User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Tue Jun 02, 2020 12:49 pm

@Jost80 I'm sorry that happened for you.

@BloodyCactus I honestly don't have much of a clue what that means: linode. If it means creating my own server/box I'm not likely to go down that route.

At the moment, seems seem normal to me. I've not gotten the official all-clear, though, which makes me a little bit nervous the good service I'm seeing now won't hold.

Fingers crossed. If it comes back again today - please drop a note here so I can try to replicate. If I can, I'll get on a third (and likely final) call with them.

User avatar
EzdineG
Springfield, MO

Posted Tue Jun 02, 2020 3:43 pm

BloodyCactus wrote:
Tue Jun 02, 2020 12:41 pm
have you thought about something off linode? I run several systems off linode. you do need to know linux and how to setup a secure box etc. nice and cheap. great band width, access etc.
And excessive downtime, at least in my experience with the Dallas based nodes. I'm in the process of moving away from this service.

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Tue Jun 02, 2020 3:49 pm

This site is hosted via Dreamhost, whom I've been a customer for over 15 years with various domains. This is the first time they've really been shaky. Hopefully they solved the issue.

User avatar
BloodyCactus
Lexington VA

Posted Wed Jun 03, 2020 5:55 am

EzdineG wrote:
Tue Jun 02, 2020 3:43 pm
BloodyCactus wrote:
Tue Jun 02, 2020 12:41 pm
have you thought about something off linode? I run several systems off linode. you do need to know linux and how to setup a secure box etc. nice and cheap. great band width, access etc.
And excessive downtime, at least in my experience with the Dallas based nodes. I'm in the process of moving away from this service.
wow thats crazy, my linodes are in the Newark center, I think been down 2 or so times in nearly 10 years.

User avatar
Zippy Zapp
CA, USA

Posted Wed Jun 03, 2020 8:30 am

intric8 wrote:
Tue Jun 02, 2020 3:49 pm
This site is hosted via Dreamhost, whom I've been a customer for over 15 years with various domains. This is the first time they've really been shaky. Hopefully they solved the issue.
It seems like they have solved it as it is back to responsiveness. I too have been using DH since 2003 and have found it exceptional for the most part. There was a period of occasional email issues on many of my domains but not in the last several years.

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Mon Jun 08, 2020 10:49 am

Still seeing bipolar, manic site issues. It's either liquid fast, or mind-numbingly bad, sometimes producing 503 Site Unavailable issues.

I've created a 3rd ticket with the ISP. This time, they've brought over an Admin to assist. If this doesn't get resolved today, I will begin the process of looking for my next host. This is just silly at this point.

Hang in there, folks!

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Tue Jun 09, 2020 1:09 pm

Hey everyone.

After several hours of investigation and work, I believe I've finally fixed the problem.

Apparently - unbelievably - we've been the target of several bots completely hammering the site every day. Why? I've no idea.

But I've gone in and blocked large swaths of IP addresses that were hitting the site really hard.

I have now blocked all the ones that looked to be causing problems. But I've more research to do there for monitoring things going forward.

I've also installed Cloudflare, which should also help protect the site and improve site performance even further.

I'm sorry this happened, and I appreciate you all hanging in there while this got worked out. Hopefully now whoever was doing that will leave us alone!

-- Eric

User avatar
stevelord

Posted Wed Jun 24, 2020 12:26 pm

I ran lighthouse tests against the site, and it looks like there's issues with javascript and font loading blocking other connections. That might explain why the first time I access a page takes maybe 2-3 seconds for something to appear.

You can access lighthouse from Google Chrome. Failing that, https://gtmetrix.com/ might help you find any frontend issues with slowness.

Reading between the lines, it sounds like the support guy you spoke to didn't know anything about running a server. There should be an upper limit on apache processes, way below the point of causing the server to run slow.

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Wed Jun 24, 2020 12:58 pm

Thanks, Steve. Very interesting indeed.

From what I can tell, I was getting bombarded by someone/something and I seem to have successfully blocked that attack. It was very strange as we're just a small niche hobbyists/fan site, so why we became a target I've no idea. But we do seem to be OK now after I blocked several IPs.





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