Here's my latest encounter with support. Do you guys think I'm unreasonable? I'll agree I'm not the brightest mind around and perhaps it shouldn't be so hard for me to resolve the problem myself, but I have limited free time and I know what I know and what I don't know and I knew that it'll take hours and hours of monkeying around for me to figure out how to get the galleries back online so I asked for some support...... What a waste of time!



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Request Key d525f9146925
Call ID 14576
Status Closed
Logged 2005-10-23 13:47:19
Priority 1 - urgent

Add Fields

gallery failure

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Hello,

Neither of my gallery pages work:

http://ak4life.com/gallery2
http://ak4life.com/gallery

I haven't made any recent changes to either gallery and no changes at all to http://ak4life.com/gallery

Regular HTML pages load fine.. Both galleries are based on PHP and MySQL.. Any idea what might be going on? thanks much, -Alain.

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User/Staff follow-ups
Slavik Koshelev
2005-10-23 14:02:15 Dear customer,
we are working on the problem.
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Best regards,
Slavik Koshelev.
Support Team
Rate It: BadPoorNot RatedGoodExcellent

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Slavik Koshelev
2005-10-24 17:57:32 Dear customer,
The php.suexec was intalled on the server. You need to change AddType to AddHandler
Php is running in CGI mode now. You should also set up 755 permissions.
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Best regards,
Slavik Koshelev.
Support Team
Rate It: BadPoorNot RatedGoodExcellent

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Alain Kelder
2005-10-25 02:39:29 Can you give me a little more info?

1. Where do I change "AddType" to "AddHandler"?

2. What do I give 755 permissions to?

May I also ask why this change to run Php in CGI mode?

thanks much, -Alain.


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Alain Kelder
2005-10-25 21:50:23 Hi,

I read up on PHP in CGI mode and understand why you changed to that mode, so you don't have to answer why.

I still need help getting the galleries back online.

1. Each gallery install contains over 100 php files, I searched for "AddType" and didn't find a single instance of that statement in any of the gallery php files.

2. What directories do I need to set permissions to 755 on?

My galleries have been down for several days now and while i can appreciate that you're busy, i'd also appreciate help with resolution.

thanks much, -Alain.



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Alain Kelder
2005-10-26 03:02:00 Any word?


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Alain Kelder
2005-10-26 09:04:52 Complaint message

just need some help.. thank you..


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Alain Kelder
2005-10-27 02:15:49 geesus, how about a little support, guys??

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Alexander Brykulya
2005-10-27 03:25:46 Dear Customer,

All these problems are concluded in the php suexec.

The owner for all files should be your username but not nobody

chown -R username:username
For instance,

chown -R pdknoln:pdknoln /home/pdknoln/public_html/

also, all php files must be set in the 700 (755) mode
chmod 700 file.php

some directives defined in the .htaccess file don't work.
You should remove those lines from the .htaccess file.

Then you should create php.ini file in the folder where php script should be executed.
For instance,

cp /usr/local/Zend/etc/php.ini /home/username/public_html/faq/php.ini


php.ini must be put in every folder where php scripts are executed.

If you need further assistance just let us know.







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Best regards,
Alexander Brykulya
Support Team





Rate It: BadPoorNot RatedGoodExcellent



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Alain Kelder
2005-10-28 01:42:40
TICKET RE-OPENED BY USER
problem not resolved.


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Alain Kelder
2005-10-28 01:56:28 Thanks for the follow up, but my problem is far from resolved and to be honest, it's getting more frustrating by the minute because I don't know how to fix this problem.

My galleries worked fine until you guys made a system change without bothering to do due diligence to ensure your customers won't be negatively affected, and guess what happened? A ton of stuff broke. So, please help me get the galleries back online.

1. As far as I can tell, all php files are in 755 mode.. Is there a query I could run that would reveal permissions on all php files? I have 402 php files in all (most of which are Gallery and Drupal installed).

2. So you're saying that if a directory doesn't contain a php.ini, php files in that directory will fail to execute? I don't have a php.ini in /home/tekeleme/public_html/ak4life/ind/, but php files in it execute just fine (try http://ak4life.com/ind/index.php)....

3. "some directives defined in the .htaccess file don't work". OK, how do I determine which directives are causing the problem?

thanks, -Alain.


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Alexander Brykulya
2005-10-28 03:46:12 Dear Customer,

As I told you earlier,
/home/tekeleme/public_html/ak4life/gallery/.htaccess: Invalid command 'php_value', perhaps mis-spelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration

php values and php flags must be defined in your php.ini files.

Your site is working now.

http://ak4life.com/gallery/index.php

If you need further assistance just let us know.





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Best regards,
Alexander Brykulya
Support Team





Rate It: BadPoorNot RatedGoodExcellent



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Alain Kelder
2005-10-28 03:55:26
TICKET RE-OPENED BY USER
problem not solved!



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Alain Kelder
2005-10-28 03:55:34 As I told YOU before, the gallery pages worked fine BEFORE you guys made a change to the server. Please tell me what statements/commands/syntax is no longer supported following the change you guys made to how PHP is handled by your server.

http://ak4life.com/gallery/index.php was never down! Why don't you read what I wrote??

