1and1 cgi problems - 500 internal error on all cgi calls

[Mike Hughes]

on the phone to 1and1 now. both my websites on their professional unix hosting are giving error 500 on all cgi calls.

Another forum post suggests this has been going on since yesterday. anyone else seeing the same thing?

mike

[Paul Bulpit]

I have Dedicated Server DC L, three sites down.

Our sites went down totally yesterday morning for about ten minutes, but came back normally.

Paul

[TraceyHand]

ouch!
Glad I moved at the start of the year then :eek:

[saucysal]

We are getting the Error 500 message when adding to basket/checkout. 1&1 not answering. Nightmare. We only take orders online.

Sarah

[Donna Kempster]

Yes both our sites giving this error

Error 500 - Internal server error

Our last order 23.56 16/2

D

[Mike Hughes]

After 40 minutes on the phone to 1and1 all I got was that there seems to be nothing wrong with the scripts and that no changes have been applied to the server (how often have I heard that before).

I'm sure she said they were going to 'refresh' the server in case something had been corrupted. So I'll have to wait a while (max 1 hour) and see if that works.

The problem was that usually with 1and1 support I get someone very technically able but I think this one was probably not so experienced. Plus we had a few bits of difficulty with accents. It could well be that all their main support people are getting hassled about this which is exactly as it should be.

So, keep chasing 1and1 support. I'm sure they'll soon escalate it to the right level and find the problem.

Mike

[saucysal]

I have been trying to ring them frequently this morning, put in queue and then silence.

Sarah

[Donna Kempster]

Hi S it gets picked up there is no on hold music just a reasurring buzzing noise!!

i was told to change permission on cgi-bin to 644 but this has just changed the error to a 403 forbidden so don't do that!!

[Paul Bulpit]

I have been trying to ring them frequently this morning, put in queue and then silence.

Sarah

ditto.

We have also discovered that we can't use Actinic Payments from the 'Pay' button, presumably because it sends a call back.

Paul

[johnshackleton]

me too. on 3 separate sites.

Error 500 - Internal server error

[Mike Hughes]

It doesn't seem to be Actinic related. Even a simple hello world script gives the same error.

#!/usr/bin/perl
print "Hello World.\n";

Mike

OK. I take it back. A better perl hello world script does run OK.

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
print "Hello World\n";

So it's not everything to do with perl that's broken.

[Donna Kempster]

I couldn't get the operator to quite understand that I know 6 people with the same problem and that its not just local to my sites. She is checking the processing on our server and if this doesn't resolve it she assured me she would escalate it further. I'll update if I get anything more.

Donna

[Donna Kempster]

ditto.

We have also discovered that we can't use Actinic Payments from the 'Pay' button, presumably because it sends a call back.

Paul

We've jsut taken a telephone order and it loaded AP page but returned an error 500 on authorisation but the payment HAD gone through when checking AP reporting.

[saucysal]

When I ring 1&1 I get told I am being put on a queue and then total silence - no buzzing even. I wait about 10 minutes, just silence, and then give up. Some of you have managed to speak to somebody - did you have to wait in a queue with total silence? It could be my hearing isn't good.

Sarah

[Donna Kempster]

Yes Sarah was total silence - buzzing could be our lines!! We're right on the end of the exchange here! but even when the operator put me on hold to look at something there was no sound.

This is the latest response I have:

Thank you for contacting us.

This is in reference to the previous conversation that we had. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience that may have caused you. As further checked, you haven't reached the limit of the processes made in our shared servers. In this case, we have reported this case to our Administrators for further investigation.

If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

[Mike Hughes]

I thought I'd better post an update that a better perl hello world script does run OK.

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
print "Hello World\n";

So it's not everything to do with perl that's broken.

Mike

[guccij]

We're down as well. Looks like they changed something at midnight - ish. Madly cross now.

[leehack]

I'm guessing that there has been a Perl upgrade.

[guccij]

I'm getting the "all our advisors are busy message" then buzzing. Crap.

[Duncan Rounding]

All our 1and1 hosted sites are affected as well with fhe same issue.

[saucysal]

OK. So I waited through the silence and eventually somebody spoke! Amazing! She said that there was a known problem and that they were fixing it as quickly as possible and that it should be working again in a few hours. Uh! This is our whole business! We have had some telephone calls from customers: some get very cross, even though I am as polite and helpful as possible, and say they will go elsewhere and that we have lost a customer, others let me take their name and number so that I can ring them back as soon as it is working, though I guess some will give up waiting and go "elsewhere". There is one "elsewhere" and they are not hosted by 1&1. So were are certainly losing business, and we have 7 full-time employees here with nothing to do at present.
Sarah

[saucysal]

After they tell you that you are on a queue, there is silence, but you are on the queue, you just have to wait . . . and wait.

However, it looks like they now realise that they have a problem and are trying to fix it.

Sarah

[Mike Hughes]

It's probably too late to make much difference now but I wonder if we should replace the standard 'error 500' message with one that has our phone number and maybe a 'mailto' on it.

