Moving some file servers
Posted (March 12th, 2007 at 3:16 pm PST) by KellyTomorrow night, Tuesday March 13, 2007, at 10PM Pacific time (http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/) we will be moving two file servers down the hall to be localized to their web/mail servers for the “swarthy” cluster. This will disrupt email, web, ftp/sftp, and shell service for anyone on the affected file servers. This it to make those servers go faster, and free up some space in our cramped primary datacenter. Downtime window is 2 hours.
To find out if your server is affected, head on over to https://panel.dreamhost.com/ , and in the upper left right, click “account status”. Your email server is also your cluster! If you are on “swarthy” you have a chance of being affected. We would have to list out affected users, not affected servers Re: comment #1, and we don’t list usernames on the blogs.
Duh, My other left.
All done!
105 Responses to “Moving some file servers”
Adrian, you say that because there’s NO OTHER hosting company which announces downtimes for everyone. I’m SURE that each company has hundreds of server downtimes every week, but they dont say it. Only who is affected to those outages know …
Keep up the good work DH!
Lucas, true, true. I came to DH after trying several other “recommended” hosts. The reason I switched is because of the price and features. However, I have NEVER experienced such downtime, announced or not. That includes the slowdowns, announced outages, and “oops, chuckle, chuckle” moronic mistakes that are all too common lately. Since switching is such a hassle, I really, REALLY, hope DH will start listening to us and realize we don’t think it’s funny.
It used to be 95% was a decent standard uptime for hosting companies. The good ones do better. DH isn’t even close in the past couple months.
Not for me. Even with all the down times, I’ve logged over 99% uptime. That’s decent for 10 weeks.
Peace,
Gene
Is it just me, or is the “Account Status” feature in the upper RIGHT … that nitpick aside, its a nice touch to pull all that info together in one place … kudos to the individual/team that pulled the new panel design together …
It doesn’t matter if I have downtime YET.
@Airwick, it was in the upper right for me too. Hmm??!
Why not LEAVE if you are not pleased?
@Why not?, maybe they’re lazy like me? Besides, I’ve only had about three hours of downtime that I know of, and that was when everybody was having problems.
Yeah, the status is in the upper right for me as well. I’m using Firefox 1.5.
I couldn’t find the Account Status link in the top left. Then I realized that this was Dreamhost-speak, and figured that left must really mean right. Guess what? There it is…
Yea, idk, maybe Twix is a trooper, it has never ever failed me. The DB server, lionel, got clogged once, that was it. I’m not on that server anymore.
Kudos to DH for moving my sql server and not a single noticed problem.
who gives a fucK??????
you lost my biz. dishonest cunts.
gene gfy.
disclose your relationship to dh cunt.
anyone who is reading this
DREAMHOST SUCKS
look elsewhere.
Uh, okay… So I went ahead and checked earlier to see if I’m on “swarthy” and found out I’m NOT on “swarthy”.
Yet 10PM hits and WHAM! No more e-mail etc.
????????????
One more thing. According to http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/ it’s 10+ PM in LA not the 9+ PM that this comment shows for time.
Yes, I understand that this server may not be in LA but since these messages are time specific as to events etc. AT DH then perhaps they should reflect the ACTUAL DH server timezone don’t you think?
My problem right now is that my sites aren’t working, and I can’t even get to the panel to report that my sites aren’t working.
I have three days before my hosting account renews, and I guess I have to cancel.
Damn.
“Why not LEAVE if you are not pleased?”
actually i am. and i will badmouth dh every chance i get. as i have a huge trusted web presence (on sites not hosted by dh thank god).
They say it doesn’t effect mail? Well, webmail is certianly down. While that is not technically part of “mail” they say nothing about webmail as an item that will be effected.
Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Lost connection to MySQL server during query in /usr/local/squirrelmail-1.4.9a/plugins/dreamhost_virtualhosts/setup.php on line 262
1044: Access denied for user ’squirrelmail’@'192.168.10.0/255.255.255.0′ to database ‘dreamhost’
urm… dreamhost OWNS, but the downtime is massive also.
if you are dependend on the money you generate from your site, you should probably not be a picker and get a more expensive host!
Well, as for me, I find a certain sense of excitement in DH…
Whenever I’m looking to do something semi-important on the servers, they’re down.
It’s as if their core business plan revolves around Murphy’s Law.
All the excitement for such a low price too!
Sigh, how come my sites always get affected?
well, I’m not on those servers and webmails is indeed down.. My websites are still up though..
Of course I can’t get into the part of the webpanel to report the error..
