

Failure to comply will result in access to the files and/or directories in question to be removed on your behalf. If you are interested in keeping file backups, you will need to purchase the Online File Folder, a Virtual Dedicated Server, or a Dedicated Server.

March 18, 2010
Max Life, Photography, WebMastering

Learning through adversity

As I have documented extensively over the last three days, cncpics.com has been causing me a lot of grief.  To re-cap, the mega post of photo’s combined with a failed cron job several weeks ago combined in a ‘perfect storm’ to seriously annoy the godaddy network admins.

I had three choices.

1 – find a new and inexpensive host and hope that they would be able to deal with the traffic that came their way.

2 – give up and walk away from something that I have put serious time/effort and passion into for many years

3 – do it correctly and get a (virtual) dedicated server to handle the load and fix the issues.

Obviously I chose to walk away from it. NOT.

Initially, because it was cheap and had a good reputation, I  created a domain on a basic hosting platform using Siteground, they are a lot more techno than GoDaddy and I thought that it might me a risk going to them, but for under $20 it was worth a shot. Initially it seemed that this may just be the right host, PHP5 support would allow me to move to Gallery 3 and the control panel is full of cool stuff.

Problems with the database restore should have told me that I was wrong, but the curve-ball of getting an old backup from godaddy threw me and I pretty much worked through the night last night.

When I finally got the site up with the last two weeks of images loaded, the impact of the viewers from around the world simply swamped the poor host and they throttled the scripts.

In short they are a great host, but not tough enough, I will be using the hosting space for this blog and my personal sites once I have got my new host up and running.

So, my new host…..

Following some advice on fatwallet.com I am now the proprietor of an extremely cool Virtual Dedicated Server. I am not going to say where just yet as I want them to prove that they can handle the traffic before I give them a shout out, but I certainly got a ‘deal’.

Initial impressions are very, very very good indeed.

The MYSQL database that took ‘all night’ to create last night on siteground took 4 minutes and 15 seconds here.

Approximately 120 times faster.

FTP is uploaded at a solid 1.4MB vs 240KB on the old host.

But the best part is that we are no longer worried too much about processor and memory use unless we try to exceed the apportioned amounts.

So, the new URL that I am building on is cncpicsarchive.com all other domains point here.

As I intimated with the title of this post, I have learnt a lot during this fiasco.

Read More

March 16, 2010
Max Technology, WebMastering

Access Denied – catch 22

This morning I sat having coffee with a friend when my phone displayed a voicemail

Hi. This is Amanda calling from go daddy hosting at (480) 505-8712
to say we sent you an email regarding your hosting account
recipient keep X dot in for which requires your attention. Thank you.

As this is not the first such call I have had from them I waited until I got home to deal with it.

It appears that the cache had built up to the point of impacting performance, again.

So they simply blocked access to my hosting account.

The first call had the following logic problem

We cannot allow you access to your account until the cache is deleted

But I cannot delete the cache without access to the account

We cannot allow you access to your account until the cache is deleted

But……..

As you can see, this loop has no end and the first support rep was adamant that I needed to delete the files before they would unlock the domain.

The second guy was better, he wanted to create an archive of all of the files that were in the problem folders for me.

this would take a few minutes.

a couple of hours elapsed and I got hold of an exceptionally feisty young man that basically called me a liar and suggested that I needed a dedicated server

Finally I got hold of a much more sensible person called ‘Jared’ that was able to tell me what the files were and to get the ones that I no longer needed, deleted.

i am now waiting for the site to come back and/or more logic errors – I am not sure which will happen though….