This would give customers some way of contacting us to let us know about the problem and/or place the order over the phone and/or leave some contact details so we can let them know when it's fixed.

Mike

[leehack]

Seems like a good idea Mike, even if it only helps for an hour or so now, it will be there in the future.

[Donna Kempster]

Sounds like a good idea .... for the less able of us could you give a quick post how to do it??

D x

[Paul Bulpit]

We just put a message up in the header explaining that it's not just us, and suspended ordering.

We've kept one tiny site live so we can see when it's working again.

[jayzy1]

Yes down here as well with 1&1, have raised a support ticket.

and agreed, simple instructions on how to replace the standard 'error 500' message would be very useful.

Thanks

[saucysal]

I have put a message on our homepage about the problem and inviting customers to ring us with their contact details so that we can let them know when it is fixed. Unfortunately not many people seem to go on our site via the homepage. All our Google Adwords take them directly to specific product pages.

Sarah

[guccij]

Just got through, useless. "Within the hour". Yeah, right. No apology of course. 1and1 - you suck.

[Mike Hughes]

It's the same as the 404 error page explained here http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=33443 ( see Duncans note about where to put the error pages with 1and1) but using

ErrorDocument 500 /Internal_Server_Error.html

instead / as well as

ErrorDocument 404 /Page_Not_Found.html

in your htaccess file.

These lines tell the server which filename / webpage to display for the error. You can call the page anything you want.

Mike

[Paul Bulpit]

I have put a message on our homepage about the problem and inviting customers to ring us with their contact details so that we can let them know when it is fixed. Unfortunately not many people seem to go on our site via the homepage. All our Google Adwords take them directly to specific product pages.

Sarah, go to Site Options | General - Header Text.

Put your message in there and it will appear on every page, and you can use !!< >!! to format it in large red print!

[saucysal]

As I was typing my last posting and mentioning Google, it suddenly made me think. I have now switched off Google Adwords and should have thought of that sooner - a waste of about £300 so far today in clicks that go cannot produce a sale. I just have to remember to activate it again when it is fixed, as most of our customers, including regular repeat ones, click on Google Adwords.

Sarah

[saucysal]

Thanks Paul. That's brilliant. Didn't think of that.

Sarah

[saunderson]

I got through to 1and1 dedicated server support guy called Mark this morning. He said he needed to restart our server. He tried to restart it but it didn't come back up so now all our sites are totally down.

Interestingly 1and1's Customer login page is now also giving a 500 Internal Server Error....

[saucysal]

1&1 must be fully-aware of the problem as their own website has it!

I am surprised that it is taking so long to fix it. But perhaps, come to think of it, I am not surprised. It is 1&1.

Interesting that it makes no difference whether you have a dedicated server or a shared server.

Sarah

[Paul Bulpit]

1and1's Customer login page is now also giving a 500 Internal Server Error....

Perhaps that's to stop people raising support tickets!

[Darren B]

for those that might want a quick fix try nublue its set up real quick and actinic runs well. http://www.nublue.co.uk/

the only thinkgpaypal call backs will fail on the shared hosting as it does not have all the modules installed, the vps solution can have the extra modules installed if you need them.

Excellent support with uk call centre

[Sean Williams]

Sorry to hear you guys are having such a torrid morning - 1and1's customer service sounds pretty poor.
I get the impression from our host UKFast that if anything like that were to happen there, those responsible would be marched into the middle of a misty field at dawn and dealt with appropriately :eek:

[saucysal]

When something like this happens it makes one think about changing host. However, firstly this will take a while, as my experience of transferring domains is slow and painful. Secondly, on thinking about it, my personal experience with 1&1 over the past 8 years of using them is generally good. The website has been down rarely, I have been able to speak to somebody at any time of the day or night on those rare occasions, and they have fixed it usually within 30 minutes to a hour. The present problem is unique with them in my 8 years of experience with them. It is possible that such a problem, whatever the problem is, could happen with other hosts as well. I therefore will not be rushing to change.

Sarah

[johnshackleton]

on thinking about it, my personal experience with 1&1 over the past 8 years of using them is generally good.

Sarah

I agree. They've messed up big time here but this is the first problem I have experienced with 3 different sites over the past 5 years.

[NormanRouxel]

Looks like it's everyone on 1&1. All my demo sites there (Business / Linux) fail on the cgi-bin pages. PHP and HTML pages continue to work. Not a biggie for me as they're just demo pages but this must affect a huge number of critical sites due to 1&1's size.

[guccij]

All our Google Adwords take them directly to specific product pages.I've suspended our Ads. No point in paying to send people to us if they can't order.

[TraceyHand]

We'd been with 1and1 for several years before we changed hosts last month (there but for the grace of God etc!)
I was happy to work with them on sorting the issues we were having with our new (non-Actinic) site but the feeling didn't appear to be mutual.
1and1's support was SHOCKING. It was truly horrendous and I ended up with numerous emails that were just churned out from a script and related in no way to the problems I was experiencing.

