Before we get into what we just endured & got partially shut down for. I would like to offer you a Halloween treat, please don’t Digg my theme. I gave the treat don’t give me the trick… lol

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Description:
Theme pack for Halloween. Theme includes GTK2 theme, Metacity theme, GDM Login, Cursor, Emerald Theme, Icon set, and 6 wallpapers.

Download: Ultimate Edition Halloween Theme

Those using our repository can enter the following in a terminal to ensure you get the newest version:

sudo apt-get install ultimate-edition-halloween-theme

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On to what happened:

Cloud based hosting is not impervious to the “Digg” effect, I now know that first hand thanks for the 100,000+ users sent to me in a day, but not from “Digg”. By the way 42 or 43 thousand in a day on the old host when "Dugg" before Godaddy suspended my site, the most I had previously seen in a day. That record has now been shattered. Distrowatch’s homepage and Softpedia‘s Linux homepage together evidently make “Digg” look like a joke, or is it just plain Godaddy sucks? After all Michael Jackson’s passing put the hammer to Google right?

Let’s look a little further into this:

Hello,

This message is to advise you of a temporary block placed on a file or folder under your account. The account referenced above was found to be consuming an inordinate amount of system resources , to the point of degrading overall system performance.

While we do limit each account to no more than 25% of a system’s resources in our terms of service, we do not actively disable accounts until they greatly exceed that number, which is what happened in this case. Fortunately, we were able to isolate the cause to a small set of files/folders. Rather than disabling the entire account, we were able to disable just those files/folders.

It was necessary to disable these items to maintain a minimum level of proper service for everyone else. From this point, the following options are available:

a) Block heavy users of your site, if any, that may be causing excessive load.
b) Optimize scripts (php, etc) that may be consuming a large amount of cpu and/or RAM.
c) Upgrade to a dedicated server; your site may have outgrown a shared environment.

Please let us know if you have a solution you feel would resolve this issue. Should a solution not be forthcoming, we are happy to assist you with an upgrade to dedicated services, where your site will have room to grow without affecting other customers. I appreciate your attention to this matter. Thank you.

Load: 1.27, 1.25, 1.46 at 2009-09-22 00:09 (33.5% SQL)
14.98/usr 0.54/ni 4.47/sys 3.43/wa 0.00/id

Apache: 29 requests/sec – 202.0 MB/second – 7.0 MB/request
154 requests currently being processed, 96 idle workers
Apache Uptime 20 hours 55 minutes 24 seconds

Top: 136: downloadue.info (74: /ISO/ultimate-edition-2.3-gamers-x86.i

136 downloadue.info
34 ultimateedition.downloadue.info

Johnathan Sa.
Network Security

While this may upset a normal user, I emailed them back encouraging Hostgator to suspend the ISO’s folder until I could further review the situation. It is then I realized I was not only on Distrowatch’s homepage, but Softpedia’s linux homepage as well. This happened while I slept. To think I said I do not want to make a big deal of the releasing of Ultimate Edition 2.3 Gamers. Imagine Ultimate Edition 2.4 period. One of 2 things that grabs me on the email posted above is this:

Apache: 29 requests/sec – 202.0 MB/second – 7.0 MB/request
154 requests currently being processed, 96 idle workers

What does this all mean please correct me if I am wrong. 29 people trying to download Ultimate Edition Gamers every sec perhaps a webpage one could only wish. How about this sending out 202 Megabytes a second, not megabit per sec. that is MB not mb right? 154 people downloading that second, seems very logical to me, you? Petabytes now become a reality for you non-believers. One of their suggestions block users? I want only to expand and I am not talking Windows. Be it ours be it Linux Mint or otherwise; I do not care. Free to you is my #1 goal, all software should be period & I am a programmer.

What is the other then?

Lets re-approach this situation again, why did the ISO server really go down? Yet the main website & all the rest has remained up?

Load: 1.27, 1.25, 1.46 at 2009-09-22 00:09 (33.5% SQL)

This was the “true” culprit, I am bad about analyzing situations, traffic is no exception. I used a plugin in wordpress called wassup a true CPU Hog on a high traffic website. It stores your IP, page you viewed, where you came from, country of origin etc. in a mysql database. Store a 100 of them a sec. what is the results? I have a AMD Quad Core I bet my machine to be incapable to just do that let alone send out 202MB a sec. I do not hold Hostgator responsible, they are better then Godaddy, at least they did not hammer me in it’s entirety (remember I host 8 domains through them).

I have since removed the “wassup” plugin and enabled wp-supercache, I feel we should now be safe with up to 500,000 users in a day. Hopefully we never have to witness this again, once again sorry for the inconvenience.

Do not think I have not seen traffic as I do today, I have tried Bluehost (at least they refunded my money) and seen Terabytes a day only to be once again shut down. The list just does not end. I will be honest with you the only place I can proceed is Amazon E2C and never worry. Does Google worry? Oh, that’s right Michael Jackson 😉 I will have to hit the lottery or similar for that. Do not take this post wrong, Hostgator is the best host I have had to date & I promise you I have had many more then I have posted. Even if you do not have a heavy trafficked website, I would still recommend them. If I could do it all again Hostgator is where I would start.

This is funny at least to me. I would have 1 website, not 8 thanks Godaddy (trying to spread the server load). Godaddy called me wondering why I canceled all my accounts, well now feel me. He was in a hurry to get off the phone when I told him all are hosted off 1 server, his answer dedicated; my answer nope shared. I am glad I got the chance to tell him how much I sent out err Hostgator before he hung up on me. Before it is over Hostgator will be #1, I have read Hostgator’s CEO’s blog, should I suffer? He should not have either. To me it has been one large learning experience.

Lets please get this in perspective, learn as I have. I am sure I am not talking to Google.com. You will arrive here because you most likely have a highly trafficked website. Do a search for "ultimate edition" does Microsoft show up #1? They make a Ultimate Edition right?

This worries me, and is being discussed within admin section of the board. I may not release a Ultimate Edition 2.4, mirrors only & let them go down. It is piss poor when I even have to think that way. The forum will also go down. We have a few days to make decisions. I should not have told you that. I just want you to understand how critical it is.

Happy Halloween,

TheeMahn

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