The webpanel gives a page not found error and webmail gives this:
Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Lost connection to MySQL server during query in /usr/local/squirrelmail-1.4.9a/plugins/dreamhost_virtualhosts/setup.php on line 262
1044: Access denied for user ’squirrelmail’@'192.168.10.0/255.255.255.0′ to database ‘dreamhost’
Well, they do have a message on their webpanel login now:
Centralized DreamHost Services Are Down for Maintenance From Monday, March 12 2007 10:00pm until Tuesday, March 13 2007 04:00am PDT (GMT -8)
(Total downtime within that window is likely 4 hours)
This affects the following services:
Web Panel
Signups
Domain Registrations
DreamHost Wiki
THIS DOES NOT AFFECT CUSTOMERS SITES, DATABASES, OR EMAIL. ALL YOUR STUFF IS UP AND WORKING FINE!
Well, webmail is down, so it’s not all working fine 
WebMail is down when we need it, second time in the weak… I dont understand you write WebMail for central database maintanance is not suppose to be effected, then why the hell it is down ??
“i will badmouth dh every chance i get. as i have a huge trusted web presence (on sites not hosted by dh thank god).”
If you have such a “huge trusted web presence,” then why are you posting all your whiney, pathetic threats and insults anonymously? Oh, right, because you’re a pussy. No one here cares about your childish temper tantrums so why don’t you just go away?
I’m here to pickup J.
can you just try to not have webmail down so often? It is true that a lot of people like their webmail and saying that we can see what server we are on by looking on the webpanel right as you take your panel down as well is kindof pointless. The happy in ‘happy dreamhost customer’ is wearing thin on mornings like this. Maybe coffee will help but i doubt it. Good morning to the rest of you 
There is a scheduled downtime for both the webmail interface, and the DH control panel: http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/2007/03/08/more-dreamhost-central-database-maintenance/
I need my mail
I wonder why the centralized DreamHost services maintenance wasn’t announced. I planned to do several movements this night. Time to go to sleep then.
What a idiot I am:
http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/2007/03/08/more-dreamhost-central-database-maintenance/
They better show us a new/redesigned website
ok. I owe dh an apology for not scrolling down further than the first item on their statuspage. Maybe it would be a good idea to have ’solved’ items under the unsolved ones, so all unsolved ones would be kept on top. Anyway webmail seems to be back (thank you for that) but meanwhile i’ve set up a spare gmail account to read my webmail with
Looks like the webpanel and the webmail is back up.. At least at the moment
my sites can’t access the mysql datebase now. why?
Gene Steinberg Says:
March 12th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
Not for me. Even with all the down times, I’ve logged over 99% uptime. That’s decent for 10 weeks.
Peace,
Gene
While you’re volunteering helpful info — please go ahead and specify the servers you’re currently assigned to(web/email/database).
You know, I don’t mind downtime at all, but some advance notice would have been nice. If you can send out a newsletter once a month you’re more than capable of emailing the people whose servers are going to be hosed for the evening.
For http://www.macnightowl.com it’s Web: dasani; Mail: spacey; MySQL: droopy.
Is that helpful?
Peace,
Gene
共产主义万岁！！！
Elliot - apparently it was on the site. I was surprised too.
I too am starting to get frustrated in what appears to be huge and frequent central database maintenance windows.
One thing everyone relying on webmail must consider is either hosting their own webmail (such as roundcube) on thier own domain or consider using an imap client like thunderbird. This would minimize your email service interruption. Quit bitching about it and DO SOMETHING. Even J’s solving his problem.
J - you’re not the first and you’re not the last. You’re simply the loudsst.
so dreamhost has downtime? all servers need it at some point for maintenance. those complaining about webmail: this is hosted for you by dreamhost, as part of their central database server. when you go to your webmail link. it is pretty much just a redirect to dreamhost’s main install. install your own IMAP mail script, or use one i have set up http://mymail.iupds.info to connect to any IMAP mail server you specify during login.
Wow, you sure do go down a lot.
The problem is that more than half the time, DH doesn’t know, or at least admit, the downtime. The last instance I had of several 5-10 min outages in a single day, their answer was “not possible.” How ‘honest’ is that? For every instance they post on here (usually after the fact), I experience 4 or 5 other instances that they refuse to acknowledge (even though they mysteriously fix themselves after I complain).
Sure, go elsewhere if I don’t like it. And put up with the same or different problems again and again. Dreamhost came so recommended. WHY CAN’T THEY JUST FIX IT?