I'd be 10 emails down through a query and then someone else would respond with the same response/reply/suggestions that I'd already had way back at the start of the ticket!

I'd have been happy to stay with them but they showed to me (fortunately, back in December/January) that their support was a joke. And I have NO qualms in stating that!

We moved to an alternative host who have been excellent every step of the way. Every ticket I've submitted has been answered quickly (usually within a couple of hours, even within 10 minutes by phone on a Friday evening!) and their service has been faultless (this is NuBlue but I appreciate that their shared hosting, as Darren B has already mentioned, is not really suitable for Actinic sites)

Poor support was the nail in the coffin for me/them. If the current problems aren't the nail(s) in the coffin for you guys, perhaps an experience of their (lack of) support might do it.

I sympathise greatly. Hopefully some of you guys will be able to benefit from Actinic's emergency hosting??

[guccij]

Agree with views above: this is the first big outage in many years with 1and1. All hosts have issues from time to time and the effort involved in moving is too daunting for me right now.
Hopefully this cock up is soooo big that 1and1 will tread very carefully once it's fixed.

[Joanna14]

I agree too, I have had no problems with one and one over the last 8 years and have always got straight through. Even at lunchtime today I was speaking to someone within 5 minutes and they could only say what we already know, "that they are working on it as fast as they can". He did also say we can e:mail complaints and ask if there's any form of compensation. Which is maybe worth a try.

Tracy, I called Actinic cover to take up the emergency hosting and it's not applicable to this sort of thing as you would have to set up a whole new domain and register everything new. This is annoying and a bit misleading in the advertising.

So the only thing we can do is wait.... and fingers crossed it will be sorted soon.

ps. I too have turned off Google Adwords, thanks Sarah for this tip!

[saucysal]

Unfortunately I own a number of domain names but they are all hosted by 1&1. If I signed up elsewhere with another domain name, presumably I could then re-direct the present domain name to the new one and thus have my website up temporarily, though on a re-direct. Better than nothing. Does this sound a good idea? Has anybody hear of fatcow.com and are they OK? Or any other recommendations that are fully suitable for Actinic?

Sarah

[Duncan Rounding]

Does anyone know if thie issue is only affecting Actinic sites?

[leehack]

Usually takes about 4 hours to transfer domains to another registrar, once that is done you can start a new hosting account with whoever you like. Problem is you never know when hosting problems will be fixed and you could end up actioning a transfer and your old hosting account being fixed the next minute, you'd then sit there for another 4 hours without a site, when sitting tight would have been better.

With shared server hosting i think there are 3 simple rules to follow:


If there are continuous problems with the hosting, move hosts and don't wait until the next outage to do it, 3 largish outages in a year should be your trigger
99.8% uptime translates to about 17 hours of downtime per year
Ringing up endlessly for updates achieves nothing on global problems, all you are doing is clogging up a system that is already aware of the problem and already doing what it can to fix it, you nagging or asking for updates will not improve that by 1 second

[Paul Bulpit]

Does anyone know if thie issue is only affecting Actinic sites?

Duncan, 1and1's own Customer Login isn't working (500 error) so, probably not!

Paul

[saucysal]

Rather than transfering domain, I am thinking of re-directing the present domain, to a new one, with any name, hosted elsewhere, eg fatcow.com. This should be quicker and could be used as just a temporary fix when needed. This would work, wouldn't it?

Sarah

[leehack]

Rather than transfering domain, I am thinking of re-directing the present domain, to a new one, with any name, hosted elsewhere, eg fatcow.com. This should be quicker and could be used as just a temporary fix when needed. This would work, wouldn't it?

Sarah
Indeed Sarah, to do that slickly though, you'd have the temporary site already up and live and just sat there waiting. DR procedures aren't created within a disaster, they're created well before it. You'd also need to confirm payment processing from a different domain was OK, might need to revert to Paypal.

[NormanRouxel]

Duncan,

It seems to be code specific. I just tried the Network Test on a site that fails to run the Search or Add to Cart. Network Test runs fine and I even got the confirmation email.

Now that requires Perl to be running so it must be something Actinic does that's triggering this fail. Which of course doesn't mean that other sites won't be failing in the same way as it is just standard well tested Perl.

UPDATE: And it's nothing Actinic did recently. I just located an old V7 test site and the fault occurs there too.

[mikejdavies]

1and1 control panel back up

[saucysal]

I have just signed up with fatcow.com (I paid for 12 months hosting) with a new domain name (free), and was going to re-direct present site to it temporarily. However, cannot do redirect as need to log in to 1&1 to put the redirect on, and of course cannot do that as they have the same 500 error!

I don't really want to change the web settings in Actinic for a temporary fix, and also have to change settings for SagePay, etc. This may be necessary of course if 1&1 never sort the problem.

Sarah

[leehack]

Can't you FTP an htaccess file?

[guccij]

Control Panel's back

But auth.smtp outgoing mail has stopped working.

[saunderson]

My scripts are running again!

[Joanna14]

Do you still get the error 500 then ?

