Something wrong with the server? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: firewalker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 02, 2011, 09:08:51 am
content: The past two weeks is really hard to listen/download the episodes.QuoteI will fail many times. I will take up to an hour to download the episode.Alexander.

author: McMonster
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 02, 2011, 09:36:01 am
content: All fine here, up to 1,7 MB/s, it must be a problem with your connection.

author: firewalker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 02, 2011, 09:41:01 am
content: Everything else works just fine. Maybe an ISP issue...Alexander.

author: firewalker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 05, 2011, 08:36:25 am
content: This issue is really pissing me off!

author: RoelA
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 05, 2011, 10:20:08 am
content: Code:roel@vps:~$ wget http://www.theamphour.com/podpress_trac/web/1054/0/TheAmpHour-62-NarquoisNerdNescience.mp3--12:20:18-- http://www.theamphour.com/podpress_trac/web/1054/0/TheAmpHour-62-NarquoisNerdNescience.mp3=> `TheAmpHour-62-NarquoisNerdNescience.mp3'Resolving [url=http://www.theamphour.com]www.theamphour.com... 74.220.207.157Connecting to [url=http://www.theamphour.com]www.theamphour.com|74.220.207.157|:80... connected.HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 FoundLocation: http://theamphour.com/wp-content/uploads/TheAmpHour-62-NarquoisNerdNescience.mp3 --12:20:20-- http://theamphour.com/wp-content/uploads/TheAmpHour-62-NarquoisNerdNescience.mp3=> `TheAmpHour-62-NarquoisNerdNescience.mp3'Resolving theamphour.com... 74.220.207.157Connecting to theamphour.com|74.220.207.157|:80... connected.HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OKLength: 30,400,604 (29M) [audio/mpeg]100%[============================================================================================================================>] 30,400,604 1.77M/s ETA 00:0012:20:37 (1.65 MB/s) - `TheAmpHour-62-NarquoisNerdNescience.mp3' saved [30400604/30400604]Can you do a traceroute to theamphour.com?

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 05, 2011, 10:30:01 am
content: I don't see any problem, does anyone else?Dave.

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 05, 2011, 11:56:28 am
content: It took me about 3 days to get episodes 61 and 62 on iTunes because the download would crawl and then Itunes would abort. This was starting last Friday. Tried downloading ep61 directly from the Amp Hours website and that kept aborting too. I didn't run any diagnostics.I thought iTunes downloads actually came from iTunes, but there are about 20 other podcasts that have no problem - just the Amp Hour.I am getting episode 63 right now and it is going a bit faster - 80 minutes to get 30MBytes, while another 24Mbyte podcast downloaded while I was typing this.I am at Oberon, NSW, AU, and my ISP connects via the Telstra network.Just before posting this, the iTunes download of #63 crashed at 3.9Mbytes error -3259 which means "network timeout" I gather.Richard

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 05, 2011, 12:06:11 pm
content: I just downloaded Ep63 to a server in Dallas - 17 seconds, so it looks like it is probably not the hosting site.A direct download to home is 7Kbytes/sec which is slow but an improvement. So something on the network between your host and Telstra.If I download 2 episodes directly at the same time, both go at 7KBytes/sec, so there is some definite throttling happening on a router somewhere.Richard.

author: firewalker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 05, 2011, 12:41:03 pm
content: tracerouteCode:traceroute to theamphour.com (74.220.207.157), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets1 (192.168.2.1) 1.212 ms 1.144 ms 1.068 ms2 80.106.108.3 (80.106.108.3) 23.771 ms 9.838 ms 11.031 ms3 80.106.229.49 (80.106.229.49) 9.565 ms 9.265 ms 9.008 ms4 lari-gsra-lari7609b-1.backbone.otenet.net (79.128.231.9) 9.827 ms 9.561 ms 10.003 ms5 athe-crsa-lari-gsra-1.backbone.otenet.net (79.128.224.201) 20.627 ms 18.184 ms 19.438 ms6 ten0-0-0-0-crs02.ath.OTEGlobe.net (62.75.3.13) 101.346 ms 65.698 ms 63.834 ms7 62.75.4.138 (62.75.4.138) 68.858 ms 64.428 ms 64.405 ms8 62.157.251.41 (62.157.251.41) 66.719 ms 66.547 ms 67.075 ms9 194.25.6.46 (194.25.6.46) 65.911 ms 66.834 ms 66.730 ms10 194.25.211.134 (194.25.211.134) 71.760 ms 70.547 ms 70.393 ms11 xe-4-3-0.nyc30.ip4.tinet.net (89.149.182.114) 146.752 ms xe-9-1-0.nyc30.ip4.tinet.net (213.200.81.126) 147.053 ms 148.122 ms12 ace-data-centers-gw.ip4.tinet.net (173.241.129.42) 154.457 ms 153.366 ms 150.470 ms13 tg1-1.ar02.prov.acedc.net (199.58.196.41) 211.824 ms 208.905 ms 208.808 ms14 port99.ar02.prov.bluehost.com (199.58.199.118) 208.054 ms 206.548 ms 208.254 ms15 host157.hostmonster.com (74.220.207.157) 204.332 ms 204.079 ms 206.084 msAlexander.

