Piotr GRD

@ djbob Data diged from heliohost nameserver: ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;ns1.heliohost.org. IN ANY;; ANSWER SECTION: ns1.heliohost.org. 14400 IN MX 0 ns1.heliohost.org. ns1.heliohost.org. 86400 IN SOA ns1.heliohost.org. ashoat.gmail.com. 2011062001 86400 7200 3600000 86400 ns1.heliohost.org. 86400 IN NS ns1.heliohost.org. ns1.heliohost.org. 86400 IN NS ns2.heliohost.org. ns1.heliohost.org. 14400 IN A 64.62.211.131 ;; ADDITIONAL SECTION: ns1.heliohost.org. 14400 IN A 64.62.211.131 ns2.heliohost.org. 14400 IN A 64.62.211.134 Just saying. Maybe it shouldn't, but it goes to .131. So I incorrectly diagnose the problem while not having previous correct records anywhere stored. The real issue is that the DNS record has been change for some reason. Result is that "ns1" is not accessible to the world.

There is no any A or CNAME record for wideaperture.heliohost.org so no any surprise that is not accessible for you or for anyone. If I'll "spoof" the DNS system, though, I see that it works (when Johnny works correctly at all, which is rare recently) and display the default portion of data. So I assume (I'm not an admin, I may be wrong) that the account has been created correctly except DNS entries not being set on nameserver.

In cPanel on your heliohost account check the "Shared IP Address" in the left column. Then you can create the "A" record for your subdomain that will point to that IP address and everything should work. If for some reason you can not or you don't want to create "A" record but only the "CNAME" then it can point to ANY hostname (domain/subdomain) that is pointed to that mentioned IP address (so for example you can use your heliohost.org subdomain if you did register account with it).

Short version: ns1.heliohost.org does not work for almost 24 hours already. Longer version: Technically there is only one nameserver on heliohost. But it's accessible through 4 IP addresses (maybe more, but these 4 I know for sure): 64.62.211.131 (as ns1.heliohost.org), 64.62.211.132, 64.62.211.133, 64.62.211.134 (as ns2.heliohost.org). It doesn't matter to which IP address you'll send the DNS request - the same nameserver installed on Cody will answer you. For every regular browser, though, ns1/.131 and ns2/.134 are the only "official" addresses. But for 24 hours already for some reason it does not respond for DNS queries when being asked through .131 / ns1 address. The same IP address is assigned to johnny.heliohost.org, so the problem may (or may not) be related to the latest longer problem with Johnny being inaccessible. This fact has no serious effect on websites being accessible or not, as ns2/.134 still does answer (when works at all) but something is definitelly wrong in there. More serious problem is that the nameserver (whole nameserver, accessible through both ns1 and ns2 addresses) is down so often (in other topic you said Cody has 95% uptime, which is low) as this has effect on theoretically more stable Stevie being so much inaccessible (if one use heliohost nameservers for domains hosted on it), too.

Not the nameserver on .131 thing, but maybe it's completely separate problem accidentally started almost at the same time, little bit after Johnny started being inaccessible.

This may be something else than usually. But I may be wrong, of course. FTP and cPanel is accessible, only HTTP on port 80 is not. cPanel reports practically no server load, but memory usage is surprisingly high (especially swap) as for the server that do almost nothing. Additionally - which for me is the main factor that it's something different this time, but I may be wrong, of course - the nameserver (located physically on the same server) has stopped to respond for DNS queries on the 64.62.211.131 IP, the one assigned to ns1 subdomain. It does respond on .132, on .133, it does respond on .134, so it works, but does not respond on .131 IP.

@ Geoff I don't know how about you, but I have just convinced myself that Johnny does affect the whole physical server and nameserver on it. Look at the time when Johnny did serve only the "DIVA Development", majority of requests ends up with 404 responce, no any PHP were executed and... nameserver responces were definitelly more stable. Image: http://i52.tinypic.com/141lf06.png

All accounts located on server Johnny display the same at the moment.

At the moment all accounts on the server Johnny seems to contain exactly the same files of some "DIVA Development". Try smashleaks.heliohost.org/website%20home%20page.htm or johnny.heliohost.org/website%20home%20page.htm or any other URL that points to the Johnny. If you still see some of your original pages (ie. the main one) then it's just the cache of your browser most likely.

I don't think that it's just you. At the time of your post all (or many) PHP scripts on Johnny did return 500 (pure HTML pages worked fine). Later the websites on Johnny worked fine and your "decoded.heliohost.org" did return "account queued" page. And now all the Johnny accounts seems to contain the same "DIVA Development" website files. So...

CloudFlare is not that great for dynamic pages in my opinion. It works in the way that you are pointing your domains/subdomains to their servers with the proper CNAME records. The visitors are sending requests for your pages to their (multiple) servers. Then their servers are requesting the page from original source and send it to the visitor. In other words - it works as a reverse proxy. While it works fine for static pages as these may be cached on their servers, save the bandwidth of your original server and even if it is down the page will be displayed to the client from the copy, but it's not that great for dynamic pages, as the "proxy" server needs to access the original server everytime, anyway. I did see the pages that use CloudFlare already and in a case of original server problems for dynamic pages I've only see a CloudFlare message about problem after many seconds of waiting time instead of request timing out like it is normally. Some other hosting recently did turn it ON and integrate in cPanel for all the clients, I don't know if it works as espected for them. Dynamic pages that uses it are not faster if the original server is slow, at least that's my personal experience. Other people may have different opinion, definitelly it have to have some advantages if so many people are using it already.

Stevie is intermittently slow with the responces, so this may be the reason of your problems, too. More in here: http://www.helionet.org/index/index.php?showtopic=9276

@ Geoff I don't know how the physical server resources are shared between the two VPS'es, but I would guess that one could affect the other. Even Charlie's responce times (not displayed on my monitor, but I log them) are vary, not that much but sometimes when Cody and Johnny are slow, Charlie's responce time is longer, too.

