XC-Host — Support Blog

FINAL EDIT: The move is done, if any account was improperly transferred please let me know asap, we only have roughly 10 more hours before the other server is taken offline permanently.

Yes it looks like yet again we are moving. Were not moving hosting companies just going to a smaller vps. Since I don’t pay for the server anymore it’s been a tough time for the person who took over. The only feasible way to keep things going is to move to a vps (virtual private server).

A move date has not yet been set but from what I was just told it will be by the end of this month.

Reading this over it looks like I’m telling you a lot of nothing.. I’ll post more details once I know them..

EDIT on Feb. 23rd @ 8:16pm Looks like it might be by the end of the month, settled on a 100GB vps. More soon.

EDIT on Feb 25th @ 4:46pm The new vps is setup, currently transferring accounts over. The nameserver ips will not change. Currently transferring the nogs00 reseller. More to come..

EDIT on Feb 25th @ 5:03pm Just finished manually transferring all the packages.

EDIT on Feb 25th @ 5:46pm PHP has now been compiled with version 5.3.1. Transfers start soon, unlike what was mentioned above.

EDIT on Feb 25th @ 6:21pm Account transfers have begun, so far only nogs00, and alphades. More soon..

EDIT on Feb 25th @ 6:41pm 19 accounts have been transferred so far.

EDIT on Feb 25th @ 8:27pm 43 accounts have been transferred at this time. The resellers dmlanger, mint and root’s accounts will be transferred tomorrow. This will be the last update tonight.

If you are reading this then the server switch was successful. I’ve moved away from mjz’s hosting because of the unreliability as of late.

Still no updates on the server move.. But things are underway..

Not sure if anyone else noticed this but there was some downtime earlier yesterday around 10pm. I had to get the latest version of cPanel before upgrading php and firefox decided to take a shiz on the deal and crash. Long story short I had to kill the still running upcp process before running /scripts/upcp — force to re-install cPanel from scratch. This took the longest to do and then I finally got to rebuild php.. That took a good 45 minutes for that and it looks like suphp still isn’t installed. I’ll take a look in the morning, NEED SLEEP..

UPDATE BEFORE SLEEP: Turns out I was doing it wrong, thanks to some quick googling even me being half awake can fix the problem.. Now every php script run will show as your user account and not “nobody”. Which in short makes the server secure.

The drive was installed last time the server went down and only today it was mounted, formatted and I setup the backups.

Too bad I didn’t know sooner or I would have mounted the drive and setup the backups..

Backups run daily, and I’m trying full backups at the moment. The backups have already run for the night as I haven’t changed the server time yet.. More soon.

– JoeM

I just was notified by Kevin that the server will go down for a bit as the new backup hard drives are installed. It’s happening at 7:00pm my time because it will be 11:00pm in Ireland.

Sorry for the short notice but I just learned about this myself! It is currently 5:15pm so in another hour and 45 minutes.

–JoeM

At approximately 1:30am (EST -5) this morning I noticed a couple instant messages saying that there was extreme server load on the server. I took a look and had to wait a while as pages are taking much longer than usual to load. Everything is fine, server load is under 1, but pages do take considerably longer to load..

I pinged xc-host.com and got one timeout and ended up with 25% packet loss a traceroute confirms this. I’ve sent in a ticket and will have a cause / fix for this soon. I’ll edit this post when I have more information.

EDIT #1 @ 10:08am: “I can see a lot of packet loss to that server. I’m still looking into this problem and will update you shortly.”

EDIT #2 @ 10:50am: The server is down now. They tried doing a reboot but it’s not responding. From the data center: “I checked all the connections but couldn’t find any problem, and other servers in that rack aren’t having any problems.
I tried rebooting the server but I’m not getting any response from it now. We’re going to take it to the workbench now and see what the problem is.”

EDIT #3 @ 11:35am: “Unfortunately one of the two recently added backup drives has failed.
We’re trying to get the server back online asap without the failed drive but it’s giving a few errors we have to work past.”

EDIT #4 @ 2:01pm: It looks like both backup drive maybe corrupt. OR the main drives. It is uncertain at this time. A backup is being run right now so nothing is lost. I don’t have eta. But I’ll post here once I know more.

EDIT #5 @ 3:33pm: The data is okay thankfully, the data center has gone ahead and is building a new server for us. At first I said WHY?! But it is so that this doesn’t happen again. As you know when we got the first hard drive it failed almost instantly.. I hope this is resolved soon. Still no eta..

EDIT #6 @ 8:58pm: The servers back finally, just doing account restoration. Unfortunately the restores are from the 17th. But the old main hard drive is mounted and the files will be restored along with the databases and DNS entries. Also I suggest everyone read the post about XC-Host closing.

