Hey guys!

On Friday night, Hamster Time's host, Total Choice Hosting, took down the site. After I submitted a technical support request, an assistant general manager replied to the ticket with the following:



Now, I'm not sure why this is a problem given that we are well within our alloted monthly bandwidth amount (so far in August we've used up 77 gig of bandwidth, but our subscription allows us 150 gig/month). So ... yeah, not really sure what TCH's problem is with this.

Anyway, I've sent back a reponse trying to confirm with the GM that what he's telling me is that if HT continues to receive our current level of traffic, I need to take the site elsewhere. It really doesn't make any sense to me - again, we're well within the terms outlined in the monthly plan we pay for - but there you go.

I'll update this thread as soon as I know more. In the meantime, please bookmark the old EZboard site - http://p200.ezboard.com/bbb3livefeeds - in case we get suspended a second time.

It's like getting kicked off TWoP all over again.

Thanks for your patience!

My understanding is that it isn't the bandwidth, it's the amount of CPU that the site is taking. Very active forums can frequently suck up a lot of CPU time. You might want to check the IPB forums to see if there's a way to optimize the settings of the site so that it doesn't do that.

Personally I liked EZ Board better, but I'm probably in the minority. If it comes down to money being a problem, I can chip in more. I don't want to lose Hamster Time, it's more fun than watching the show and I love me some BB!

This does not sound good at all. The server can't handle this website. Do they not have load balancing and process pooling? That reads like they could shut you down at any time and reserve the right to do so without warning. The veto Comp today is going to kill this site. Can you send out an Admin email to all registered users with a warning and the backup board URL just in case?

EzBoard has been very stable since the hacker incident BTW. My sad and pitiful little Cage has had no problem. Spell checker never came back but we're all illiterate in there anyway.

I love the layout of this board and ease of use with this board, but I agree with FerfeLaBat, EZ can handle the loads better. One of those other extremely popular sites with Survivor in the name uses EZboard, and I've not seen any problems with it.

One thing to keep in mind about ezboard is that it's eventually going to change over to Yuku, which is a sucky place IMO.

Could someone tell us what we can do right now to avoid being clamped again? Not refresh so much? I'm not computer savvy so I couldnt even tell you what CPU is.. how can we conserve it?

I believe that the issue is the extremely high traffic on this site at times, which of course is not something we want to discourage. I think the best thing to do is keep on as we are, unless hwg tells us otherwise.

Ferfe - your right. I know I don't have enough information about the set-up of this site or the web provider's practices but it IS disturbing a web provider has a virtual server running without critical control systems in place. Furthermore, it just strikes me as a really bad business practice not to contact your customer and discuss the situation. There are short-term alternatives to shutting a site down due to load or bandwidth issues until you have a chance to talk to your customer and discuss the situation.

Anyway, the excellent administration of this site by HWG and whoever else she has working with her to maintain this site is proof enough that HWG is gonna handle this situation and make the right decisions. Last night was an unfortunate incident but it also illustrates how successful HWG and the other mods have been in creating a fantastic enviroment whose popularity is growing by leaps and bounds. This place gets any more popular and before we know it HWG is gonna be an Internet media mogul with the most popular reality TV site on the web.

Also, I'm glad I know where the damn back-up is now. I knew the location was different last year but had forgotten about it. I was about to go crazy when I got home last night and saw the site was shut down. I was pacing around like a crazy person mumbling about the site being down while my wife was looking at me like I was an insane maniac. I almost even went to ::::::shudder:::::: BB Updates (assuming I'm not still blocked by IP to access to that site) to find out what had happened in the house.

Ok, I don't know the difference between bandwidth and CPU, whatever the hell that is. I do know this, I want this site to stay. If it takes some cash, I can contribute some, like in the $20 -$30 range. Just email me.

Some sites go down every now and again, but this was so crazy. Because we are crazy! One minute without the feeds, and we are jonesing. I had the backup site in my history but coudn't get into chat. And it seemed to take forever for a thread to be opened.

To the owner of this site, we love you. How can we help?

On the positive side, had the site NOT gone down, I wouldn't have found myself outside, having a cigarette, and then spontaneously laughing until I cried (CRIED, ya'll) over the Stinkfinger song, and the parting shot (by whom, I forget):

This heart is COLD!!!!!

Someone: More like mold.

So thank you, HT, for going down, and making me laugh until I cried. CRIED, ya'll.

Did you try www.godaddy.com? This is where I host my web site. If you need mo-lala just say the word.

Oh for God's sakes, I really should try to take more time out and read every thread to learn more about what the heck is happening. With my computer bein' older than dirt, I don't book mark anything, I'll just lose it all and have to reinstall everything. Luckily I was on someone's email contact and alerted of the move. I haven't been alerted to much lately about anything. *wipes a tear* O'please don't leave me out. If it's money you need or want, I'll help support HT. Laughter's the best medicine and you are all curing me of every ailment. I've been around since the beginning - of course lost my handle since the o'days. But, I've watched everyone of you all like it's my JOB. Last year was the first time tryin' to even attempt recapin' the live feeds and boy did I eff it up. I'll leave that to you pro's. Anyways, kite me an E. rainesty@yahoo.com or rainesty@hotmail.com or rainesty@msn.com

Truly - I could not LIVE without HT.

HT is working for me now, but between 10:30am and 10:50am HT today, I kept getting a message similar to this when I tried to open the HT site:

SQL error: User xnnfodxa_ivbd1 has already more than 'max_user_connections' active connections
SQL error code:
Date: Monday 28th of August 2006 01:48:19 PM

Beehoppy had the same problem. Hope it's not a precurser of things to come ...

I was coming to report the same thing. I met up with Aurora in chat who was having issues as well.

That doesn't seem to be the same problem, though. The problem last Friday was one of excessive CPU usage. This one seems to be an SQL error associated with too many users trying to access the database (where all the posts and other HT info is stored). Still it's something that should be reported to the hosting company, unless they are purposely throttling the number of users in order to restrict usage. I wouldn't think that would be a good thing, especially if they haven't told our admins about it before.

I was getting that same error too, and as I recall, there were maybe 300 or so users on at the time. I know we've had heavier traffic than that in the past, so I'm stumped as to what today's issue was.

I don't remember how long ago it was, but there was a day earlier on in the season when i tried to come see the site and read the recaps and i kept getting that "max_user_connections" message . . . i eventually gave up and just came back later that evening . . . but yeah . . .

ok sorry, that was kinda a pointless post . . . but just thought i'd share that it's happened in the past, way before this whole "CPU usage" thing popped up . . .

Where ever you go, I'll be there. If you need money, just say the word. I don't watch the feeds, but I read the recaps religiously. I love all you recappers!

As a performance engineer, I can tell you that any single client taking up nearly half of all CPU is a critical problem regardless of the disk space you've been promised. Without knowing any details about your host, I would assume that they sponsor a large number of clients and that having a single client using that much CPU would have jeopardized the access of many others. I have no doubt they would have contacted you to discuss this if there wasn't an immediate threat and the decision to shut your site down was something they had to do on the spot with no time to discuss. I adore Hamster Time and was as distressed as the rest of you when I lost access. No other site out there compares. I wanted to add my two cents as someone who monitors server performance for a living to see if it might clarify why things went down the way they did.

Keep up the good work. The recappers keep me laughing all day long with their witty and clever commentary.