User disabled... for how long ?

Hello,

This morning, I got a message from support that one of my Unix user had been filling the /tmp folder of the machine and that they disabled the user. I answered immediately to work out the problem with them (try to understand why my - pretty standard - MediaWiki installation could cause that). But I haven't heard anything back... How long should I expect it'll take support to re-enable the user ? It would probably be good that I'm around when the user is re-enabled, so that I fix the issue before it starts again, and I will have to go to sleep at some point :)

Has anyone had such an issue already ? (note that it's not an *account*, it's just a *unix user*'s home directory that has been "chmod aug-rw"...). How could I ask support *nicely* to give me access to it :) ?

DreamHost has been doing the right thing in disabling the user (especially since they had - more or less - warned me a few months ago... but since the problem didn't occur anymore, I didn't follow up), but I would love to see the files back :). I have a group of students adding content on the MediaWiki installed on this user. and they have a deadline for their work (on thursday)... I have backups, but they are from last week, and they have been working a lot over the week-end...

Any shared experience, or tip on how to get it fixed, is welcome !

François

Looks like ImageMagick isn't cleaning up after itself.

Check which version you have and if there's an update. Google is your friend wink

How To Install PHP.INI / ionCube on DreamHost

you're right ! It's a known issue with some versions of ImageMagic, see for example http:// http://www.imagemagick.org/discourse-server/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=10770

But I don't think that I have installed ImageMagick on the machine: the only thing I had added were a few (well-known) plugins on my MediaWiki "One-click install". I would suppose that one of those plugin is using the ImageMagick "/usr/bin/convert"... It seems that I'm being blamed for a problem that I didn't cause :), or at least that would have been difficult for me to foresee (a bug in a software installed on the machine by DH, exposed by a - relatively standard).

Thanks a lot for your input. and for Google...

However, regardless of who is to blame, the urgent problem for me is to get the user re-enabled. How long do you think I will have to wait ? Maybe the fact that it's not really my fault could help support handle it a little faster, no ? wink

François

I'm not in a position to give a response to the timeframe for reinstatement.

In reply to:
It seems that I'm being blamed for a problem that I didn't cause :), or at least that would have been difficult for me to foresee (a bug in a software installed on the machine by DH, exposed by a - relatively standard).

Plugins are not even 'relatively' standard wink

If it's a plugin calling ImageMagick then you'll obviously either need to disable it and find a better solution, or compile a different version of ImageMagick in the user's local environment when/if you regain access to that user account.

How To Install PHP.INI / ionCube on DreamHost

Thank a lot for your help.

In reply to:

If it's a plugin calling ImageMagick then you'll obviously either need to disable it and find a better solution, or compile a different version of ImageMagick in the user's local environment when/if you regain access to that user account.

yep, will do as soon as I have acces to the user...

Your "when/if " worries me a little however. Do you mean that I may *never* get access to the account ?

From what I see, it seems easy to fix: currently the user folder is simply "world-unreadable", so I suppose that enabling is just about doing a "chmod" on it:

[khan]$ ls -l /home/.lapis | grep bertrand
d--------- 8 bertrand pg184076 4096 2008-10-20 08:20 bertrand

If I'm around at the time it's fixed, I can immediately disabled the plugin. Knowing that the issue wasn't an error on my side, I would hope that it would be fixed very soon...
I have 30 graduate students who worked all week-end on this wiki, and who need to finish by thursday...

In any case, thank you for your very prompt answers,

François

I used the when/if phrase because I have no control over your account. I didn't mean to panic you, I'm sure everything will be sorted out wink

How To Install PHP.INI / ionCube on DreamHost

ok. Thanks a lot.

You guys rock at DreamHost, I'm always had a good experience with you, I hope this time again it'll work out !

François

I think your a bit confused. Most members including SXI are customers. Once in a while you will see someone from DH on here, their posts usually include a signature that states that fact or in the header of the post it will say moderator or administrator.

My website

I don't work for Dreamhost, I'm just (vaguely) familiar with how things work here.

But yeah, they rock!

How To Install PHP.INI / ionCube on DreamHost

I got similar trouble with one of my users and mediawiki install as I never really found which plugin left those files on /tmp I fixed with a cron job
@daily find /tmp -type f -user heregoesyourusername -atime +2 -exec rm {} \; 2> /dev/null

What it does? it runs find, search for files, only those that you own (anyway you can't delete other users files by the way /tmp works), finds those files that had more than 48 hours since used (-atime) and then deletes them, also as find is going to find directories inside /tmp which doesn't own and can't access 2> /dev/null to no receive output and mail.

I think is a very good solution as it uses really little cpu time and almost zero other resources.

Kyle in support re-activated the user this morning. When they say 24 hours... it's it 24 hours. I would have prefered less, but I guess I would have had to pay more smile .

Thank you to all who helped me.

I've added a cron job as vicm3 proposed, but I'm still a little worried because it *seems* that many files were created in a very short amount of time - so maybe the cron job will not catch them ? We'll see...

24 hours (or less) is the norm, but it's *not* a guarantee. From DreamHost's support contact page on their main site: "When all else fails, you can contact our technical support team. We strive to answer all emails within 24 hours, and most are answered in substantially less time."

People keep acting like the 24 hours is some sort of requirement, and I don't know where they get that idea. If *you* have that requirement, then look elsewhere for a guaranteed SLA. Not that I'm picking on farialima, but anyone who has such an expectation.

-Scott

If really its a problem you can change the cron job to schedule @hourly and only to search for the files created by imagemagick, some like:
@hourly find /tmp -type f -name "magick*" -user heregoesyourusername -exec rm {} \; 2> /dev/null

without checking hard numbers it uses .06 secs of cpu time running this 24 times at day gives me 1.44 secs of CPU time so I think it's a good solution.

User disabled... for how long ?