PHP/CGI permissions problems!
Many of you are still reporting issues with your php and cgi applications, and we pinned this one down, too.
On some servers, apache’s suexec binary was installed without setuid permissions, causing it to not function. This was causing user’s scripts to not run as their user. If the script needed access to certain files with strict permissions, it would fail. We’ve remedied this situation and sites should be working as usual now.
If you are still having problems with your sites, please contact support and we will look into them as soon as possible.
Once again we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this caused.
Thanks,
The Happy DreamHost Workin Late On A Monday team!
June 18th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
Oh wow that is the most amateurish crap I’ve ever heard of. Everyone who deals with apache knows full well of the dangers of suexec and setting them wrong, this is why you package apache or leave notes around on how you configured it. Yet you guys fail at even that? How do you manage such a large userbase with such incompetence?
June 18th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
burn
June 18th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
There was no danger involved. suexec has very *very* specific requirements on permissions, and completely refuses to run if its permissions aren’t set properly, which is exactly what the problem was in this case. Instead of users’ scripts running as their user, they were running as the apache user, same as you would get if you ran with mod_php or whatnot. Since some people have locked down permissions on certain files in their home directories such as config files and whatnot (which is a very good thing!) their scripts were failing.
June 18th, 2007 at 8:51 pm
This is an example of a *good* failure. It failed just the way it was supposed to without giving access beyond what was correct.
(Assuming there is such a thing as a “good failure”)
June 18th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
@Amateur Admin
This may be an armature mistake from a admin point of view but think of it from the perspective on other hosts.
You email other host saying one of your scripts isn’t working.
They reply: there must be something wrong with your script
You spend hours looking though a tiny script trying to find a problem.
mean while host gets other emails about the same problem gives everyone the same response and fixes the issue with everyone never knowing what the problem was thinking they were in the wrong.
June 19th, 2007 at 12:27 am
It’s very bad, my site http://www.shock17.com always down
June 19th, 2007 at 4:17 am
@shock17
now it isn’t…
June 19th, 2007 at 6:23 am
there must be something wrong with yoohoo web server: ftp, ssh, … OK but lots of 503 on websites and VEEERY SLOW
June 19th, 2007 at 6:33 am
Still not down, shock. Care to moderate your hyperbole? You could use words like “often” or “most-times” or “whenever I check”, but “always” doesn’t appear to be accurate.
June 19th, 2007 at 6:36 am
Shock17 just needs hits to his website…lol
June 19th, 2007 at 7:21 am
Oh, Dreamhost. It was good knowing you.
Wait, nevermind. NO IT WASN’T.
Well, we got sick of the bullshit and my forum has now been moved to something SOOOO much better.
So, toodles, Nightmarehost.
June 19th, 2007 at 7:24 am
My site is down, I don’t need hits to my website, I have thousands a week. I do however need my site to have more consistent uptime and speed, as is outlined in my Dreamhost contract. I’ve proceeded with every request from Dreamhost staff to reduce spammers and other issues with mysql. Still, my site is slow and down A LOT!
What gives?!
June 19th, 2007 at 8:00 am
@Jue - Could you copy in the relevant portion of your DH contract where they actually guarantee uptime and speed? Mine doesn’t have any such guarantee - they state goals only.
June 19th, 2007 at 8:34 am
My site is VERY SLOOOOW!!!!
June 19th, 2007 at 8:54 am
My site (Ke Te Follen.com is down for a long time… still not working, also all the server moorpark…
And usually as for Luca very slow…
Could you check it?
June 19th, 2007 at 9:22 am
I didn’t say they guarentee anything, I’ve never seen 100% ANYWHERE. What I did sign up for is a consistent service with notices of downtime. The only way I receive notices is if my site goes down, and I come here to get them!!!
Seems the trend lately is that my site is slow, and then goes down. Gets fixed up for a day or two, then slows down, and goes down all together. I’m pretty sure I’ve received all the excuses and reasons for the downtime, and I’ve placed many restrictions on my system to help Dreamhost handle the load. Still no good!!
June 19th, 2007 at 9:38 am
Waaaaaaaaaaa Waaaaaaaaaa!
My mommy won’t let me use her credit card again to switch hosts, so I’ll just cry here. Waaaaaaaaaaa!
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
June 19th, 2007 at 9:49 am
Not sure if that was a dig Mike, but is that the solution, just leaving Dreamhost all together? If so, I’d rather just be told that the service I’m paying for does not meet my needs!! I have not received that message yet, just reasons for why my service is limited, slow and absent sometimes.
June 19th, 2007 at 10:58 am
Not sure if that was a dig Mike, but is that the solution, just leaving Dreamhost all together? If so, I’d rather just be told that the service I’m paying for does not meet my needs!! I have not received that message yet, just reasons for why my service is limited, slow and absent sometimes.