Well after my site being up for an hour it’s down again. I just submitted the request for the money back guarantee and I’m moving all my sites to hostmonster. Sorry DH but you guys suck more than the “dorm room hosts” of the mid 90s.
Nice to know dreamhost’s customer’s are all nice and grown up, *cough* J
Luckily I’m not affected this time, apparently I’m on the Spunky cluster 
I’m already experiencing Prepartem Depression…
Dreamhost - please update us on the status. I’m getting various complaints on email still being down. “Downtime window is 2 hours.” That was 10 hours ago. Thank you.
“J Says:
March 12th, 2007 at 9:07 pm
anyone who is reading this
DREAMHOST SUCKS”
I think J needs to get some.
BTW I think the move they talk about will be TONIGHT Mar 13.
For the Euros due to earlier daylight savings time this year Los Angeles will be GMT -7 for 3 weeks untill Europe moves the clocks ahead. Plus realize that we are also 1 day behind for 7 hrs during the 24 hrs period. So the maintenance will occur today at 10 pm, that is Mar 14, 5 am London Time
My question to everyone complaining, why not leave and try your luck with another host? You will not be informed of these problems, so I guess you will not complain about them. If you leave, this will create less of a strain on the servers, there by creating less load and maintenance, which in turn will increase reliability.
This will ultimately make my experience better. So, if all of the people that continually complain leave, my web hosting experience will be better. By taking your business else where will make me a happier customer.
Also, if I never see “J” again, I will also be happy, idiots upset me.
I’m not even on either of these servers and my site is pretty much unusably slow. 30-40 kbp/s download speeds… blah.
I’ve been saying to myself, “hold on, it’ll get a bit better. Dreamhost was great when you first signed up, for nearly 4 months there wasn’t a single problem. This’ll sort itself out.”. But it really hasn’t. I’ve switched servers, I’ve sent tickets, I’ve waited patiently and kindly told admins that it’s no big deal — and to take your time and figure it out and keep it working instead of rushing to fix it for all the whiners and having problems again 5 minutes later. But I am really getting sick and tired of waiting. 2 months straight of downtime, slowness, lag, unloadable pages, errors, and general unusability. I don’t rely on my site as anything more than a testdump for scripting and a filedump for pictures and home-made media (mp3s, video, etc). I don’t use more than 5 GB of bandwidth a month, and that’s at most.
I will continue to try and be patient, and this is not a threat. I don’t forsee myself switching to any other host, because, as I said, my first 4 or 5 months on dreamhost was like riding a rollercoaster running on nitro. Fast, responsive, and very worth the money. But right now I really am starting to get discouraged.
Please, fix these problems. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.
Sites down again. No post about issues. Another day, another support ticket …
Fourth day in a row, my sites are down. Really losing patience. I send a ticket, things come back up only to be down again the next day. PLEASE fix it so that it stays fixed!
“Wow, you sure do go down a lot.”
Normally I don’t complain when a host goes down on me….
MM23, your site consists of a few lines of poetry and that’s it. What’s the big deal? Is there a site you haven’t told us about?
Peace,
Gene
Gene,
It doesn’t matter what or how little content MM23 has hosted here.
The hosting company being unable to reliably host “a few lines of poetry and that’s it” is itself the “big deal”.
-Gumby
Hey, DH isn’t that bad…things could be worse. I have a Dedicated server with HostMySite and it took them 5 days to allocate a few ip addresses.
HostMySite has a really nifty online chat with support but I never chatted with anyone there who was actually able to solve my problem. Thank god I’m on a dedicated server becuase I’m always able to solve my problems before they even respond to my support requests.
Once, after the online support couldn’t solve my problem the tech opened a ticket. I continued working on it and eventually solved the problem. Two days later, I get an email that they haven’t been able to solve the problem but it was working and had been working for two days.
Dreamhost is big and has its share of problems but it is still by far the best host I’ve ever worked with.
@Gene - can’t you use some of that voodoo paranormal malarkey to predict when DH will get all the problems ironed out?
gene has nothing to do all day but post how great dh is despite the fact there are serious issues that are not even addressed let alone fixed. he is dh’s resident information minster.
“there are no americans in baghdad.”
Gene,
Yeah, because there’s nothing private behind that index page, right? Right?
You’re an idiot.
MM23: Clearly you are playing games here, and are not reporting real problems for your 10-line site. In fact, why do you bother putting it up at a Web host, when there are lots of free places to post that stuff?
I’ve had my sites on different hosts since I started http://www.macnightowl.com in 1999. All hosts have problems, but the issue is who well they resolve them when they occur.
I’ve had good luck here, and if you folks have problems, still, you should be submitting support tickets not whining about it.