I said:

-------------- begin quote-------------
2. So you're saying that if a directory doesn't contain a php.ini, php files in that directory will fail to execute? I don't have a php.ini in /home/tekeleme/public_html/ak4life/ind/, but php files in it execute just fine (try http://ak4life.com/ind/index.php)....
-------------- end quote-------------

The pages that didn''t work are:
http://ak4life.com/gallery2/
http://ak4life.com/gallery/

You or someone else did something and http://ak4life.com/gallery/ now works. Thank you.

http://ak4life.com/gallery2/ still does not work. Perhaps you could tell me what you did to make the other page work, so I know what I need to do.

thank you.



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Alexander Brykulya
2005-10-28 04:06:46 Dear Customer,

I have read what you wrote.
We do not perform reconfigurations of your scripts.






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Best regards,
Alexander Brykulya
Support Team
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So after all the downtime, critical system changes implemented without any warning to the custmer and crappy support is it time to considerhosting alternatives?

do you have shell access to your account ?

Sometimes they answer/do stuff completly irrelevant to what you actually wanted. I remember when I had to install the SSL Certificate, wow that was a hassle.

I have the same problem. They broke my galleries and the only answers I get are some strange, cryptic answers nobody understands and the answers I understand are wrong (see answer stating to do a chown command).

It is frustrating. I was a strong supporter of Hostony. But the ignorance the currently show is tremendous.

==========

Galleries broken
Hello support staff,

I am on server27. I do not know what kind of maintenance has been done on this server but I noticed that the galleries are not working anymore.

Could you please fix

http://www.jenni.name/gallery
http://tvm.jenni.name/gallery

as soon as possible.

Thank you.

Regards,
Oliver

User/Staff follow-ups
Dima Skalenko
2005-10-23 22:06:15 Dear customer,

We are sorry for the inconveniences you felt with us.

You see, for the security measures we have installed php suexec on the server; therefore, you are unable to use php keys in your .htaccess file.

You need to specify these keys in your php.ini file.

We copied php.ini file in the public_html folder. This file should be located in the folder with your php scripts. Please, transfer php.ini file into the proper folder.

Your patience in regards to this matter is greatly appreciated.


Best regards,
Dima Skalenko,
Support team.
Rate It:

Oliver Jenni
2005-10-24 04:03:57
EDIT Dear Dima,

I do not understand what suexec, php.ini etc. is. Could you please make the necessary changes to let my my website run as it did before the maintenance job.

Thank you.

Regards,
Oliver

Oliver Jenni
2005-10-25 03:35:02
EDIT Complaint message Dear Supervisor,

Could you please check why my support ticket is being ignored. I am convinced that your support staff should fix this problem, as it was a problem introduced by your maintenance activities.

Regards,
Oliver

Oliver Jenni
2005-10-26 19:22:54
EDIT Complaint message It is rather shocking that even the supervisors do not feel the need to answer customers tickets. Especially, if Hostony broke the website.

For some time I was convinced that the service Hostony is delivering is good and people are doing the best they can. But now I really have to admit that the huge number of complaints in the forum are real.

Sorry, Hostony. That's horrible service delivery.

Alexander Brykulya
2005-10-27 03:25:46 Dear Customer,

All these problems are concluded in the php suexec.

The owner for all files should be your username but not nobody

chown -R username:username
For instance,

chown -R pdknoln:pdknoln /home/pdknoln/public_html/

also, all php files must be set in the 700 (755) mode
chmod 700 file.php

some directives defined in the .htaccess file don't work.
You should remove those lines from the .htaccess file.

Then you should create php.ini file in the folder where php script should be executed.
For instance,

cp /usr/local/Zend/etc/php.ini /home/username/public_html/faq/php.ini


php.ini must be put in every folder where php scripts are executed.

If you need further assistance just let us know.







-------------
Best regards,
Alexander Brykulya
Support Team




Rate It:

Oliver Jenni
2005-10-29 08:47:30
EDIT
TICKET RE-OPENED BY USER
it is not possible to chown a file that has nobody:nobody as owner with my account. Could you please give me the correct permissions that I can do the operation you suggested.

I'm out. Signed up for hosting elsewhere. Hoping the new service will be more reliable.

yes i have (had) shell access. my problem wasn't so much changing permissions, but figuring what php directives are not allowed following the php suexec implementation.

most of the 400+ php files in my directories came with PHP Gallery (ver 1.x and 2.x) or Drupal. i didn't write any of the php code in them and don't want to get into identifying/modifying code that no longer works. if i wanted to code myself i wouldn't have installed these products, the only modifications i made where style/apperance mods.

It's been more than 24 hours since my sites went down:

They came up this morning and thirty seconds later I received this response to the ticket I raised yesterday morning and which had been dormant for 16 hours:

an hour after that the sites went down again and haven't been back since. I've requested an update through support but had no response so I tried live help just now and here's what happened:




All this a week after I was moved to this server because of unreliable e-mail

This is NOT acceptable.

Sarah