[mikejdavies]

Still the same issue here.

[guccij]

Mine are still borked

[saucysal]

We still have the 500 error. There are signs that they are doing something, starting with fixing their own site, so I am hopeful they will get to us soon.

In the meantime, I made a clone on Actinic of our present site (licensed new site and imported snapshot) and then tried to enter the web settings for the new host, but am getting error messages. I think it may take me longer to sort out the errors than it will take 1&1 to get their problem fixed.

Sarah

[skinnybloke]

Mine are now working again

[4children2enjoy]

Our sites on 1 and 1 have all been down since early this morning. Got through to telephone support without problem late morning. They say they are aware of it and are working to resolve it.

[saucysal]

Unbelievably 1&1 have just emailed me a customer feedback form to see if I am satisfied with the service I have received today! I filled it in and you can imagine what I said, the problem being on-going and our having lost thousands of pounds of custom, and lost customers to a rival business that is not hosted by 1&1.

Sarah

[mikejdavies]

Unbelievably 1&1 have just emailed me a customer feedback form to see if I am satisfied with the service I have received today! I filled it in and you can imagine what I said, the problem being on-going and our having lost thousands of pounds of custom, and lost customers to a rival business that is not hosted by 1&1.

Sarah

We have hosted with 1and1 for nearly 2 years and have not had a single problem until today. Our other eCommerce site is with Internetters and they constantly have problems.

[guccij]

Unbelievably 1&1 have just emailed me a customer feedback form to see if I am satisfied with the service I have received today! I've also had one of those. Unfortunately because it's specific to the person who took my call, I can't bring myself to slag him off. It's not his fault that 1and1 have messed up today. He's probably paid peanuts to work terribly long shifts in some dank warehouse in Indonesia.

[Mike Hughes]

Glad to see it's sorted now. (fingers crossed).

Like others, I'm disappointed with what's happened, but have to view this in the context of many years untroubled hosting.

Mike

[guccij]

It looks like they're trying each batch of servers in sequence. Mine are both still down.

[saucysal]

Presumably you got through on the phone this morning before we could. We are still waiting. Our last order was at 1.00 am and it is now 3.41 pm. The carriers have just arrived to collect the day's orders, but there are only those placed yesterday evening.

Sarah

[johnshackleton]

1 of my 3 is back again. Fingers crossed.

[Mark H]

We're just back up.

Darren - before this, we were thinking of moving our site onto our NuBlue Reseller account. We are also just in the process of setting up PayPal, is the callback issue on PayPal a major problem? Is 1&1 any better?

for those that might want a quick fix try nublue its set up real quick and actinic runs well. http://www.nublue.co.uk/

the only thinkgpaypal call backs will fail on the shared hosting as it does not have all the modules installed, the vps solution can have the extra modules installed if you need them.

Excellent support with uk call centre

[guccij]

Both sites back up now. We've lost so much money I daren't think about it.

[chris ashdown]

Now it seems over for you guys

My question is where was sir breakalot at midnight and what we he doing!!!!!!

Glad to hear it's over in most cases

To have hit such a big site in one go I would have thought was caused by outside forces rather than the company, but i doubt they will ever say

[guccij]

Oh bollox. The https://admin.1and1.co.uk is down again.

[Donna Kempster]

All our sites are back hopefully just one bad day. Must say having this forum and thread meant I didn't end up doing some of the spurious things that one and one support told me to do. I knew it wasn't just down to my site.

Thanks for being there guys!!:D

Donna

[saucysal]

We are back-up. In the meantime we have signed up with another host, with another domain name, have cloned our site by licencing another Actinic site and importing a snapshot of the first site. Only problem now is getting the ftp settings on Actinic to work right. Once that is sorted we'll have that site to fall back on if the same thing happens again. So we have learnt something.

Now today brings another problem - PayPal appears to be down this morning - can't login. Orders are down this morning, which may possibly be a spin-off from yesterday's outage, or could be because PayPal isn't working.

Sarah

[chris ashdown]

Sarah

Do you have your domain registered at the 1&1 as well as the site, if so you would be better moving the domain register to someone like 123reg so that in a emergency you can just redirect the domain to another server and it will probably be online in about 4-6 hours

If you have both at the same ISP you are unable to change as their who site will normally be down

[saucysal]

I signed up with fatcow.com, paying for a year, which included a free domain. I created a brand new domain name with them. There was no name server stuff to be transferred anywhere, so it was instant. It really was instant. So once I get the settings right in Actinic, I can have two identical sites up but with different domain names (just the extension is different), so if the main one is down I can divert/re-direct to the other. In the case of yesterday's problem, 1&1 login was down, so could not put a redirect in place via the settings with them, I would have had to put the redirect on my site. With previous cases where my website was down (very rare and brief), the whole site was down so a redirect on the website would not have been possible, so as long as 1&1 isn't down at the same time, I would be able to put the redirect in place via them. Does that make sense?

Sarah

[Mike Hughes]

I'm not so sure this is going to work the way you want. If your main host/webserver is down where is the redirect going to come from?

