Major network issues
Posted (September 21st, 2008 at 6:23 pm PST) by JamesHWe are currently experiencing problems with one of our network providers. Our network admins are already on the case and working to get this fixed as soon as possible. More updates as information becomes available.
Update: 18:28: This seems to have already recovered. We’re watching all of our servers to find any that may have not liked having their internet taken away. If you’re seeing any problems with sites hosted with us please refrain from contacting support for the time being.
66 Responses to “Major network issues”
Mike, support peeps don’t watch this site at all. If you have any problems regardless of severity, the only way for Dreamhost to know is if you send in a trouble ticket. I think you’ll find them receptive to mos any type oft complaint so you might want to give that a try,
It might be something easy to fix.
all my sites down.
All my sites still down too. On ’slice’
Dont think this is fixed, or there is another major problem showing its ugly head. I can not get to any of my sites and I can not get to panel.dreamhost.com to login and report the problem. Even dreamhost.com is down!
My email server is still down it keeps on giving messages like user unknown, but on webmail it is working.
Is there anyone that knows what happened>?
None of the sites that I have on jawbreaker seems to be working either.
Sylvie, my email server has been doing that since last Wednesday night — I finally got a generic response from Support on Friday night, saying they hoped to have everything fixed by the end of the weekend, but things are still “no joy” this morning. As with you, webmail allows login, but POP does not. Even within webmail, I’ve found that the Junkmail filter also seems to be suddenly highly inconsistent (quarantines stuff on the whitelist, misses obvious spam), and messages that should have come in last week still have not shown up at all.
I’m boggled that a widespread problem of this magnitude and duration isn’t deemed significant enough to merit its own entry on the DH emergency status blog. I’m really good at sitting quietly and staying out the techs’ hair while they fix stuff; it seems a small thing to ask, that they keep me in the loop in return. After eight years, I am finally becoming one Very Unhappy DH Customer.
Ok, maybe I was wrong… I saw a issue come through last night and so I figured this was a continuation from that. But I see that the server recovered just a bit later from last night and what I just saw must have been a random fluke because things seem to be working fine now. 
my sites are still down…can you provide better support?
My site is down too and I’m pretty patient but I’m starting to have a problem with this “If you’re seeing any problems with sites hosted with us please refrain from contacting support for the time being.” when you haven’t posted an update to whats going on in over 13 hours!
At least keep us updated ,please.
Site is down here as well
Anyone have any suggestions for an alternative host? 7 Years with DH, have been a big fan, stuck with them through some problems a few years back, but this time it looks terminal.
My site is down as well ;(
I hate to say it, but I’m starting to think I’m with daltonr on this one. The server downtime is starting to become more and more often. It’s really hard to stay upbeat about your webhost when this stuff happens regularly…
My sites have been down all morning and today was a huge day for me. Mondays are when I post any huge updates from the weekend… Argh.
I know it says resolved, but I’m still having a crapload of problems on my end, connection refusal to FTP, as well as site not loading And I deperately need to get to my files for client.
down again everyday now! been with dh since 2001. its getting worse.
It’s Monday 11:38 est and my clients are getting really pissed not being able to access our site.
Meanwhile, I am being told the following by DH
“If you’re seeing any problems with sites hosted with us please refrain from contacting support for the time being.”
hmmm. not good. time to rethink DH.. i think.
““If you’re seeing any problems with sites hosted with us please refrain from contacting support for the time being.”
hmmm. not good. time to rethink DH.. i think.”
I agree I was going to comment on that fact, I mean how do they know if we’re truely resolved if they’re telling people not to submit tickets. On my paenl it says my FTP is “resolved” but its still doing a connection refused and I got one client yelling at me to get crap moved over to his server since I was supposed to do it last night but I haven’t been able to get into the http://FTP.
Yes, but how many web providers provide space for people to bitch about them? When I was with WebHost4Life, their forums were notably low on criticism.
