i.justrealized

SingNet doesn’t like Slicehost too much. I’ve been having some troubles connecting to the host. There’s a 20% chance that the request would time out. It’s like 1/5 of SingNet systems aren’t working.

Other Singaporeans like pkchukiss and Jeremy encounter similar problems with we earlier discussed in Slicehost forums. Both of them mentioned they mailed the technical support so I guess I’ll just wait and see.

Basically, there’s some problems with the internet backbone (probably the C6 cervical vertebrae or something). After randomly tracerouting and pinging here and there, it appears SingNet’s machines aren’t properly configured to a SingTel node.

When with Media Temple, this blog takes ages to load, but at least it loads. With Slicehost, this blog loads quickly and that is if it actually loads.

Are there any other Slicehost users in Singapore?

[The problem appears to be resolved.]

It’s been a love-hate relationship with Media Temple. I’ll move this blog to another host. Blogging is a chore here with all the wait. Things aren’t really reliable here. My new host is slightly better though not a lot better. It’s VPS now. The whole Grid Service thingy? Just marketing.

Been kinda busy too, I’ll probably blog more when I clear up my work.

I’m honest! ‘Cause today - especially today - the blog actually loads faster than usual (i.e. all the yesterdays). Usually people write in to their web hosts to make complaints, saying this don’t work that don’t work. And when it works, they keep quiet.

I tell you what, later I’m going to write a short note to commend my web host (Media Temple) for their great work, erm, for today. And hopefully, for the many days to come too.

Just saw this at WordPress hosting page. I supposed they sort of recommend these hosts and Media Temple is the second on the list.

MediaTemple

“Hosting that’s ready for traffic spikes. Start your new blog on a clustered hosting platform that’s ready for you to hit the big time. Whether you reach the front page of Digg or get an unexpected shout-out on Oprah, your blog will always be available. Get started right-away with our WordPress 2.5 one-click installer and enough high-speed storage and bandwidth to run a blogging empire.”

If you have to reading my blog, you probably know that I am not too happy with Media Temple these days.

I lost a lot of faith in them when they have storage issues. Sometimes I can’t reach my own blog. But I got really mad when they claimed that my databases are overloaded or something. (more…)

Okay, some Ubuntu news. Next version of Ubuntu is going to be released real soon. I got the released candidate already. It seems to have killed support for my old graphic card. Maybe there is some problem with the configuration. It’s going to be released on coming Thursday. The following is a news excerpt:

Ubuntu ‘reaping Linux dividend’

A new version of Ubuntu, a version of the Linux OS, is released on Thursday.

Mr Shuttleworth said the success of the Asus Eee PC and the work of the One Laptop Per Child programme had driven awareness of open source.

“There has been a sea change in the way people think of Linux, which is very healthy,” he said. (more…)

I’m losing patience with Media Temple. I pay around 20USD per month for Media Temple’s Grid-Service and I’m starting to wonder if it’s just some sort of a marketing thing. They made it sound so reliable and blah blah but in reality it’s feels kinda slow. Media Temple serves huge files pretty quickly. Unfortunately, when it comes to responding to requests, they seem slowly than other web hosts.

Anyway I filed a support ticket complaining that their database seemed problematic.

My support ticket on 2008/03/31 11:28

I get this Error establishing a database connection.

And I can’t access phpmyadmin, it says too many connections. What’s happening?

The database seem to be problematic…

By the way, Firefox’s dictionary suggested ‘phpmyadmin’ to be corrected to ‘badminton’. And this is the reply I get from them. Basically, they’re trying to get me to pay more money again.

Support response on 2008/04/01 20:39

Sorry for any inconvenience that you may have experienced by this. We also apologize for any lack of information provided to you. I’ll try to explain the best that I can.

Essentially you are in a shared server environment. The (gs) Grid runs off of a cluster of servers and provides resources to multiple users at once. In that, you also share database servers and the resources provided. When a “Bad Neighbor” performs some sort of unauthorized action, such as running scripts or queries that are configured to run for long periods of time and consume large amounts of resources.

When you are receiving the “too many connections” error, this means your are experiencing the “Bad Neighbor Affect”. Meaning that someone else has caused the server to reach a high load. When this happens, the database is isolated and that particular “Bad Neighbor” is bumped off of the database server and notified of their actions. During this time is when you are receiving the error. Once everything is resolved the database is restored and accessible again. (more…)