The usual approach is to host the domain at 123-reg (or similar). Then you can just point it to another host if your main one goes down.

Mike

[guccij]

I can have two identical sites up but with different domain names (just the extension is different), so if the main one is down I can divert/re-direct to the other. There could be a problem with duplicate content - Google is said to frown on this.

[Darren B]

Having read through this thread i find it amazing at how distressed a number of you are with the fact your sites are down and the amount of sales you might be losing and all the costs involved yet you are still happy to bumble along "hoping this wont happen again"

Sorry if thats the level of support you can expect or willing to accept and this is an important part of your business then to me you have made the wrong choice of host or made a poor business decision IMHO.

If its that important then be prepared to pay a little more than a cheap shared hosting package. If you want good support and uptime then you need to be prepared to pay for it especially if this is your main source of income. Look at VPS solutions for a cheaper alternative to a dedicated server.

Things do go wrong with all hosts, but its how it is dealt with and the impact on your business which should be key to making any decision.

[guccij]

If its that important then be prepared to pay a little more than a cheap shared hosting package.Darren, it affected all levels of 1and1 hosting. We're on Professional - not exactly cheap at £24.99 + VAT a month.

And while yesterday was horrible while it lasted, it is the first time in 8 years for us that there has been downtime of this nature with 1and1.

As it is, 1and1 have offered compensation. I imagine this will be in the form of free hosting for a time. Not enough, but something.

Also, as soon as the scripts were fixed and our sites were stable, we sent out an email newsletter to 9000 subscribers - which we were going to send yesterday anyway before we realised the site was borked. Anyway, as a result, we have had the busiest day so far this year, more than making up for yesterday's losses. 52% conversion rate ain't bad ...

[Darren B]

I understand what your saying, but i think i have seen more complaints about 1&1 in the last six months than i probably have in the last 6 years.

My point was, if your online business is that critical then you need to fully understand what your going to get if it goes wrong. If your happy then by all means stay put, if your not then you need to decide what is right.

Putting a critical business on a shared hosting option would be a definate no in my books. Ask any host who gets priority when something goes wrong.

But as i said if it suits your business model and your happy then go for it, i was merely trying to draw peoples attention to the bigger picture.

[Darren B]

Darren, it affected all levels of 1and1 hosting. We're on Professional - not exactly cheap at £24.99 + VAT a month.


Whats cheap and whats not is a personal decision IMHO if my whole business depended on my ecommerce then £30 p/m is cheap if i have a few sales or small amount of income through my ecommerce then £30 p/m is not cheap.

[malbro]

As it is, 1and1 have offered compensation. I imagine this will be in the form of free hosting for a time. Not enough, but something.
Did you get an explanation, so far I am being fobbed off, this is the first problem I have had with them in over four years but an explanation would be a start in revuilding confidence.

[guccij]

No, no explanation but that's because I couldn't be bothered to ask. I do find that they respond quite quickly to emails sent to support at 1and1. co. uk so maybe it's worth another shot.

I have looked at alternatives over the years, the latest being UKFast. Got fed up with them after 15 minutes of sales pitch. I hate sales calls. Couldn't answer basic questions, very defensive, all I want is a fecking price. Couldn't give it to me.

Edit - well blow me down with a feather. UKFast just called again. On an ex-directory number. Which they didn't get from us. That's them firmly crossed off the list.

[leehack]

Did you get an explanation, so far I am being fobbed off, this is the first problem I have had with them in over four years but an explanation would be a start in revuilding confidence.
Malcolm, i fully understand the feeling when you've been taken offline, it's an awful feeling, but you gotta be realistic too. In your own words this is the first problem you've had in 1461 days and it only lasted for about 0.5 day. That's one hell of a record, why would it be enough for you to lose any confidence at all? Realism is every bit as important as expectation.

[malbro]

That's one hell of a record, why would it be enough for you to lose any confidence at all? Realism is every bit as important as expectation.I realise that record is still good, uptime is still above 99.99%, my issue is with the scale of the problem, and the lack of feedback. An email from 1and1 support today saying that they checked the servers today and there is no problem leaves me feeling fobbed off, if they explained what they did to cause the problem I would feel a lot better about their support.

[Darren B]

Does anyone here use an external monitoring service for their websites?

You might find some interesting results about the real uptime of a server, remember a server might be up but for 100's of other reasons your site might not be visable on the internet.

There are a few companies offering monitoring services if you want to know when it goes down. From free every hour checks that send an email to 5min checks that will text you as soon as something goes wrong.

If you dont want to waste money on adwords or other ppc systems or just want to know your site is online its definately worth a look http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=website+monitoring&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&client=firefox-a&rlz=1R1GGGL_en-GB___GB315

I have used host tracker plus some others in the past, i can tell you its a real eye opener.

[chris ashdown]

No, no explanation but that's because I couldn't be bothered to ask. I do find that they respond quite quickly to emails sent to support at 1and1. co. uk so maybe it's worth another shot.