I think this is the first time I’ve gone to check my website and seen nothing there since switching, so I’m not panicking quite yet.
All my sites have been down all morning.
12:27pm: All my sites were working earlier this morning, now I “Could Not Connect.” Argh.
Another thing I’ve been noticing, and also read about elsewhere, is that the MySQL servers used here aren’t the fastest, and my experience has also been “satisfactory” at best. Anyone know of another host with fast MySQL servers?
My PS load is usually around 700MB and it is around 200MB now all day.
I have sites on 3 different DH servers. One of them is really Borked and wouldn’t you know it, the Borked one is getting launched today.
F**k!
And the customer complaints (ie: my customers) keep rolling in.
My site is down and I also can’t get onto the CP to do anything — like launch new sites. I have been a customer for a week - how often does this crap happen?
Our PS ‘unipar’ is down!
To those losign business because their site is down, I’m not sure how much sympathy I would have. I’ve never considered Dreamhost the kind of place I’d put a mission critical system. There’s a good cheap-ish host, that tick along nicely most of the time, and from time to time have serious problems. The problems are rare enough that I’m happy to have them host sites that are not all that important.
You can’t run a business on this kind of hosting. I can see why people would like to, and the PS idea certainly makes you think it should work, but if recent events tell you anything it’s get your mission critical stuff only much more robust (and expensive) hosting, or figure out how to host it yourself.
My site reappeared today, the emails I had on the server are still gone, and the site is running with some errors.
My site isn’t important, I don’t mind occasional downtime. But I expect it to come back and I don’t expect to lose data.
Still looking at options.
We’ve been alright with Dreamhost most of the time… a month or 2 at the start of our hosting with Dreamhost, and now this past week of horror. My site’s not loading at the moment.. again. And while it’s a fansite and not something business related that makes us lose a lot of money… that doesn’t mean it’s not annoying, or nice to have a multitude of members asking what’s wrong and there’s no real answer to give them!
My site is down. It lets people run free MoveOn-like email campaigns. Getting calls from unhappy users. I’m totally not technical. Ahhhh!
I’m on Pandora. Is not up yet.
All sites down 
Mine finally just went back up.
my site is down too!
mine are all down right now
Mine is down too.
error id: “bad_httpd_conf”
Is this the problem? All my other sites on the server seem to be working fine.
Mine is still down too. It has been down most all of the day. Weird that they do not want people contacting them about it.. It must be bad.
All of my sites are down… Ahahahah~
I just got a response that my site was moved — to a “high tech” server (I guess they really have some running with hamster power). I was told to change my home path in my scripts…. Now I just need to figure out where I left those scripts…
I’m missing a few emails is that related to this in anyway? I’ve checked my junk mail and everything but not got them.
all my sites down.
Hi,
Every one face problems, I guess DR is having a big one this time. please wait…. I know it costs money But we also make form sites on DreamHost.
Please resolve issue as quickly as possible…
cheetu
One of my Wordpress sites is working fine, but the other (on the exact same server) isn’t working (though it does go to login page, but nothing else.) Getting the following message, and I’ve let DH know about it in the CPanel too, but haven’t heard back from them yet… This is the 3rd or 4th time within a few weeks, during work hours, that some of my DH sites have gone down.
Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@angieslistpodcasts.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
“If you’re seeing any problems with sites hosted with us please refrain from contacting support for the time being.”
Bwhahahahahashahahahha…..HHHAAAAAHAHAHAHA!
Oh wait, I’m hosting here…shit.
bad httpd on my link above…..24 hours out now.
@Tristan: I’m seeing the exact same thing on a WordPress-run site. It’s serving static pages (i.e., those created as regular HTML documents instead of WordPress pages) just fine, but WordPress seems hosed. My speculation is that maybe the database server is having issues? Total speculation, tho.
@Bill, I did some brief research earlier, and it looks like last year and the year before, similar errors were caused by DH upgrading PHP stuff. But you’d think they’d have that listed on this status page if that was the case.
