| MP3 file of Brinkster conversation:
http://media.odeo.com/files/5/4/4/998544.mp3 Read below for the blurb... This is the epitome in a series of annoying failures on behalf of the Brinkster.com webhosting service. The most frequent (and perhaps serious) problem of theirs, has to do with their e-mail being down or crashing or losing e-mails (!!)... Some times, it takes more than 10 minutes of waiting to get into their WebMail system! But today's problem was the most interesting one so far... I was happily working away doing changes to my website when all of a sudden, my FTP client gave me a OUT OF DISK SPACE message while attempting to upload a small 50kb text file to the Brinkster Server! I thought... Surely not. I am on an account that gives me 3 gigabytes of storage and I was only using around 800MB of them... That's less than a third! So I originally contact their technical support via their Live Chat IM. The transcript follows further below. What I found out was shocking to say the least! Their server has run out of disk space! A "Professional" web hosting company with users like myself who are hardly using much of their web space has bloated hard disks and I can't upload as much as a single kilobyte anymore! ...and the guy's response? We'll look into it from Monday... (I noticed this on a Saturday). I asked for an immediate resolution and the only thing they could offer was to move all my websites to other machines, something that would involve going through code and changing absolute paths to databases since Brinkster doesn't support DSNs (!!) as well as staying in line with customer support for at least an hour while trying to reset write permissions to so many different folders I have requirements for since Brinkster doesn't allow me to do that myself manually either and of course won't transfer permissions across! Not to mention the hours of downtime as a result of this and the even more hours spent afterwards debugging each and every website to make sure the transfer worked correctly! What's worse is that when in the past I requested a transfer to a new server they cocked it up in two different and equally frustrating ways... 1) They lost data!
That's right. Not all files were copied across and I found out the hard way (no easy way of telling when your web apps have hundreds of files). 2) They have different versions of PHP and MySQL running on different servers and I actually got downgraded on the PHP front to an earlier version which was incompatible with my code (from 5 to 4 to be precise)!! So, my choices were to either risk losing my data due to full servers causing corruption or risk having broken websites after incapable techies do another one of those disastrous "server transfers"! So I call them up... I thought I'd share my audible frustration with you in this way... Thanks for listening and draw your own conclusions... Cheers! P.S. Below is the transcript of the chat, interrupted when I finally called them up... Chat InformationPlease wait for a site operator to respond.
Chat InformationYou are now chatting with 'Darb'
Darb: Thank you for contacting the support department. How may I help you?
myNickname: Hello. Username is [....] password is [....].
myNickname: Your FTP service has all of a sudden started playing up.
myNickname: Whenever I try uploading something to my site, it gives me this error:
myNickname: 125 Data connection already open; Transfer starting. ERROR: > [28/10/2006 23:23:24] Can't write to data socket. Socket error = #10053. [28/10/2006 23:23:24] 426 Connection closed; transfer aborted. ERROR: > [28/10/2006 23:23:24] Connection closed; transfer aborted.
myNickname: The server I'm connecting to is: xxxxx.brinkster.com
Darb: I was able to upload a test file name test_upload.txt directly into your webroot. What program are you using to connect via FTP?
myNickname: xxxFTP. Try uploading something that's larger than 100k. That's when the problem seems to occur....
Darb: One moment please
Darb: Thank you for your patience. I am looking into this for you.
Darb: The server you are on is currently out of disk space.
myNickname: Are you serious?!
myNickname: There's serious data corruption issues associated with this!!
myNickname: The machine must be absolutely bloated if it can't even save a few kilobytes of data!
Darb: I can transfer you to another server. If I do this, your ftp address will change and so will your absolute path. You will get the new settings when the transfer is complete. Would you like to be transfered or wait until our administrators take a look at it?
myNickname: What are you running your services on? Home PCs??
myNickname: ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!
myNickname: I have several websites running and I will not spend my entire weekend sorting your mess out.
myNickname: Can you please sort this problem out?
myNickname: I'm paying for 3 gigs of space and I want my 3 gigs of space or a refund until this is fixed!@
myNickname: I am seriously frustrated by this!
Darb: I personally can't do anything about it at this moment, but I will have an administrator look into it right away.
myNickname: It means I can't do any work until you guys get your act together and come up with a solution that doesn't involve requiring your customers to change code in their websites.
myNickname: I'm waiting...
myNickname: Is this affecting my e-mail too?
Darb: No, your email is on another server.
myNickname: Have you heard back from your administrator yet?
Darb: An administrator will not be able to look at this until Monday.
myNickname: You have to be kidding me!
myNickname: OK. You have two options. Either you guys get your act together now and start coming up with a solution while I'm on the chat with you or else I start publishing our conversation all over the blogs.
myNickname: Brinkster is already gaining bad reputation steadily and believe me, this isn't going to help one bit!
myNickname: It's your call. I am very frustrated and I intend on making full use of my consumer rights.
Darb: The only option we currently have is moving you to another server.
myNickname: That's not an option. That's a convenient way out for you guys at your customers' expense.
myNickname: You are offering me several hours of downtime and debugging due to reconfiguring my websites (at my expense) or the option of having my data corrupted.
myNickname: I find it hard to understand which of the two is a "technical support" solution!
myNickname: Are there any websites on this server that you can delete?
myNickname: From inactive customers?
Darb: I understand your situation and am sorry for any inconvenience. The hard drive on the server is out of space. The only option we have at this moment is to transfer you to another server. If not, an administrator will look into this Monday.
myNickname: ...and what if my data get corrupted during this time?
Darb: If your data gets corrupted, we keep daily backups.
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