I have looked at alternatives over the years, the latest being UKFast. Got fed up with them after 15 minutes of sales pitch. I hate sales calls. Couldn't answer basic questions, very defensive, all I want is a fecking price. Couldn't give it to me.

Edit - well blow me down with a feather. UKFast just called again. On an ex-directory number. Which they didn't get from us. That's them firmly crossed off the list.

Jules

Sounds like a very sales oriented salesman, but try this, call them back and ask for their support number, give it a ring, I bet it's answered in under 15 second by a engineer who has full control of your dedicated server and can solve most if not all problems, I have only had to call them about three times and each time answered in under six or eight rings ( all calls related to my problems not theirs)

[Paul Bulpit]

As it is, 1and1 have offered compensation. I imagine this will be in the form of free hosting for a time. Not enough, but something.

Jules, they offered me one month hosting free without me trying very hard, I haven't replied yet, what did they offer you? PM me if you don't want to post.

Other comments noted - I think I've been with 1&1 about fifteen months, dedicated server, 3 e-commerce and two static sites, numerous domain names automatically renewed. Emails are answered fairly quickly when there's a question, telephone support is a little difficult with the accents, and the answers to either aren't always quite correct and take another go.

But if I put "1 and 1 down" into G there are rather a lot of negative comments to be seen! Yesterday was an annoyance but not too bad in the scheme of things - trying to upgrade to V10 at the same time, a lot more traumatic.
____________
Paul

[Paul Bulpit]

I realise that record is still good, uptime is still above 99.99%, my issue is with the scale of the problem, and the lack of feedback. An email from 1and1 support today saying that they checked the servers today and there is no problem leaves me feeling fobbed off, if they explained what they did to cause the problem I would feel a lot better about their support.

Maybe so - at the very least it would be very useful if they had some sort of Message Board giving notice of the fact there was a hiccup, and when it was going to be fixed.

My problem was that we were trying to upgrade to V10 and thought WE HAD broken something!! Especially as our static sites, and another Actinic site on 1&1, same datacentre (where we know the owner) were still operating normally.

[guccij]

I haven't heard back from 1and1 about compensation yet. I've told them our average order volume and take for a Thursday/same time frame as the downtime.

[malbro]

Maybe so - at the very least it would be very useful if they had some sort of Message Board giving notice of the fact there was a hiccup, and when it was going to be fixed.

My problem was that we were trying to upgrade to V10 and thought WE HAD broken something!! Especially as our static sites, and another Actinic site on 1&1, same datacentre (where we know the owner) were still operating normally.I was doing the same at a clients, not a good advert, it took a little while to figure out it wasn't our problem but a hosting problem. So far the only explanation they have given me is 'Technical Glitch'

[Sean Williams]

No, no explanation but that's because I couldn't be bothered to ask. I do find that they respond quite quickly to emails sent to support at 1and1. co. uk so maybe it's worth another shot.

I have looked at alternatives over the years, the latest being UKFast. Got fed up with them after 15 minutes of sales pitch. I hate sales calls. Couldn't answer basic questions, very defensive, all I want is a fecking price. Couldn't give it to me.

Edit - well blow me down with a feather. UKFast just called again. On an ex-directory number. Which they didn't get from us. That's them firmly crossed off the list.


I'm with Chris on this.
All companies try to give sales pitches - I just stop them before they start, give them my spec, get a price. Done.
UKFast were no different - took me three minutes to get the price for the dedicated server, 1 minute to agree a lower price and another 5 to finish the deal.
IMHO £24.99 + vat is very cheap for hosting what is in effective your complete business.
We pay £200 p.m. for a dedicated server, which is a lot for us, but it's peanuts in the whole grand scheme of things and we pay it willingly because UKFast respond by being brilliant at support, efficient at sorting any issues and providing very fast server response.
And they call me Sir :rolleyes:

Chris - you've had bad service from support - they ALWAYS answer within 4 rings for us!
Perhaps they value our custom more :p

[leehack]

Hosting should be compared to rates/rent on a bricks and mortar establishment. Cheap and cheerful in a crap area will work to some degree whereas great shop in a great area has better opportunities.

Cheapest hosting (the free stuff) = shop in the back of the video shop in the bronx, have to walk past 3 dead students to get to the counter and there's a strong aroma of funny fags at all times, always has music playing with a deep bass undertone

Good shared hosting (normal stuff) = shop in your general high street, generally clean, doesn't stink, occasionally a dog has crapped somewhere around the frontage

Dedicated hosting (expensive stuff) = boutique with an automatic entrance door that always smells of fresh flowers when you enter, can't park outside unless you have a private plate and do not wear trousers 2 sizes too small for you (if your name is Gulliver, you auto qualify)

[Sean Williams]

Spot On :D

[guccij]

Well it all depends on turnover I guess. We're not in the multi-million pound bracket.
And bully for you getting your "deal" so quickly. I'll stick with my dog-crapped front door for the time being.
Over and out.

[leehack]

A dedicated server is a step along that journey Heidi, circa £2000 for prime location is very cheap though, I'm surprised you're not on one tbh, kind of business that should be imo.