Peace,
Gene
Gene - After looking at your picture to see what the face of an idiot looks like…..damn dude. You ugly.
Kevin, you clearly are here to throw smoke bombs, not to talk about anything real. Without making any representations, at least I have the courage to put up my photo and list my site, so anyone can check it out themselves and see if they work well or not.
And you, Kevin? Just a troll!
Peace,
Gene
I was just saying dude….You’re ugly. The yellowed, gapped teeth bother me quite a bit.
You’re right - I’m just a troll. I have no website. And I have no photo to put online. And I’m a coward.
But you’re still ugly…
DB doesnt stand for database
The fuck? Do you really think people are going to take your bait, Gene?
Goddamn some people are stupid. Enjoy your finely veiled sarcasm, because it’s sure as fuck not working. Learn to troll.
God DAMN some people are retarded.
God doesnt damn it, beavers do.
Hey You! At least dreamhost tells you about these downtimes - no other host gives you notices, they just take down your website whenever the hell they want to. Stop complaining.
If it’s out of sight, out of mind. If you don’t know it’s happening, and it takes place in the middle of the night or at any time you’re not checking or running a host-tracker, you’d never know if your site was offline, unless it was for a long period and affected your visitors/customers/whatever.
Consider that for a moment and maybe some of the things that some people complain about here won’t be so significant.
Unlike most other Web hosts, DreamHost puts its problems front and center. A lot of those places hide status reports in hard-to-access places (one that I checked did it in a forum message so it was even less likely to be seen).
Peace,
Gene
I seriously cannot believe the people who come and post here… even when they aren’t having problems with Dreamhost. Get… a… life…
Meanwhile, I am still experiencing severe network slowness, which is making my email (via webmail) virtually unusable.
Oh yeah - and it will amaze you to hear that people not the US still use web hosting services - and it is not actually the middle of the night in other parts of the world.
The US is the world. Don’t you get our press?
– Dick Cheney
Always fucking down. What the hell is wrong with DH? Are you all apes? Learn how to fucking run a hosting service. For what I pay, you should be sucking my cock.
It’s not even 10 PM Pacific yet, my website isn’t on swarthy, and it’s down. I have two accounts and one works and one doesn’t, but the one that doesn’t work is the website I have for a national organization! Thank goodness I’m not trying to run a business from my websites. I realize that every place has its issues and I do love DreamHost for all the goodies they offer and assistance I’ve needed at times, but there have been a lot of times that the website is down and my server isn’t listed as being affected. That really worries me.
down again.
If some of you idiots actually read the whiny crap you post here, it might take some of the mystery out of why you’re still virgins.
Damn! (In a good way!)
Okay, so first I was bummin’ ’cause my site was offline with this server move. And now that it’s back up, WOW! It’s faster than I’ve *ever* seen it before. Please, please tell me it’ll be like this forever!!!!
I still can’t connect to my site
Yes things OVER HERE IN THE UK (emphasised incase anyone else is UK based here?) are moving a tiny bit faster, still not zipping though - I really wish DH would invest in a Euro based server, the US cluster they have just haven’t ever been that fast, and I’ve been a customer for 10 years!!!
Its a little frustrating when you compare the load time of http://www.fasthosts.co.uk for example, not only does the page load at lightening fast speed but the image fly onto the page, unlike Dreamhost hosted websites (including their own site) where the page eventually appears, then the images gradually crawl onto the page.
Anyone else seeing similar?
I’m in the UK - I was having problems due to the load average on my host mug (around 25) now it’s back to around 3 to 5 and things seem nice and fast again (5 second average index page load) and my site is joomla based with the SMF forum wrapped so the front page is fairly heavy.
Check your hosts load average by running top from an ssh shell. If it’s much above 7 then log a support call asking for DH to investigate. They did for me and managed to track down the heavy users and do something about it.
Hi Van,
Would you mind explaining to a Linux newbie how to do this? Sounds like a good idea.
Cheers
Joe
Hi Joe
1) From your control panel select (users->manage users) pick your main user and make sure that shell/ssh access is enabled for that user.
2) download an ssh client (putty is a good free one) you can get it here http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html
3) Fire up putty and point it at your host (If you have a firewall you will need to make sure port 22 is open) the first time you point putty at your host it will bring up a dialog letting you know that it doesn’t have a key for the site, just accept this and it will save a key. You will then be presented with a logon screen (sign in with your userid and password)
4) Once at the command line type top and you will see the top stats appear - the load average is shown top right.
Type Q to exit top and then type exit to exit putty.
