Script Error Again - URGENT

[murf]

Chris

We are having a nightmare with a general script error:
Error: Error opening ../acatalog/217Z46Z161Z215A1041805415B2824.session (No space left on device)

We are losing multiple orders every day this has been going on. You said in a previous thread that we should ask our host to increase the memory it allows for perl processes to say 12mg.

Our host tells us that they have done everything possible to help, as other Actinic users have reported the same problem to them.

Can i ask you to contact, Michael, majk@hostway-uk.com at Hostway (UK) and try to resolve this issue. I have spoken to him and he would very much like you to make contact so they can resolve this problem asap.

I hope you can help as soon as possible.

Many thanks

Mike
www.thefreemason.com

[cdicken]

Mike

I am unable to help you out here as I know very little about these kinds of problems on web servers.

I have checked my records and I can see you have not got Actinic Cover so I have registered a email support query on your behalf at http://www.actinic.co.uk/support/register.htm

The email support team should be in contact soon with some further details.

[garyhay]

Mike

This may seems obvious but why don't you just switch hosts??

[murf]

........because they are excellent !........and we've found most others abosutley crap.

[pinbrook]

they can't be that good, if they can't help you with your error!!

[garyhay]

I second that

[Jan]

Talking of switching hosts - will search engine listings etc all be lost if you switch hosts or will they find their way over to the new site somehow?

Regards,

[garyhay]

I have switched hosts before and you just need to make sure you have a good 404 page as the links on the site should all be the same so the search engines don't see any difference

[pinbrook]

switching hosts makes no different to search engine listing, SEs capture URLs.

so as long as your URL doesn't change your listing won't

[Jan]

Thanks chaps.

Regards,

[murf]

ok............i'll rephrase

Most of the host providers WE have used (we use multiple now for various reasons) are pretty poor at what they do.....they say they are the best, until you actually experience them.

Hostway are the best WE use and have used. Put it in that context and i still say that most are crap.

If you have a small site, changing is easy. Our sites are not small or simple to change.

Hope that helps :D

mike
ps........dont forget that it is an actinic error being shown to our customers...repeat !actinic error !

[jasondarby]

You do have to be careful with ISP selection.

Im currently with U-net, ive had a few server downtimes, and once where they removed my server for 48 hours, and claimed there was nothing wrong with it (even when support said there was).

Generally they are ok, except there ability to never increase or improve their services (25mb space - two years been like that - while everyone else is giving away about 50-100+).

But as i say they have been reliable for quite a time now.

The other host that i have is www.oneandone.co.uk. Excellant service and rarely (if any) problems... just 1 issue. 9-5 Support only.

Jason

[tobyjones]

Mike,

Did you ever get your script error fixed?

I was hoping to use Hostway as my web host with Actinic and saw this posting.

Are you using the Unix or Windows package?

Thanks,
Toby

[murf]

Hi Toby

The following is the typical detailed response from Hostway UK, and then people wonder why i always sing their praises.........it does seem however, that the problem is more to do with Actinic than Hostway UK...........

The error has been no problem of late, and i wonder if the recent Actinic upgrades have helped......anyhow, here is the response from Hostway UK......

"There are only a couple of reasons why you are prevented from moving through the checkout process:-

o the server disk is out of space (very rare, as it has to bypass
monitoring by the hosting company, can happen in DOS attacks).

o the script operating memory limit is too low to allow all of the
processing required.

The requirement for memory in truth, is not the script itself, but all
the runtime environment. In other words the operating memory allowed, includes the memory required by Perl and Perl modules.
Otherwise the script itself requires approximately 1Mb with all the
Actinic modules and loaded data structures.

The actual memory requirement depends on several things. The main influencing factors are:

- the Perl version on the server
- catalog version (script size)
- catalog configuration
o customer accounts
o payment methods
o etc

There is a way to decrease the amount of memory used, and that is by installing a couple of modules on the server, one Perl and one Actinic specific.

The Actinic module is called ActEncrypt1024.
Installation of ActEncrypt1024 significantly decreases the CPU load of the server and the memory needs are also decreased a bit. This is down to the replacement of the standard pure Perl order encryption to a (faster and smaller) binary package.

The other is called mod_perl and is a standard apache module. This can be downloaded from http://perl.apache.org/

The mod_perl module is an apache module which keeps perl in the memory while the server is running. If this module is installed on the server then the runtime environment shouldn't be loaded all the time. In other words, the script memory requirement excludes the runtime environment.