Every time there’s a problem with the service there’s a few trolls that enjoy insulting the people with the problems. Just ignore them…
I’d rather not switch webhosts–its a pain in the ass, I fundamentally like the people and the approach of Dreamhost, and I’ve been in a situation where a business grows faster than your ability to manage it so I sympathize. My primary gripe is that I can’t get a straight answer about what’s causing these problems, not to mention the suggestion that the problems are “resolved” when they’re not…
I agree that if Dreamhost is *unable* to provide better than the 40% to 50% uptime I’ve had in the past week just send out an announcement to their client base that if you expect better than a coinflips chance that your site will be up to go somewhere else.
June 19th, 2007 at 11:09 am
I’m going to make some extra money by taking bets on the biggest Internet based slot machine of all, my Dreamhost web hosting:
ARE MY DREAMHOST SITES DOWN?
YES -750
NO +500
May have to move the line on the “yes”, as I’m afraid that even at the high price I’ll just get one sided action
June 19th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
The solution is getting over it. I can’t think of anything in life that crying like a little girl fixes.
Would you rather be with a host that hides everything and doesn’t let you whine on their site? If so, then yes, leaving is the solution. Or did you just think the other hosts have no problems, based on the fact that they don’t publicize them?
This wasn’t even a big deal, as pointed out by a few people above that actually have triple-digit IQs. Everything after that is either pointless whining or link-spam.
Wrong. The trolls are the ones that think this place was put here for an around the clock tear-fest. And for link spamming, of course. Only the little babies & link spammers seem to disagree with that.
If that even represented anything close to the average, there would be more people leaving than signing up, which isn’t the case.
June 19th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
I have had 36 1 minute or less downtime events today. It isn’t that bad but something is in the airrrrrr
June 19th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
@snewp, Joe:
- When the dreamhost have a problem, which will be reported to dreamhoststatus.com ,my website is shutdown. The down tiem is longer than any other website that use the same host.
- Yesterday, there is a probem in my website which indicates “500 Internal SErver Errors”, my site down for 1 hour and subsequently run very slow after that.
- When the dreamhost continue show a message such as “PHP/CGI permissions problems!”, my website has no response.
June 19th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
Shock17,
What part of “your website is up” don’t you understand? It has been up and loading fine every single time you posted, including now.
June 19th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
Well, my site has been down since 8am this morning and I have not received an email yet back from Dreamhost after submitting support tickets 3 times today. I was finally able to get into my webpanel and found that hosting was somehow removed my account on this site but yet the domain was still there, but the webserver had changed to some random server. I would not call that whining, I would call it bad customer service. Going on 11 hours of downtime so far and not a peep out of DH.
June 19th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
Your site isn’t down either.
June 19th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
I read the comments here and amateur admin is spot on. They should’ve noticed a ballooning suexec.log file and they should’ve checked the suexec.log file to see why things didn’t work. Any admin above the age of 14 years old who admins apache servers knows these things.
The only people who I see that make this mistake consistently are unionized university employees too lazy to check if scripts still work.
@john
They didn’t check suexec.log, they didn’t have tests to tell them what was up. This is ignorance of their own webservers.
@why
As a rubyist you are supposed to care about testing, there was none here. Configuration is their focus yet nothing to test if shell scripts still work? Yeah suexec is supposed to fail if the permissions are wrong but dreamhost was supposed to setup suexec identically to their previous installs yet failed. So your point is moot, it is a good thing suexec works because the dreamhost employees sure didn’t.
I hate to say it but amateur admin’s “troll” is of the worst kind, it was right!
June 20th, 2007 at 9:06 am
Shock17… your site is up… even though it is a complete rip of youtube!
How original, you cant even change a logo sufficiently, let me know when you get sued!
June 20th, 2007 at 11:34 am
And when it does get shut down for TOS violations, he’ll probably come here and pick a random post to whine about it being a server problem.
June 25th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Is anybody having trouble getting dynamically driven flash components to communicate with php files? The posted issue is the only thing I can think of that would have caused my components to randomly stop working.
January 13th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
thanks a lot
March 16th, 2008 at 4:45 am
Successful website
March 16th, 2008 at 4:46 am
thanx a lot
June 10th, 2008 at 3:41 am
thank youu
August 13th, 2008 at 2:43 am
I hate to say it but amateur admin’s “troll” is of the worst kind, it was right!
August 13th, 2008 at 2:44 am
How original, you cant even change a logo sufficiently, let me know when you get sued!
August 13th, 2008 at 6:54 am
I hate to say it but amateur admin’s “troll” is of the worst kind, it was right!
August 13th, 2008 at 6:55 am
Successful website
August 19th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
thanks