Very strange, and extremely disconcerting, @Vincent, that they don’t want us to contact support.
What if my bank account locked me out for an indecipherable reason (error.log), and my teller told me not to ask why I was locked out? This hosting problem is a similar situation: one of my websites that’s down is key to my friggin’ job! No working website, no job, no money If this keeps up, I may as well be locked out of my bank account, too.
For those getting the “bad httpd conf” error - a simple search on the support wiki yields the following page:
@daltonr et al, if you have recommendations of a great, reliable place to host a professional website, please suggest. There are so many hosting companies out there, I have no idea how to go about choosing one. Thanks!
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2008-09-23/
no other comment necessary…
Might be time to update the status page. This update is from yesterday and says that things are resolved. They’re not resolve.
I think you just issued evidence that there is truly a God, John B. Can’t be just a coincidence that that strip was posted today.
Yep. Same here. Nothing is resolved as yet. My site has been down now off and on for the last 24 hours. It’s down at the moment. I’ve never experienced anything like this from any other hosting provider. Truly disappointing.
Site down again… this suuuuuuucks. Hope to be switching to Media Temple soon, they look pretty solid.
I will say that I think the Media Temple tech guys are great. However, I’d double check on grid server. I had serious mysql problems with grid server a while back and ended up canceling the account. Media Temple went through the same forum bashing that dreamhost is going through here. But they’ve probably worked out those database issues by now.
Richard, thanks for that tidbit, great to know!
My websites not work… looping in “Loaded..”, please fix!
media temple blows.. dont do it. i promise.. I had really bad experiences trying to use their shit
Mine are back down again on hector…
You people really need to stop with your “this is really disappointing” and “I’m switching providers” crap. From an ex-web hosting phone support agent that doesn’t have any loyaly to you because you aren’t my customers, I am going to say what I always wanted to say to people that would call in and bitch (and bitch and bitch and bitch) because their website was down.
To the ones who don’t have a clue how hosting works…let alone how the Internet works. The people that think the Internet is magic and “just works.” I got news for you, it’s just a bunch of computers. And guess what? Computers break. Just like that peice of junk you have in your spare bedroom that’s so full of porn and *ware (i.e., broken) you don’t know which way is up. Ya know, your wife probably wouldn’t be too happy if she knew you use that computer for porn, but then again she doesn’t know anything about computers either so there’s a good chance you’re safe. :thumbsup: “Git ‘r done!”
I’ve been on both ends of the hosting business, it sucks for the host as much as it sucks for you. They don’t want to lose your business anymore than you want your website to be down. On that note, I dare you to switch web hosts. Watch out though, you might end up on a server owned by Endurance International…hahaha…then you’ll be begging and pleading to come back to Dreamhost.
Thanks for the great hosting, Dreamhost worker-people! Even though my site is down, we all know stuff happens and I hope it’s a relatively painless fix for ya. =] Welcome to 2008 folks! Shh…it’s called the “Internet”…and it’s magic…
You suck.
All of my Websites are down. I hope you can resolve this soon.
I think I’ve found my problem — YMMV. It looks like the permissions on my folders are hosed. I have one part of my site working — luckily the income producing part… I can add to my galleries if I create a folder through my site admin page, but I can’t CRUD from my FTP client.
I was told my sites were moved to a new server. I’m guessing the move caused the permissions problem. Post here if you have the same issue.
My sites are working good, except for the one with flv files. The flash movie files are not working at all.
thanks.
thnksthnks
Just FYI for any future investigation I quite regularly get problems with getting onto my DH sites, experiencing network timeouts and failure to load.
This has been most noticeable using SquirrelMail, usually on my maughan.co.uk mailboxes which are set to auto-refresh the display at frequent intervals.
I have done the usual checks here but no other provider gives me these sorts of problems.
I’m in the UK on Nildram/Pipex/Tiscali bband running XP SP3 && FFox 3.
Regards, Mike