[Darren B]

Well it all depends on turnover I guess. We're not in the multi-million pound bracket.


you dont have to be, its how you value your sites uptime and response to any problems, spending x amount on hosting as a % of your turn over is not always the best way to decide IMHO.

Back to my earlier comment, are you all telling me that not one person here has a monitor on their website?

[Paul Bulpit]

A dedicated server is a step along that journey Heidi, circa £2000 for prime location is very cheap though, I'm surprised you're not on one tbh, kind of business that should be imo.

See my posts above, we're on a 1&1 Dedicated Server and it didn't do us any good, we got taken down with the rest of 'em!

dog-crapped front door

Our landlord has put a rat-poison bin (bolted to the ground) outside our front door - not good greeting for customers!

[guccij]

Back to my earlier comment, are you all telling me that not one person here has a monitor on their website?Of course we have monitors on the website. Two paid for monitors. But it wouldn't have made a scrap of difference in this case because the sites themselves were not down.

[Darren B]

Of course we have monitors on the website. Two paid for monitors. But it wouldn't have made a scrap of difference in this case because the sites themselves were not down.

Jules my question was a general one, i understand it was a script problem. Although you can have monitoring of script execution, so you know if cgi scripts execute properly.

I just wondered if anyone did run anything, to be honest the issue everyone faced was highly unusual IMHO to effect everyone on a multitude of servers is extremely rare (if im honest this looks like an upgrade balls up, test, test and test again)

my questions and input are not directly related to this problem but more of a "if, what and when" Im sure everyone here knows something else will go wrong at sometime and its always worth learning from this and dont always assume the host will be on top of it.

[chris ashdown]

And they call me Sir :rolleyes:

Chris - you've had bad service from support - they ALWAYS answer within 4 rings for us!
Perhaps they value our custom more :p

They call me Chris, charge me £1400 so don mind the extra rings, but when i first started they stated 3 rings butthat slowly increased a couple as others joined

Lee who told you about my trousers, if you only have a little one you can wear them tighter

I must admit I was a slow person to spend on my website for a number of years, now days a dedicated server and a few thousand a month on adwords seems good value. I guess it's when you change from small little shop mentality (in a nice way) to faster growth and more solid plans

[leehack]

Hey Sean, I'll call you sir for 2,000 a year! Hell I might even cook you an occasional meal.

Chris, seriously great to hear you talk like that, its great to see sites making the next leap, we get to see many underachievers in this industry, its wicked to see it go the other way too. 2 years ago I'd have said you was an old fuddy duddy stuck in his thoughts, you're a perfect example of what that a leap of faith can do for a business.

Its very hard to get over as a designer, the insight you get into what makes a great site as opposed to a good one. All the great sites have the almost exact ways of working. I am absolutely convinced that website underachievement is at least 90% because the site owner is holding it back.

[Sean Williams]

Cheap at half the price :D

[Darren B]

I am absolutely convinced that website underachievement is at least 90% because the site owner is holding it back.

And this is something i battle with regulary even as a GM i still meet reluctance, although it is very little and the MD is always open to ideas and suggestions but sometimes the odd thing is a hurdle that takes some jumping

[chris ashdown]

2 years ago I'd have said you was an old fuddy duddy stuck in his thoughts, .

OLLLLLD FUUUUUDY DUUDDDDY yooou yooou young whipersnapper you, I will prove how old I am

Whatever!!

How that for being modern

[TraceyHand]

OLLLLLD FUUUUUDY DUUDDDDY yooou yooou young whipersnapper you, I will prove how old I am

Whatever!!

How that for being modern

Not good enough, Chris.
you have to be able to spell it wrongly too ;)

Woteva!!

[Darren B]

Not good enough, Chris.
you have to be able to spell it wrongly too ;)

Woteva!!

Ah the preachings of our very own essex girl "Tracey" :D

[TraceyHand]

Ah the preachings of our very own essex girl "Tracey" :D

yeh right!
Just because that's how you spell it anyway :p

[gcamley]

A recent server upgrade applied at 1and1 resulted in all hosted Actinic sites failing while running any Perl script.

1and1 have rolled back the upgrade to allow Actinic sites to continue to work.

Actinic and 1and1 are currently investigating what part of the upgrade caused the sites to fail.

[Mike Hughes]

Hi Gordon,

I assume this is just a little update on what happened and what steps are being taken to investigate the cause?

it just seems a little odd to see a brief statement four weeks after the last post on the topic.

Mike

[Benjamin Dyer]

Hi Gordon,

I assume this is just a little update on what happened and what steps are being taken to investigate the cause?

it just seems a little odd to see a brief statement four weeks after the last post on the topic.

Mike

Hi Mike,

1&1 are intending to upgrade their servers in the near future, this time though they have decided to tell us about it. ;)

While it looks like a problem with the perl module they are choosing to use we are currently investigating and trying to decipher exactly what went wrong with their servers last time. As this is all retrospective its a little tricky.

