site dead - heavy usage? - DreamHost Forum

I have a very small personal blog (letthedogin.com) that has been cut off by DH due to heavy usage. So far, DH has suggested I had lots of plugins and to take some out and they emailed a Wiki article about heavy usage which did not have enough information in it for me know what to do. I have maybe 3 plugins, including akismet, and had not done anything new when this overusage started. I think there are some spammers or robots or something doing this but don't know what to do. I emailed Dh again and am waiting for more feedback. Has anyone else had this problem and what did you do about it?

How can a personal blog exceed 1.7TB bandwidth? Unbelievable!! Did you allowed visitors download/uploading large files such as video? Only letters and some images can hardly and rarely reach 1.7+TB bandwidth. I'm not experienced with this so wait for better answer.You can also contact dh support again to say u what to do clearly and easily. As far i know dh never ban any site for over load.

In reply to:
How can a personal blog exceed 1.7TB bandwidth? Unbelievable!! Did you allowed visitors download/uploading large files such as video? Only letters and some images can hardly and rarely reach 1.7+TB bandwidth. I'm not experienced with this so wait for better answer.

LOL. He didn't mention bandwidth usage. There are also system resources to consider such as memory and CPU, and he most likely got cut off due to CPU usage.

cool Atropos | openvein.org

As far as I know, no visitors have downloaded anything huge. I am being used by evil forces!! What do you do? DH has STILL not responded. Maybe they are working on it themselves?

It is not because of the bandwidth usage. I belive some of the plugins in the blog use too much CPU or Memory. You may want to refer to this article for more info http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/Persistent_Processes

I think the poster is still trying to figure out the problem. I can't think of anything but to suggest the poster to disable some of the plugins.

BTW, I can't open the website :(

In reply to:
As far as I know, no visitors have downloaded anything huge. I am being used by evil forces!! What do you do? DH has STILL not responded. Maybe they are working on it themselves?

What plugins are you using? Akismet shouldn't be a problem since it uses the Akismet server.

Also, what version of WordPress are you using? You can find out at the DreamHost control panel.

In reply to:
I think there are some spammers or robots or something doing this but don't know what to do.

Download your server access logs = ie /home/username/logs/example.com/http.n/access.log

These will show you the hits to your website, and obviously if you are getting a lot of robots trying to post comment spam or exploit vulnerabilities it will stick out like a sore thumb. They don't waste time downloading images or CSS files and most likely POST out of the blue or go straight for the login in page.

Obvious things to do when setting up a blog: don't let it automatically perform an "update" service that lets various websites know yours exist. And use Apache directives to block posting comments and trackbacks instead of relying on akismet and moderation. If the hit doesn't result in an immediate response from Apache, you're spending CPU time running PHP code and up goes your CPU minutes.

cool Atropos | openvein.org

Turn on CPU utilization collection too (of course if you're cut off, this isn't going to be very interesting).

Wholly - Use promo code WhollyMindless for full 97$ credit. Let me know if you want something else!

I'm using Wordpress 2.0.6 (I should probably upgrade but my personal computer crashed a week or so ago and I'm nervous about it right now) and my plugins are from them: backup, akismet, and wp-cache. I can't view my site either. I can get to the dashboard and the ftp.

OK, I found a couple of IPs that look suspicious. How do I block them? The wiki article mentioned creating a htaccess file which I tried to do but then my whole site was inaccessible to me. I saved this as a .htaccess file and put it in the main directory:

<Limit GET HEAD POST>
order allow,deny
deny from 65.55.212.48
deny from 65.222.176.123
allow from all
</LIMIT>

Then I got a 505 server error and couldn't do anything, so I deleted that file. Now I am back where I was....
What am I doing wrong? DH has failed to offer specific advice and just gives me links to wiki articles.

I don't see anything wrong with your htaccess file.

Maybe you want to upgrade your wordpress.

Btw, have you tried to disable your plugins?

I think there is something about the htaccess file I am getting wrong, Like WP needs something more somehow?

I think I'll need help to upgrade WP to 2.12 (I think is the latest?).

I did take out plugins, except for akismet, because I just don't think that could be it. Website is acting the same as it did 30 hours ago. Argggggghhh! :(

I don't use wordpress very often. But I know you can upgrade in one-click installs.

Good luck.

In reply to:
I know you can upgrade in one-click installs.

That's assuming you installed the version that you already have via the "one-click" process.

If you manually installed the application yorself, the "one-click" system will l*not* upgrade that application. There are ways you can trick it, but they are more trouble than manually updating. wink

--rlparker

Oh no, it's one click or nothing for me! I thought it was more complicated than that to upgrade, having to backup certain files, etc.

SO, at this point I have found and blocked on IP (thanks to a step by step instruction email from DH). If that was the problem, should it work immediately? This is dragging on and on. I really don't know what other plugins could be trouble for me at this point. I have very few and I had not just installed any new ones when my site froze up. What else could be the problem?

Wendy, it's a hard thing to know, particularly since I don't have access to your site and/or logs. There is another thread here ("I'm dead") with a similar situation; you might want to read through that one and see if there are any ideas there that apply to your situation.

I also suggest you continue to have a dialog with DH tech support; my experience has been that as long as you are genuinely trying to help yourself, they will go the extra distance to help you. Thye *want* you to *succeed*!

--rlparker

Yay, I'm back up! I upgraded to 2.1.2 at DH's suggestion. It took a little longer than 15 minutes but looks ok. Maybe that did the trick? Anyway, I'd love to know the cause so I can avoid it in the future! Maybe we'll never know... Flying by the seat of my pants here!

I dunno about everyone else, but I like keeping up-to-date on upgrades. There are frequently security holes that are plugged in updates.

One thing I try to do is *not* upgrade the the first day of a release unless the release notes say that the point release is to fix a critical security hole. More often than not, the first few days after a release is when the problems are shaken out and you can avoid the "double upgrade" with just a wee bit of patience.

I also like reading the odd article in the wordpress.org troubleshooting forum: http://wordpress.org/support/forum/3. They have an RSS feed so you should be able to additionally filter it down to those articles you think you'll be interested in.

Welcome back online! BTW, I love a well-poured Black and Tan!

Thank you for the tips! I have to say one thing that kept me from upgrading sooner was the wordpress.org support comments. People had had problems with their site running well afterwards, etc. I had no idea there was a one-click option that was so easy. Makes sense since the install on DH was one-click.... I am learning (a tiny bit at a time....).....
Black and tans for everyone! I am having one now, really!
Here's to me not having to visit this forum again! :)

You may want to turn on CPU usage reporting in the control panel so you can see just how much CPU your site is using. (Assuming it was CPU that was causing it). It could be DB queries also. It is also possible that your cache'ing plugin was actually helping so...

Stay on top of things if you can! I'd hate for you to get bounced again.

Wholly - Use promo code WhollyMindless for full 97$ credit. Let me know if you want something else!

BTW, wp-cache is fine to turn on too. I can't remember the site that suggested it, but I turn the cache time to 999999 and just clear the cache when I make any administrative changes like editing templates and such. It automatically clears the cache for normal content changes so you don't have to worry about that.

And it actually helps in reducing server load, as you might imagine.

site dead - heavy usage?