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 05, 2011, 12:56:45 pm
content: The only two IPs in common with me are the last two:14 port99.ar02.prov.bluehost.com (199.58.199.118) 208.054 ms 206.548 ms 208.254 ms15 host157.hostmonster.com (74.220.207.157) 204.332 ms 204.079 ms 206.084 msSince the hostgator is in California, and I got a 20Mbit/sec download to Dallas, that makes it look like the bluehost router (199.58.199.118) is the one throttling.Bluehost is one of Hostgators biggest competitors. I wonder why Hostgator goes through a Bluehost router? So my internet is going from New York to a Bluehost router in Utah and then to Hostgator in California.If anyone has good download speed for AmpHours podcasts, can they do a trace (run "tracert 74.220.207.157" in a cmd window on Windows) and see if they go through IP address 199.58.199.118?Richard.

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 05, 2011, 01:27:45 pm
content: My last 4 IPs in the trace route are:QuoteThe last two are Cogentco. I just did media downloads from the Cogentco server (38.100.128.10) and it was fast.Still looking like the Bluehost router in Provo, Utah may be throttling mp3's to 10Kbytes/sec, but in doing so, it often gets below 5KBytes/sec or times out.Richard

author: baljemmett
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 05, 2011, 01:31:39 pm
content: Quote from: amspire on October 05, 2011, 12:56:45 pmThis is from one of my colo servers:QuoteFrom the office, I get good download speeds but can't do a traceroute thanks to a stupid piece of router configuration that's outside of my control and gets on my wick on a regular basis:QuoteWhereas from home, things are a bit slower (unusual, as I can usually get ten times this sort of speed):QuoteAs for the bluehost router -- it's possible that one host keeps its machines in a datacentre or on connectivity owned by the other. I know the colo facility where my servers live also houses several end-user hosting companies, including direct competitors to their own...

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 05, 2011, 01:52:46 pm
content: Your results seem to blow the Bluehost theory.I wouldn't complain at all if I could download an Amp Hour podcast in 5 minutes or even 50 minutes.I will do some tests tomorrow to see if my burst speed is high, but the packet handshake is just timing out.Richard.

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 06, 2011, 02:19:36 am
content: Did some tests this morning on the very slow mp3 download that some people are getting from "theamphour.com".First up, I got the host wrong previously - theamphour.com is at Hostmonster at Provo Utah - the same company as Bluehost which explains when they go through the Bluehost router.I am getting regular packet loss even for normal HTTP traffic. The loss extends to other websites on the same server, and websites on an adjacent Hostmonster server, which means that the loss is either not due to the server, or it is due to a common setting across the Hostmonster servers.It does not appear there is any systematic throttling going on, just dropped packets. When packets are not being dropped, I can see speeds of over 200KBytes/sec. Each time there is a dropped packet, there can be a delay in the Internet transmission of around 100-500mSec and it is these accumulated delays causing the slow connection. The longer a bog download, the more out-of-sequence the packets get and so the communication slows and eventually just crashes.I have tested the connection out from home on both Windows and Linux systems and they both have identical problems, so it is not a problem on one PC here. Downloads from most other servers (not at Bluehost) are fine.It seems that many other connections to the same server from different locations have no problem at all. It would seem that the problem has to be in either the Bluehost router or the Hostgator server, but if so, then some connections are always slow and others are always fast.Hostmonster and Bluehost have been implementing CPU throttling in their servers, and for some customers anyway, the CPanel has an Icon for CPUThrottling and they can check the status of the throttling.Perhaps Dave or Chris could take a look.One possibility is that that the server's capacity to cope with dropped packets is limited, so if you don't have drop packets, the communication flies. If you do, the communication deteriorates until it crashes. I would love to have a better explanation. I have to go through 16 routers to reach The Amp Hour server so I guess there is more chance of me loosing some packets initially then someone connecting through 4 routers.Since I cannot tell exactly where packets are getting dropped, that is about as far as I can get right now.Richard.

