If you visited this blog around 6:00 PM yesterday, you were probably greeted with a HTTP 500 Internal Server Error page or a WordPress error page.
It started to load slowly around that time and then, it started serving those error messages. I was not doing anything on my blog when those error messages started showing up. So, what happened?
When I noticed that my blog was loading slowly, I immediately sent a support ticket to Dreamhost to check it out. I sent a support ticket again when I saw those error messages telling them that my blog is already down and I need their urgent attention.
After more than 4 hours of intermittent connection, they finally replied when I noticed that my blog is already back to its normal behavior. No more error messages showing up. They always do that to me, they’ll try to fix the error first before replying. And here is their reply:
Hello,
Sorry for your experience of late.
I’ve done some research, but didn’t find a problem with the server. However, I did find that you have a processs that is being killed by procwatch. In short, the user marhgil is hitting the memory limit of our procwatch program. So your best bet would be to work on your code to streamline it. Also any unnecessary loops, plugins or processes should be removed.
I tried to figure out which process was causing the problem, but just didn’t see it.
Feel free to contact us if there are any questions.
Thanks!
Kacy
Si Kacy pa nagreply? Kaano ano kaya sya ni Ate Shawie? 🙂
I’m not sure what causes that problem where I’m hitting their memory limit. Too many visitors? I don’t think so. This blog’s most users online is 190 which happened last November when I submitted one of my blog post to Stumbleupon. This blog handled them well with flying colors. On the other hand, this blog was just averaging 30 users online when the problem happened. Maybe, someone attacked my blog? I don’t know.
As a necessary precaution, I went over my plugins and deactivated everything that I don’t really need. I also upgraded this blog to the latest WordPress version. Somebody must be messing with the security hole on the previous version. Well, I really don’t know.
Now, everything is back to normal. No more error messages. This blog is now alive and sucking dollars again from Google Adsense. 🙂
Thank you Dreamhost support for doing your job. But please, send an acknowledgement e-mail first before fixing the error. Your dreamhoststatus blog is good, but I wanted to know personally if you are really attending to my needs.
About the blog post title? Of course, I’m going to optimize for those keywords so that I could get back the money I lost on the ads when this blog was down. Hehehe. It could send me more money actually if I hit the first page for that error. I’m sure, that error message shows up from time to time on different websites. 🙂
Technorati Tags: HTTP 500 Internal Server Error
oh dreamhost po pala to.
Uhmm Dreamhost has given me problems when my site was still hosted with them. These range from random outages, database connection errors, etc but i’m quite sure that my site has little to do with that so I guess the culprits are the sites hosted on the same machine/server.
Pero all in all… bakit sa inyo maganda service ng dreamhost at sa akin inde? =/
Kaya po pala nawala sandali yung site niyo. I want to show a friend of mine some of your blog posts pero nung nagpunta naman kami eh yun nga HTTP 500 Internal Server Error. Tinry nalang uli namin after 15-30 mins siguro tapos yun, ok na uli. ü
kagabi mga around 10pm-11pm down yung site marghil, manila time
ewan ko pero ang daming negative feedback sa dreamhost, kakataka nyan ha.. ako i have my own hosting company pero di ganyan ang dadahilan ko kung bakit nagdown… this is just a blog site.. hindi ito tulad ng video sites and talgang kumakain ng bandwidth and ng cpu.. and mostly hindi ito proxy to treat this site na kumakain ng memory…
macuha, i suggest na move from other webhosting.. sa akin kaya? heheh biro lang.. there are more better than dreamhost.. like hostgator and bluehost or i suggest na kuha ka ng sarili mong VPS.
@sylv3rblade… siguro, they learned from the past, kaya medyo maganda service ngayon. 🙂
@Maruel… oo nga. buti naman, naaccess nyo sa after 15-30 minutes.
@Glenn.. yup. during that time, wala pa ring feedback sa akin kung ano na nangyayari.
@Anime Wallpapers… lahat naman ng hosting company, may negative feedback. try googling “bluehost sucks” or “hostgator sucks” and you’ll see a lot of them too. mas vocal kasi yung mga nagkakaproblema kesa sa mga satisfied sa service. kung lagi na lang ako lilipat kung magkakaproblema, ako lang mahihirapan. no one can guarantee a 100% uptime, kahit saang hosting, makakaexperience ka ng downtime. so, i’m sticking with dreamhost. kung magiging weekly yang downtime, siguro, it’s time to move. so far naman, ngayon lang ako nagkaproblema sa kanila, which was resolved naman in less than 24 hours.
malakas kumain yung users online plugin.. hehehe 😀 dini activate namin yun sa PRC 😀 pero ok naman ata sayo online ka na eh 😛
I’m reading kasi ung mga other post ng naexperience ko yang downtime, pero weird talga ung reason na isisi sa site mo ung downtime. and tama un if ever na maexperience mo yan ng madalas try move na lang..
that’s the usual error message when you’re using too much resouce on (shared) server. it could be a load spike, too many processes running in the background and memory usage. i you have a shell access on the server, you may see the running processes and just kill some of them. you cannot blame dreamhost on that, it will happen to you no matter who’s your web hosting provider as long as you’ve reached the “limits” that were given to you.
question, may shell access ba sa dreamhost?
It’s true. Some hosts do suck. While “hostgator” is an interesting company with staffers that really like to party (evident of their corporate blog), some hosts “sucks” more than others. Honestly, I can’t say why. Hosting is not difficult, but it is an art and it is a science and it requires dedicated, reliable people who like to do more than just party.
After all, my idea of a good time is watching our server processes, learning more, and skyping our employees about what they think is good for the company and how their idea of a good time also revolves around service to the company.
Sure you can say, “hostgator sucks” or “dreamhost sucks” and in hindsight I think most people knew they were making a mistake. There’s enough negative reviews and propaganda on these hosts than more than meets the eye.
So while there’s nothing wrong with letting loose, having a good time, and snapping it all on your company blog, there’s more to be said for professionals who like what they do and think you’re crazy if think they’d rather go to a party than learn something new…. working after hours and loving what you do as a cpanel hosting provider.
Kind regards,
Martin
thank for clarify, i also face this dreamhost’s 500 internal server error