Hi there!
I was just trying to access PHPmyadmin in the cpanel, but it told me to use the right username. Took me 2 minutes to figure out: No users, no databases set up. My site can't access it either. I had full databases installed and used them 2 hours ago!
Ok, this is the third time in one week, that I have severe inaccessibility problems with astahost..
CUT I just tried again and now it is working the same way it was before. What the ®Çª??

Is this regular behaviour at astahost and do I just have to live with the fact that my site goes west twice a week without any explanation and comes back from its vacation sooner or later? This is very annoying and I really demand an explanation for this behaviour lately, it is worrying me, because I like the host in all other aspects.
regards, ruben

Looks like you chose the wrong time to get hosted at astahost ruben . My guess is that the server shift isn't completely bug-proof yet. It might take some more time to stabilise. Myself, I never had any problems of any sort with my hosting. Of course, I haven't used it much until recently and it doesn't really attract too much audience, but it was always up whenver I checked.

We are not quite through with the Datacenter change. When the transfer is complete, all will be as it was before the change....

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to let me know!!!


-William
Moderator

A couple of problems have been spotted.

1. Some members are running stuff like PHPProxy off their account - which allows them to connect to it and bounce to other sites using astahost IP. This eats up a bunch of resources.

2. Quite a few run mass mailing scripts - which again is a terrible resource consumer.

More problematic scripts are being spotted. Quite a few of these, which are unnecessary and are putting terrific load on the server will be removed.

Till then, bear with us please

Thanks,
m^e

Hi!
Thanks then. I'm not here so long, so I thought this might be usual behaviour.

Yes, I have a question still: A friend of mine once had the problem that he couldn't connect to my site (got another site instead) unless he was specifying a file to access. I know this problem from another friend. I heard from him that the reason is, if someone on the same network connected to a site which is in the same IP range as the one later then he won't be able to get it, unless he specifies a file. Is that true and can the publisher do anything against it or is it just a ISP bug of my friend?

m^e I don't get quite what the problem with resource-eating scripts is? First of all, they are not forbidden explicitly and second I thought we have dedicated bandwidth, so everyone has the resources he applied for and isn't sharing them..?
Thanks for this enlightenment.. :-)

I dont think this should happen, unless you've somehow instructed apache to handle ONLY ONE REQUEST at a time from an IP range. Other than that, it should never happen like this.



By resource, I don't mean bandwidth here - but rather CPU load. While the servers here are all Dual Xeon, even they happen to have a maximum load limit which they can comfortably handle.

Also consider the RAM - with every poxy connection a certain chunk of memory is blocked - which otherwise would be used to serve/process pages for everyone.

When one sets up a proxy in his account - keep in mind that he's NOT the ONLY ONE accessing this proxy.. He might have mentioned it to his friend, who passed it on further and further...and soon we have over 100 ppl using Astahost's link to bounce their connections to other sites.

Also by BW - it doesn't mean that with multiple connections, the speed wouldn't drop. It WILL. Because, BW explicitly refers to the AMOUNT of DATA that can flow in and out of your account on a monthly basis and NOT the speed at which incoming links will connect to the server.

So in the end with hundreds of incoming and outgoing connections using the proxy - the overall speed of the link will drop, making all of us suffer.

People who're running this sort of script should be more considerate - this service is being offered free doesn't mean you abuse it to the fullest extent. You should realize that there are thousands of other members here, who need their site up and running as badly as you - or even more.

By running these scripts, you'll denying them the rightful share of their link speed. Thus - if anyone's found to be running such Resource Hogs - those scripts will be immdiately removed - no questions asked. And depending on the severity of the situation the account might also be terminated along with an IP ban - so whoever's doing it - be careful.

When you have problems with your account, You contact support *support at astahost.com* and send them a ticket rather than alerting all the people at the forum.

If you wanted to check for any temporary account problems, you can shout at shoutbox on Trap17 or Astahost. (Both clients are now on same cluster)

From the day when we started providing hosting, NOT A SINGLE member has ever lost his data. So, please mind about the remarks you are posting against us. Even after the server shift, We took care that all members data was safe on old server so that in case of transfer failures, members could download their data backup and setup their accounts again.

As for the RESOURCE eating scripts.. Ruben, You don't have the slightest idea of what goes around with the free hosted members scripts. Members send mass emails, PROXY scripts and download scripts. We have to filter out and suspend such members.

IF you want example, Just yesterday I suspended ivirus.net for hosting Proxy script.

All these things bring down the server.

However, Our uptime history has always been more than 99.9% Better than all Free hosts and quite comparable to Paid hosting accounts.

The only difference between paid hosting and hosting at astahost is, the member's attitude.

Here, if members abuse our server, all they lose is their webhosting account and few credits. At the same time, Paid hosting members strictly follow TOS because there they know that abuse can lead to termination which in turn will prove them expensive. This is the only reason why ERROR_LOG of paid hosting accounts grow by few MBs a day compared to FREEHOSTING accounts who cause the ERRORLOG file to grow by GB per day..

Please keep all the above points in mind, and I request you to kindly co-operate with our service. We are trying our best to serve you people...

Hello together!
Thanks for explaining the problem.
OpaQue, no, I didn't have the slightest idea what was going on, now I do and I apologize for being so complaining. I know this is a free service and I think it is great, keep up the good work please. My recommendation would have been to note down in the email, that informed about the server shift that there might be some problems in the time afterwards. As an average user I have no idea what a server shift of such a size means and I just thought it was over by now.

About the resource-exploitation: Couldn't there be some traffic limit for resource using too? Don't know if that is a naive question, I just don't know.
Also, is there a list of too-resource-intensive scripts, so we know, what we shouldn't do? I don't think I use such, but I don't actually know. Daily backups for example seem a waste of resource to me now, that I know that we don't lose data that easily.