Hope this helps - Sorry it’s a bit rushed.
The above will only show the load on your web server host. There could still be problems on the database and/or email hosts but in my case my problems have been load on the webserver.
The discussion forum is a great place to find people willing to help try to diagnose performance and down site issues. http://discussion.dreamhost.com They aren’t employees, just other DH users and for some reason they tend to offer to help. Maybe they should get a life but you should take advantage while they’re weak.
“If some of you idiots actually read the whiny crap you post here, it might take some of the mystery out of why you’re still virgins.”
Not to drive my stupid-as-hell joke home but…
The only thing to go down on these guys is DH!
Thanks for top pointer, Van.
V
Resolved?
I’m getting database errors!
I like the insane referral money you give, but I might have to switch to media temple or similar. This downtime lately is unforgivable! message:
Error establishing a database connection
This either means that the username and password information in your wp-config.php file is incorrect or we can’t contact the database server at brittonblog.blog.jamesrbritton.com. This could mean your host’s database server is down.
What database sever are you on? There’s a maintenance notice that one of the servers has failed and they are working on a fix.
Peace,
Gene
thank you, thank you, thank you. finally my webmail is not creepingly slow. yea!
server load is back to 2.5 or so, which is good, too. yea, yea, yea!
-john
Has the “Bad httpd conf” error message something to do with this file servers moving?
That error appeared a couple of times, I did what the dreamhost’s wiki suggests and the problem get solved but a few hours later the same thing happens again. Right now the “bad http conf” error doesn’t show anymore but I get a 500 internal server error.
(p.s. Sorry for my terrible English)
Van thanks for that info, very useful command, only now getting into this whole Shell thing, the only way I was able to export my MySql database as a backup as DH’s configuration made any backup script I used timeout after only 30 seconds!!!!!!!
Here’s my load average output…
load average: 3.25, 3.61, 3.53
I presume thats good then? I seriously believe that its the connection between their network and ours thats causing speed issues? Fasthosts.co.uk whips along, DH’s crawls!!!
Incidently, does anyone else find FTP incredibly slow? a folder of 20kb image files should whiz up, the FTP log should move so quickly we shouldn’t be able to keep track of it via an 8mb DSL connection…but not with DH - its like a trickle…and then it times out!!!
ARGHHHHH, DH are SUCH a good host in terms of customer service and functionality but I just WISH they’d sort out this server situation, I believe a Euro server would sort it. If anyone has any spare suggestion credits, can they use them towards requesting a Euro/UK based server please?
I have faith in DH.
I don’t know about FTP, because I only use SCP from my linux box here at home.
@Ash: Yeah, those are good load averages for your webserver.
@Phantom: Support. Ticket.
@Those complaining about Webmail: It’s on the central databases, it goes down with central databases. If you want email, you should use Thunderbird/Evolution/Outlook/some other IMAP client.
@Matt “Webmail: It’s on the central databases, it goes down with central databases. If you want email, you should use Thunderbird/Evolution/Outlook/some other IMAP client.”
unacceptable.
Why is Thunderbird not an acceptable alternative to Webmail.? If your cannot install it on a WORK computer? Maybe if thats the case, you should actually be working at work Otherwise Thunderbird is the shizznit!
One fast, delayed, question: I presume that all offices have an email client of some sort. If, however, the boss prohibits personal email, that would it make a difference if it’s a Web-based email client or something like Thunderbird, Apple Mail, etc? I suppose there’s always Opera. It is, after all, primarily a browser, but also an adequate email client.
Peace,
Gene
@Eliade me too.
thanksss
Great job done! Dreamhost is the best hosting you can find!
Alıcılardan bir tanesi sunucu tarafından reddedildiği için ileti gönderilemiyor. Reddedilen e-posta adresi: ’sd@cfsistem.com’. Konu ”, Hesap: ‘mail.cfsistem.com’, Sunucu: ‘mail.cfsistem.com’, İletişim Kuralları: SMTP, Sunucu Yanıtı: ‘554 : Recipient address rejected: Access denied’, Bağlantı Noktası: 25, Güvenli(SSL): Hayır, Sunucu Hatası: 554, Hata numarası: 0×800CCC79
what ? :S
Forum, smtp ayarlarına izin ver,
Hi friends,
I want to know that how can i use this mysql server
is there a friend to help me
Best Regards
Hakan,
Why not LEAVE if you are not pleased?
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Go back to Who needs a CIO?.
Thanks
gelinlik-abiye
Aw, come on, man. They try. I sure as hell hope so, anyway.
List of affected/effected (who knows which?) servers?