author: baljemmett
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 06, 2011, 01:13:25 pm
content: Quote from: amspire on October 06, 2011, 02:19:36 amHmm. Is there any pattern to the dropped / delayed packets, for instance is it only the biggest ones that get interfered with whilst the smaller ones (the TCP handshake, small web pages) get through unmolested?It sounds vaguely like there might be an issue with path MTU discovery / packet fragmentation between you and Hostmonster; not certain, as it seems to work for you sometimes and not others, but if it's only larger downloads hitting trouble it might be worth investigating tweaking your MTU or applying some MSS clamping to see if that helps. In an ideal world this sort of thing isn't a problem, but if some router along the way is failing to pass on the relevant ICMP 'fragmentation required' messages you can get this kind of issue.

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 06, 2011, 01:42:56 pm
content: There is not really a pattern. There is a lost packet for every 1 to 3 full sized packets received - usually just one full sized packet. Small packets like ACKs are more likely to get through but they get lost too. UsuallyThis is something that has only happened in the last week or so. It was totally fine before then.I may try slowing down my connection speed to HostMonster to see if that improves the connection, but I do not want to put more time into this.It is not urgent, as I am able to download the podcasts to Dallas in a few seconds, and then download them from there in a few minutes. Trying to get them from HostMonster takes about 4 hours if I am very lucky.If HostMonster are throttling the CPU speed on their servers, then it could just be that the Amp Hour Show is increasing in popularity, and because of some characteristic of my connection, I could be amongst the first to suffer.So I hope Chris or Dave will actually check to see if they have the CPU Throttle icon in Cpanel.Richard.

author: ChrisGammell
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 12, 2011, 04:07:02 am
content: It has been getting throttled lately, quite a bit. Today (Oct 11th) was particularly bad, to the point that I was getting <1kbps, same as some others. Ugh.I'm an IT dummy, do you guys have suggestions on what this means in a larger context? Does that mean we'll need to switch to a different hosting platform?I also saw in the logs that there were errors like "Request exceeded the limit of 10 internal redirects due to probable configuration error. Use 'LimitInternalRecursion' to increase the limit if necessary. Use 'LogLevel debug' to get a backtrace., referer:http://www.minshenglt.com/"Normally I wouldn't stress about it too much. But looking at our listening stats, the numbers of people listening dropped off significantly (>1000 friggin listeners!!!) right when we started seeing problems.Any and all advice is appreciated.

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 12, 2011, 04:51:15 am
content: Chris, in the CPanel for the site, do you have an icon called something like "CPU Throttling"?I haven't heard of this before with other CPanel based providers, and so it might be something that BlueHost/HostMonster do.Anyway, in regards to the particular error, there is some kind of bad loop going on. You definitely don't need to change 'LimitInternalRecursion'. Something is wrong that needs fixing I think.Do you have any code or .htaccess file settings to prevent "hotlinking" (this is where you want to prevent other websites directly embedding your content on their sites.) If the code is bad, it can cause looping.Also try and find this error in the sites error logs and access logs (if you have both, you can match them up by time). Try and see exactly the URL being accessed on your site when the error occurred. Perhaps something that is being requested is missing, or even something on the page that that is trying to access something on the page etc in an infinite loop.This error you reported will have a time stamp, and there should be a matching timestamp entry in the access.log specifying the requested URL.Richard

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 12, 2011, 09:23:31 am
content: The latest episode is now hosted on the EEVblog dedicated server and is infinitely faster!We'll do a trial of hosting the MP3 on this server from now on. It is doesn't pull down the forum response time then we'll keep it in place.Dave.

