XC-Host — Support Blog

EDIT2: Well somehow last night, I messed a couple things up and xc-host and this blog would not work. I’ve sinced fixed the issue… But the issue is fixed on the new server I wasn’t planning on moving this account until the end but it’s over now. I’ve updated the nameservers for xc-host.com and am transferring accounts that use the xc-host.com namservers now.
To all resellers with custom nameservers. Please if you haven’t already contact me to setup times when you want to be transferred. I have spoken to some of you but not all.

EDIT1: Got the nameserver ips. 1st: 217.115.112.147 2nd: 217.115.112.145. At this moment www.hidethe.info is on the new server. I am in the process of adding an index page. Account transfers begin shortly. First up my accounts..

With the help of a friend Sully I have secured a server in Ireland. I get the ips and ownership on June 1st, so I will have more server information then..

As I have said in the past I would like to phase out the xchost.biz domain. I will update the nameservers for it but when it expires I won’t be renewing it so please do make sure to update your nameservers. As an alternative when I get the server setup you could use the new domain I purchased for $1.99 yesterday hidethe.info.

I will transfer the accounts (mostly my own) that I know won’t be changing when I have things setup. If your accounts won’t be changing from June 1 – 6th please send me an email: joem [at] xc-host [dot] com. Dont forget to include the account name(s).
Otherwise on Saturday June 6, 2009 I will transfer all the remaining accounts. This date is subject to change.

Peter’s comment reminded me that I actually do have the specs!
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (Boxed-Skt.775) 2.4ghz
2 x 250Gb Hard Disk Drives (RAID)
2Gb DDR2 Memory
1000Gb Monthly Data Transfer (bandwidth)
cPanel Control Panel License
Fantastico is extra and I never really liked it because the web applications it has aren’t updated as often as I would like. I can always help out, just submit a ticket.

That’s all for now. More to come!

– JoeM

I am happy to report that all accounts are copied over. Fixed a couple bad restores..

If any of your account(s) are still down or not working like they did please shoot me an email joem [at] xc-host [dot] com or instant message me on msn.

Also as you probably don’t know the forums are closed. No one ever used them as most just talk to me on msn.. The forums now forward here.

– JoeM

@ 6:05pm the server went down. I was given no reason why until about 7:46pm. They took it down to swap hard drives. It came back @ 8:30pm. I could ssh in but that was it. This was fixed around 10:30pm. It was an iptables issue.. I was watching the final ep of prison break so the restore was delayed a tad…

It’s 11:42pm right now and I am restoring accounts. The first wave has begun. Once it is finished I’ll do the rest of the accounts…

My fingers are crossed that this will be the last disruption in service this month! Thank you all for being patient this week with the many problems that occured..

EDIT1 @ 11:57pm — WAVE 1 IS COMPLETE! WAVE 2 (FINAL WAVE) BEGINNING NOW!!

– JoeM

This morning I received an email from cPanel saying there we some problems with the main hard drive /dev/sda.
From the email:
“S.M.A.R.T Errors on /dev/sda
From Command: /usr/sbin/smartctl -q errorsonly -H -l selftest -l error /dev/sda
ATA Error Count: 12 (device log contains only the most recent five errors)
Error 12 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 60 hours (2 days + 12 hours)
Error 11 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 59 hours (2 days + 11 hours)
Error 10 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 59 hours (2 days + 11 hours)
Error 9 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 59 hours (2 days + 11 hours)
Error 8 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 58 hours (2 days + 10 hours)
—-END /dev/sda–”

I opened a ticket @ the support center. I was told that these were most likely false positives. And to run the smartctl long test.

I ran the long and short test here are the results:
“smartctl -l selftest /dev/sda
smartctl version 5.38 [i686-redhat-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error
# 1 Conveyance offline Completed: electrical failure 90% 74 -
# 2 Extended offline Completed: electrical failure 90% 72 -”

Replied to the email from Artyom and just got this response a couple minutes ago:
“Hello Joe,

The hard disk needs to be replaced.

Thank you,
Mike
AYK Helpdesk”.

To keep things short, the drive cannot be cloned “too risky”. They will replace it tonight. I am getting backups going right now. So please if you can do not modify any of your sites.
I do not know when the server will be going down but I will keep you informed. More to come.

EDIT1 @ 9:26pm — Email has been sent to techs. For them to continue. I have tarballed the entire /home directory and copied into the /backups hard drive.

EDIT2 @ 10:12pm — Still waiting for an eta. Once the server goes offline please check dextra.ws/xc.html for updates.
– JoeM

First off I want to apologize again for all the downtime. If you’ve been following http://dextra.ws/xc.html then you know all the problems that started on saturday @ 11am. First I thought someones site had brought down the server. Then when it went down 2 more times I thought it was a hardware issue. Techs checked that and came to the conclusion that it wasn’t that. They thought it was something I had installed a couple days ago. I removed it to be best of my ability and the crashes still occured. After it crashed the 8th time. My options were to either see if I could fix it or do an os reload. I opted for the os reload. It took about 8 hours and I finally this morning found out that the os reload went okay but the server was still acting up like before. So it was not the thing I installed after all… The server has since been replaced with new hardware (same speeds and such). I have started restoring accounts. At the moment of posting the first wave is about halfway. The letter we are on now is “m”.
After the first wave is done I will do all the other accounts. If you contact me via email ore msn I can tell you when your accounts restored or anything else you might want to know.. I am also available via email: joem [at] xc-host [dot] com.

EDIT1: First wave of transfers is complete. The second and final wave has started.
EDIT2: Second wave is 80% complete. If any of your accounts have problems please submit a ticket over @ http://www.xc-host.com?page=support
EDIT3: All accounts have been restored. If you have any problems please fill out the support form via the link in edit2.

Thank you for your patience during these circumstances.

– JoeM