EDIT #7 @ 2:12am: It appears that the wrong /home hard drive was installed. As the data is old which also means that the raid hasn’t worked since August 17, 2009. I just spent 3 hours making cp-backups of old data. But XC-Host.com is up, it redirects here.

EDIT #8 @ 11:26am: Didn’t get xc-host.com up last night, as named and the dns weren’t working. But We are slowly restoring accounts. Still having problems with mysql and named but they should have that fixed asap. Please stay tuned to this blog for more updates as they come.

EDIT #9 @ 12:12pm: Named is up, mysql will stay down until restoring is complete. Accounts are being backed up using cPanels backup wizard right now so restoring will be easier. http://hidethe.info now loads fine. More soon!

EDIT #10 @ 2:52pm: Almost all the accounts have been backed up. Currently on a very large account in the w’s. There are 10 accounts left. Then the restores begin. Please note that mysql is not on yet so some of your sites will show mysql errors. We’re almost through this finally. Thank you all for your patience.

EDIT #11 @ 4:54pm: Restoring accounts. Should be another 2 or more hours before everything is 100% live!

FINAL EDIT #12 @7:53pm: We are back online 100%. I’ve restored the 190 or so accounts I have. No comes the hard part, figuring out whose staying and whose leaving. I’ll be sending out an email shortly.

– JoeM

Before everyone goes “FUCK WHY”. Let me explain.
I’ve been saying this on and off ever since we left ayksolutions because it seems that something goes wrong every 3 months. I’ve been slowly losing customers ever since. Lost one today from this outage. Whose next?

Enough’s enough, the market is so saturated with hosting companies that I can’t compete. Trust me I’ve tried. Godaddy offers hosting for pennies.. The last sign up I had was September of 2008, and I just removed the account last week as he closed down his computer business..

I’m going to see if I can work out a deal with matt @ mjzhosting (aka mjz) so that I can bring any resellers that want to come with me.

To any shared account client, your welcome to stay until your account expires and possibly beyond. Not much will change, support will be directly through this domain. If I choose to continue the price won’t change, support wont change. I just won’t have a server.

For those resellers who’ve paid for one or two years, I’m willing to continue to host your accounts if I can work something out with mjz. Otherwise I can’t really offer refunds but I don’t mind paying for the first 2 months on your new host. It’s the least I can do and you won’t get that anywhere else.

The time line I’ve come up with for the closing is two months. It gives me time to hopefully work something out with mjz and time for anyone who wants to leave to find a new host. Personally I still like mjzhosting, but I know 80% of my clients came from a bad experience over there. I started XC-Host when one of mjz’s servers had a week of downtime because of a hard drive failure.
MJZ Hosting is running entirely new servers / hardware right now, and there hasn’t been a problem in a while. Matt the owner has been running MJZ Hosting way before I even paid for hosting! Take a look at his website: http://mjzhosting.net

Lastly, I want to thank all my customers who have been with me throughout this bumpy ride since March of 2006. I’ve enjoyed hosting you for all this time and wish you luck with your new host.

Sincerely,
JoeM
XC-Host
www.XC-Host.com

This just came to my attention thanks to @lorelleonwp. Attacks on past versions of wordpress are happening now! Article: http://twttr.it/wpattack

I keep all my wp installs up to date. I even have a shell script that updates them in seconds! As I have said in an earlier post feel free to send in a support request on this and I’ll add you to the script.

EDIT: If you are running a past version of wordpress it is now mandatory and you must upgrade within 48 hours of this post. The damage that the worm can do to your website will take a couple of hours to reverse. It includes installing a fresh copy of wordpress and importing all your old posts and etc.
This post was revised on September 8, 2009 @ 1:00pm (EST -5). Thank you all for understanding

– JoeM

Landed @ 1am Toronto time this morning. Nice cab ride to the hotel and get a free continental breakfast from starbucks ftw. Grande Earl Grey Tazo Tea Latte.. mmm.. I get one everyday I’m here (4)!

If you have support requests please submit them the usual way via the support form above. Or via email..

Also trying out my new url shortening service (proudly running on yourls) twttr.it!

Off to enjoy San Fran

–JoeM

I got word from my provider that the new drive is in and will be installed 9pm GMT, which is 6pm EST (-5) my time. So in roughly 5 hours and 40 minutes the server goes down for a brief period of time.

Check this post for updates as I will be posting them.

UPDATE #1: Currently the 250gb hard drive we ordered is out of stock. So instead we are getting a 400gb drive for the same price!!

UPDATE #3: Under a tornado watch. So I won’t be on my computer. Power should be going out soon lol. Drive was apparently installed. My provider was talking to the server techs at the data center before I shutdown. I don’t see the drive in whm or ssh.

UPDATE #4: Tornato watch is over thankfully . Apparently instead of a 400gb hard drive the data center techs installed 2×200gb hard drives. So they will be setup in a raid 0 to give us 1 400gb drive. More updates soon.

–JoeM