site is broken

so i moved my site to dreamhost's private server at their suggestion and all of the links are busted.

they tell me that it's not, but it clearly is as i've checked it with several people across the country.

my support ticket is now coming up 12 hours and this is ridiculous.

anyone else have problems with private servers?
www.sleepyjohn.com
is the site for anyone who's interested. it's adult oriented (not work safe) so be advised.

That may be an .htaccess issue. Go to wp-admin for Permalinks and reset it to whatever you'd like.

-Scott

That is strange, because I can't find any broken links - the site looks fine to me (I checked the WP categories, links in posts, image links, menus,etc. - they all worked). Can you provide a URL to a "broken" link?

--rlparker
--DreamHost Tech Support

Clicking on a story title gave me a generic Not Found on a white background.

-Scott

Thanks, Scott! I didn't check that, just the "more" and other links. I guess he got it fixed though, because the story title links are working now!

--rlparker
--DreamHost Tech Support

It is NOT fixed. Not I'm getting random 500 errors. This is getting ridiculous.

Ok. I heard the "ridiculous" part twice now. That said, you reported initially broken links. I can't find any.. I have asked you to point me to one but you still have not done that.

Now you report random 500 errors. That sounds to me like a different "it" that is "not fixed".

This is an entirely different thing than broken links. I understand that if they are "random", you likely can't point me to a link to generate one, so I won't ask for that. Instead though, what do your error logs say that those 500 errors are about?

--rlparker
--DreamHost Tech Support

The site was FINE until it was recommended by YOUR staff to upgrade to the PS.

Ever since the move, nothing's gone right. You guys tell me the site is fine, and it isn't until one of your techs actually does a little bit work and finds what it is to fix it. As a result the broken links are somewhat fixed and now replaced with 500 errors.

I can do screenshots but don't know how that would help you. It is a 500 Internal Server Error.

Where do I access the error logs?

I don't want some paltry $5 credit. I want the site FIXED and working the way it was before.

I did a little digging for you, and it looks to me like you have not allocated enough memory on your PS for your site to run. It can be tricky to get the right amount of resources allocated, as it can depend to a degree on the number of connections being requested, and your site looks pretty popular and has a lot of googlebot activity pounding it.

The result of running out of allocated memory, is that 500 internal server error you are seeing. You can see what is happening by checking your memory usage using free:

free -m

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 150 140 9 0 0 0
-/+ buffers/cache: 140 9
Swap: 150 0 150

(that's about 9 mb free)

and even see it happening if you try to inspect your access logs:

tail -10000 access.log| awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq -c |sort -n
-bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory

I see that the initial problem you reported here (your broken links) was fixed by support and the fix reported to you at 06:43 yesterday morning.

This newest issue is another thing altogether, and it isn't something that we can fix for you. This is your responsibility to manage, not that of suppoprt.

To fix this you have a couple of choices (and they are yours, not ours, to make):

1) Decrease the amount of memory required to display your site
2) Increase the amount of memory available to your site.

One takes works and expertise, the other takes money; representing here that your initial problem remains unfixed when it was fixed almost 20 hours ago, and intimating your current issue is due to a DreamHost failing, won't help in any case.

I have asked a tech to respond more fully to your ticket about the 500 errors - but I'll bet you he tells you essentially the same thing.

--rlparker
--DreamHost Tech Support

It looks like we were typing at the same time. Please see my last response to your previous reply here.

The 500 errors are the result of your not having allocated sufficient memory to your VPS to run your site. Yes, you need a VPS, but you have to provision it adequately or it will run no better than it would on a shared server where it was running out of memory.

This is not something DreamHost can "fix"; it is up to you to adequately provision your VPS with the resources that are needed to service your site. I told you two ways you could approach this in my previous post.

You can access all your logs (error and access) via the "logs" directory (drill down to the appropriate http sub-directory by domain name within the "logs" directory").

I don't think anybody is inclined to offer you any credit at all here - sorry, but this one is a self-inflicted wound.

--rlparker
--DreamHost Tech Support