There are a lot of Actinic users on these boxes so I am keen to be proactive. Once we know more we will post details, but as we are dealing with a third party there is an added level of complexity.

Ben

[Mike Hughes]

Ah.

I guess I'm not surprised they'll want to continue with an upgrade. I know 1and1 use their own management system but I assume the perl upgrade is a standard module.

If it's taking time to find the problem then it suggests a test server with the same module doesn't show the same problem. Or am I jumping to conclusions here?

Mike

[Duncan Rounding]

It's a bit concerning if a standard upgrade module could potentially break Actinic. Is the back compatibility perl not very good?

[cbarling]

As far as we are aware it was caused by a bug in the particular version of Perl that they deployed.

Chris

[Paul Bulpit]

I have three sites on a 1&1 Dedicated Server, one of them went down at about 13.00GMT (2pm BST) - anyone experiencing problems today or is it just me?

Please could olderscot Mike explain how to query the server?

Paul

[Mike Hughes]

My sites seem to be OK.

It's a bit odd that it's just affecting one site on a dedicated server. Your best bet might be to try a refresh.

Please could olderscot Mike explain how to query the server?


I'm not sure what you're asking here. Can you remind me? I seem to be forgetting lots of things these days. I've already messed up one answer today.

Mike

[skinnybloke]

I have sites on 2 fully managed servers - all are fine.

[Paul Bulpit]

Change Script ID and refresh in progress already - this could take the rest of the day.

I tried to 'Quote' Post #11 (http://community.actinic.com/showpost.php?p=315202&postcount=11) on page 1 of this thread but it doesn't bring the Code with it, so I've linked to it.

Non-working site: www.rainbowfloristsupplies.co.uk (http://www.rainbowfloristsupplies.co.uk)

[Mike Hughes]

OK. This is a simple "Hello World" script. It's just a simple script you can run to show whether perl is / isn't working at all.

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
print "Hello World\n";

All you nned to do is save the script to a file. "hello.pl" for example and then upload to the cgi-bin on your server. If you then try and run it (i.e. go to www.yoursite.com/cgi-bin/hello.pl you should see 'Hello World' displayed in your browser.

Mike

[Mike Hughes]

You should be able to see what perl is installed on your server from this link:

http://www.rainbowfloristsupplies.co.uk/logs/info.pl

You'll need to enter your username and password.

Mike

* Not sure this will run on a dedicated server or not. Worth a try.

[Paul Bulpit]

1) Hmm, c&p'd your code to 'hello.pl' and ftp'd that to cgi-bin:

Input: http://www.rainbowfloristsupplies.co.uk/cgi-bin/hello.pl

Output:

Error 500 - Internal server error
An internal server error has occured!
Please try again later.

However, I did the same to a working site and got the same error response?

2) Yes, you can do that but I don't know what I'm looking for.... Perl Version 5.8.8

[Mike Hughes]

That's odd because the same script runs OK on mine. I just tried it.

The only thing I can think that might cause problems are:

- Use notepad or an HTML editor for scripts. Never MS Word.
- Make sure the permissions are 755
- Sometimes ftp programs use the wrong format. (ASCII vs Binary). I think ASCII is the right mode.
- My script is 87 bytes when uploaded. Is yours the same?

TBH if you have several sites running and one that isn't on the same server then it seems unlikely to be the perl modules that are wrong. Most likely it's something else.

Not sure where to look though. My first steps would be run a network test, check permissions and then do site refresh. Hopefully your site refresh will have fixed it.

Mike

PS:

2) Yes, you can do that but I don't know what I'm looking for.... Perl Version 5.8.8


If nothing else it shows that perl is running OK on your server.

[Paul Bulpit]

Refresh fixed this problem, (though I now have another) however to continue this in case it helps someone:

- Use notepad or an HTML editor for scripts. Never MS Word.
I used notepad and 'Saved As' 'All Files' 'hello.pl'

- Make sure the permissions are 755
They were automatically set to 644 but changing them on your advice now didn't make any difference;

- Sometimes ftp programs use the wrong format. (ASCII vs Binary). I think ASCII is the right mode.
I used Webspace Explorer in Control Panel....

- My script is 87 bytes when uploaded. Is yours the same?
Ah, mine said 84 bytes. I downloaded it and deleted a space at the end, it's now 83 bytes. There are 81 characters (including carriage returns) and presumably a start & finish bit.

Water under the bridge for now though. Thanks for your input.

__________
Paul

[gcamley]

Actinic and 1and1 are currently investigating what part of the upgrade caused the sites to fail.
We have found that the server upgrade that was applied included version 2.25 of a perl module safe.pm which was incompatible with perl 5.8.8 and earlier which happens to be the version of perl installed on 1and1 servers.

A later version of safe.pm was released to fix the problem however 1and1 have opted to upgrade perl later this year probably to 5.10.1 rather than re applying the server upgrade plus the fix.

Until then 1and1 will not re-apply the server upgrade that caused the problem reported at the beginning of this thread so that Actinic sites will continue to work.