Yes, HelioHost nameservers are intermittently inaccessible. Apart of recent longer problem with Cody (mentioned in the news) that has been resolved ~24 hours ago, in the "normal" day the nameservers are quite often inaccessible. You can check this ie. on my server monitor (link in my signature) - browse the June 6th and before to see the average condition. Some solution may be using some other nameservers (external, ie. from your domain registrar, valid A/CNAME/MX etc. records needed to be configure in there, of course) for your domains hosted in here, in such case HelioHost nameservers failures will not affect accessibility of your websites hosted in here.

@ users If you would use external (not HelioHost) nameservers for domain names hosted in here, your websites either on Stevie or on Johnny would be still accessible in such case like this one. It's just were the problems with Cody - which handle this forums, hosting main page and nameservers, and only because of not functional nameservers users websites were unavailable. @ djbob I do know that having two seperate nameservers while there is a lot of domains/subdomains is a pain and takes a lot of servers resources to share/copy the zones between, but obviously having two nameservers would save users websites from being unavailable in such situation. Considering that Johnny makes the whole Charlie (including nameserver) intermittently unavailable even in normal day, this could be good idea to have two nameservers (of course depends on how much additional stress on servers would cause zone transfers between the two). Side note - that was really funny to see server load 0 (zero) on Stevie and almost 0 on Johnny (at the time when I've checked). ; D

@ witchcraft You would have to ask yourself: - why someone/some account didn't abuse the server so much before the power failure and started to do this instantly just after power failure? - how is this possible that the "abuse process" slows down the server while not generating any significant load on CPU or hard disk drive? (CPU usage and disk I/O are two factors considered while counting the "server load", which is low most of the time as mentioned by jje) Personally I think that it is some hard to find hardware problem. It would be "better" if the selected part of the hardware would fail completely so it would be more easy to find and replace.

If it works - keep it. Does it matter if this will be iframe, image or any other *external* file loaded? With AJAX requests you would also have to warn every user that javascript *needs* to be turned on in the browser. Some people may also have browsers set (which is not that rare! - this is setting for security reasons) to not execute javascripts from different domain than they are on so while being on ie. example.com:2082/frontend/x3/index.phpcp javascript/AJAX request from heliohost.org may be not loaded for them (and again, it's usually silent error in the browser). If this would be process included in the cPanel - then it's different story. I may be wrong, but my theory is that some people's accounts are suspended because the script does not load for them, even if they're login to cPanel. Look how often heliohost main page and forums times out for you or loads very slowly. It's intermittent but one may have "bad luck" and while being logged in in cPanel the mentioned script actually does not load. And either if it will be iframe, image or whatever - it will be silent error in the browser, so user is not aware that this time he/she logged in the cPanel for nothing, it was useless and will not prolong the account.

While being on a subject... So do I understand you correctly? You actually need to access the source of that iframe and not the login process to the cPanel itself?

This issue has been mentioned already by rvt 2 months ago: http://www.helionet.org/index/index.php?s=...ost&p=61236 However his solution was to change redirection instead of link in email. I'm not sure if it was fixed and then reverted back (if still occur) or something else happend and cause further issues.

I have mentioned this correlation between server responce time and websites being unavailable 16 days ago in here while thinking that djbob did something at that time, but that was unfortunatelly the same kind of failure like it is now. Anyway - for someone who knows the server configuration and knows how it works when websites does not work etc. this might be some tip as to the reason of this weird slowness.

In a case of my monitoring server - I send the requests directly to the server with using IP address, so any DNS issues does not affect my results. What's more - I see that majority (if not all) "A" records on heliohost nameservers have TTL set to 4 hours, so in such case every person would have one slow query per 4 hours only for selected domain name, later DNS entries are cached on his/her computer. Additionally - as you may see just now for hours - while Johnny does not work, Cody is very fast, so the responces from nameserver, and situation on Stevie does not change.

It looks like that indeed it may be related to some hard drive problem. Since more than 3 hours the waiting time for the response from the server is fast with no delays. The websites on it are missing, though, so it may suggest that the hard disk drive has been unmounted (or whatever else technically) for the time of the corrective fsck mentioned by djbob - if this is what just has been started by him. If not, then anyway this shows the possible correlation. By the way - thank you for using my HelioHost Server Monitor, I'm happy if it's at least a little bit useful. : )

@ sosunlight The server "Stevie" is currently down, that's why you can not access it. You can keep an eye on the accessibility of the servers by looking at this server monitor (for guidance only): http://grd.net.pl/heliohost/monitor/ Informations about current problem you can find ie. here: http://www.helionet.org/index/index.php?s=...ost&p=63863 What to do for being moved is described here: http://wiki.helionet.org/wiki/Moving_your_account But note that this page is currently not available (I think it's hosted on Stevie, but I may be wrong, didn't check enough). Keep in mind, however, that Stevie is described as being more stable, while Johnny is described as having potentially much more problems which seems to be true by looking on my linked above server monitor archive results for the last couple of days (before current downtime).

I know you can login into cPanel, anyway, but I'm hope you're also aware that johnny.heliohost.org:2082 page does not contain login fields. Just saying for a case you missed this.

I'm not sure what is the "cache problem" in here, but I use something like this: header('Expires: Mon, 01 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMT'); // date in the past header('Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0, max-age=0'); header('Pragma: no-cache'); Of course if in such cases like above mentioned redirection takes a place - such headers have to be sent with the redirection "page", not with the landing page where visitors are redirected to. If redirection is done with .htaccess or with some other method (not with PHP script) - I don't know how to attach these headers, unfortunatelly.