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 12, 2011, 11:39:24 am
content: Big improvement.Way faster. No crashing.Thanks Dave.

author: Zad
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2011, 04:35:58 am
content: It looks like it may be slowing down again. It started off at >60kB/s and is now just under 30kB/s.Tell a lie, it has just jumped back to 60 again. Odd.

author: firewalker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2011, 11:46:03 am
content: QuoteEverything ok now!Alexander.

author: Rasz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 16, 2011, 12:30:30 am
content: http://www.theamphour.com/about/QuoteSeems teh blod is dead? only homepage works

author: AntiProtonBoy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 16, 2011, 05:08:29 am
content: yep, getting the same errors.

author: EEwannabe
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: November 16, 2011, 05:16:56 am
content: I am also receiving the same error when trying to use the comment shortcut.-Patrick

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 16, 2011, 05:33:59 am
content: Arghh, no idea what's going on.Have tried some stuff with the caching, and optimising databases, but no real idea if it's working. It seems hit and miss.HostMonster has always been super-reliable for me for a decade now, but granted, that's on a different sever.The AmpHour server may be sharing with some other site that's hogging bandwidth, but I asked HostMonster and they seem to think it's something with our code.No idea about that, it's just a standard Wordpress installation, but it does have a custom theme which could be causing problems?Dave.

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 16, 2011, 06:12:27 am
content: Has something wiped out the ".htaccess" file in the website root folder?It should look something like thisCode:# BEGIN WordPress<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>RewriteEngine OnRewriteBase /RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-fRewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-dRewriteRule . /index.php </IfModule># END WordPress

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 16, 2011, 06:14:50 am
content: It there and it looks like this:Code:# BEGIN WordPress<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-fRewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-dRewriteRule . /index.php </IfModule># END WordPress

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 16, 2011, 06:32:25 am
content: I think that .htaccess should work.Has anything changed the permissions of the folders and files?The folders should probably have permission 755 and the files 644.If all of that is correct, if may be the mod_sec issue that you can search for on Google. You may have to ask the host to disable mod_sec for your site.If they have it installed, without disabling specific rules, it can break Wordpress.Richard

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 16, 2011, 11:23:17 pm
content: Quote from: amspire on November 16, 2011, 06:32:25 amAll directories look to be 755, and all files that I checked were 644If it was working just days ago, why would any mod_sec thing have been suddenly switched on?Dave.

author: lindworm
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: November 16, 2011, 11:36:53 pm
content: You should place a .php file with the following content somewhere on the webspace:Code:<?php phpinfo();?>Then open the file in the browser, look for the "mod_rewrite" module to check if this is running. You can save the output for later questions on your local pc but make sure you delete the php file after you took a look at its output!Best regards

author: AntiProtonBoy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 17, 2011, 05:39:21 am
content: mod_sec might have been added by the hosting company during a routine upgrade/update on their servers. Still, mod_sec should not blanket filter every thing like that.As a test, disable mod_rewrite rules and see what happens:Code:# BEGIN WordPress#<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>#RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - #RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d#RewriteRule . /index.php #</IfModule># END WordPressThis action makes URLs less pretty. If this does not fix your problem, then there is probably more fundamental going on here, perhaps the database or worpress config is shot to shit.Also make sure the permalinks settings are configured correctly in wordpress and matches the .htaccess rewrite rule.https://codex.wordpress.org/Using_PermalinksMay the force be with you.

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 17, 2011, 07:05:29 am
content: A number of people have had the problem - all pages are 404 except for the Home page.Usually, changing permalinks to default, and back again cures the problem.So in the admin panel, go to Settings->Permalinks, set to "default" and Save.Hopefully the links will now work, but the URL's for the links will be ugly.If this is OK, change it back to your original settings and the site should be working again.I will try this out in an hour or two on a test Wordpress site to make sure nothing bad happens, if you can wait.Richard.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 17, 2011, 07:15:48 am
content: Quote from: amspire on November 17, 2011, 07:05:29 amDid that and it seems to be working now?Dave.

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 17, 2011, 07:17:53 am
content: Works for me.

author: FreeThinker
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 17, 2011, 10:58:55 am
content: Quote from: amspire on November 17, 2011, 07:17:53 am+1