Unluckily these modules should be installed on the server, therefore only the server operator can do this.

One of our partners did some investigation and they figured out that without the added modules, Catalog works correctly with 16Mb memory."

...........so there you have it !

Regards

Mike

[zmagyar]

Sorry for asking the obvious question but have your ISP checked if there is any space left on the drive? I'm not sure it is a permanent problem or just appeared recently but if the latter then most likely there is some problem with the server. I would suggest to check the disk quota and the free space on the drive.

Regards,

[tobyjones]

Thanks Mike,

So it would seem that I just hope for the best then.

I shall be using Hostway in the US since thats where I will be when I set up Actinic so I presume they will have an identical setup to the UK one.

And I also presume using the US Actinic version wont make any difference.

Toby

[cdicken]

The US Version of Actinic is identical to the UK one from the point of view of hosting. I would not bank on Hostway US being identical to Hostway UK though. The US seems to like Windows servers much more.

[Darren B]

Hmmm

Having just experianced the same problems with internetters, and being bounced backwards and forwards by actinic and internetters. I gave up pulling my hair out at the point only having 5 left.

so i switched to pinbrook designs. And guess what so far i have not recieved one problem (touch wood)

An all i can say is they have been more than help full in helping me out, we even have our own SSL cert at a price considerably less than most companies charge.

Darren

ps Thanks jo for the feed back form works a treat :D

[murf]

zmagyar

Its nothing to do with space left on the drive, its the amount of memory that is allocated for perl resources..........its not the same.

Mike

[pinbrook]

its the amount of memory that is allocated for perl resources..........

this is an issue for the host to resolve. It is proven that v6 requires more memory, many people have had problems with their host because of this.

[garyhay]

Blue in the Face saying this but V6 is crap on NT/2000

[Jan]

My V6 is working really nicely now on windows - uploads in minutes, seems quick to run to me. I think it only runs into problems on the machines that are a bit overcrowded - having said that it was also working just about ok on fasthosts personal account until they improved the servers.

Regards

[murf]

.......V6 used on several servers, and we have found that it now works best (espec. with patches) on W2k (via Hostway)

Just our experienced view point, that all. (you just dont know how many techies we have had to calm down about other providers !! ;-)

[zmagyar]

Originally posted by murf
zmagyar

Its nothing to do with space left on the drive, its the amount of memory that is allocated for perl resources..........its not the same.

Mike Sorry but I must disagree here (believe me, I know the difference). There can be issues due to the server memory limitations but that results different problems (e.g. internal server error or timeout in most of the cases). This problem has already been raised here several times before therefore we are taking this issue seriously. I have personally spent some time on the investigation of the memory allocation problems but I have never seen this message reported due to the limited resources for perl.

BTW probably a good news for the community that as a result of this investigation the performance issues will be addressed in the next major release. I can not promise that it will require less memory but we are trying to compensate the requirements of the new features to keep this level of memory requirements and do not follow the increase greatly summarised at http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?threadid=716.

Ah, the reported error message (I almost forgot about this :-). There is only 4 places in the code when the quoted error message can be displayed for the session files. All of them is something like
unless (open (XMLFILE, ">$sFilename")) # open the file
{
return ($::FAILURE, ACTINIC::GetPhrase(-1, 21, $sFilename, $!));
}
What are we doing here? A built in Perl function is called to open a file for writing. If the file open can not be done then we are displaying the message returned from the system. As you can see there is nothing about the memory. The script tries to do a file operation by using a system call and the system can not do that. Do not forget that the "No space left on device" message is returned from the system... Repeat, system error :)
So I guess something strange is going on that server. You have mentioned that your host has already done everything possible to resolve this issue. Therefore I guess the memory limit has been increased (or even eliminated). As you are still experiencing the problem it looks like that its reason is somewhere else.
AFAICS you are hosted on a Windows server with IIS5. I don't know this configuration well but probably some misconfiguration may lead to the situation when the script is not able to write to the HD. I would suggest to contact your ISP and ask them to investigate this field. I hope the summary above helps to move this issue forward.
Originally posted by pinbrook
this is an issue for the host to resolve. It is proven that v6 requires more memory, many people have had problems with their host because of this.Partially I agree with you. If the hosting is advertised for ecommerce then the increased requirements of an ecommerce site should be provided.

[paulh69]

the drive or partition most likely really is full!

however if it is not then "no space on device" can be caused by problems with incorrect quota settings for user/sites/directories or corrupt quota tables, incorrect file permissions or the user apache isn't allowed access to the directory, etc.