Power Cycle Useless Now, Am I screwed?

[frychiko]

My server (VPS with GoDaddy) was crashing often ever since I got one last month, then this week every day, now today every few hours, now the server is just dead even after a power cycle.

I contacted support but they tell me to check my error logs in SSH.

I can't access SSH most of the time. When I can, I login and then I get "permission denied" when attempting to do "su -".

What the hell can I do now??? (aside from paying for support).

[nyjimbo]

You really can't do anything. Its a dead machine. You will need operator intervention from the local technicians to determine if its something they can fix or if the machine needs a reformat or hardware rebuild. Tell them what's going on and ask them what it will cost, if anything, for them to look it over.

Hopefully you have backups. If you didnt then be sure to ask them if they can save the data for you before they do anything like reformat a drive.


Did you complain about the repeated problems up until now ?. If you did, then they might have to help you at no charge as they do have a responsibility to provide properly functioning hardware. But if you didnt complain until now then you might be out of luck.

[frychiko]

I didn't complain up until now.

I contacted support and they told me I'm running out of memory has soon as the server is restarted and recommended I upgrade to a better server. How's that for help...

Your server is running out of memory within the first few minutes of booting up, and this is why you are running into issues trying to perform simple tasks within the server. I am currently able to access the server via SSH and perform common commands without any issues. I am able to use top, df, and su to see that there is a large number of processes running on the server that are causing your server to reach its maximum memory limit. We would highly recommend that you backup the existing files on your server and then purchase a new server with more memory so that this does not continue to occur.

Please let us know if we can assist you in any other way.

I've only got two blogs on my server with measly traffic, so I doubt I'm taxing the server in normal operation. Must be some memory leaks / runaway scripts or something.

Support says they can access SSH, but no matter how many times I try, I just can get in OR get root access with "su -". I might just reprovision the server, backup my site and do the whole process again.

Now to find a way to backup my content...

[frychiko]

I've attached a SSH putty screenshot showing the top processes.
This is as soon as I've done a reboot. Memory is hovering just below the limit (if that's normal?). I've never used SSH before, so I have no idea what to look for in this "top" program.

Is it possible to backup from SSH to my local hard-drive? I'm getting really desparate here!

[Infopro]

backup the 2 blogs? If you're not familiar with SSH you might want to just backup via your cPanel account. Here's another idea, disable the two blogs. Either pass protect them or pull them out of public_html all together for a few hours. Replace them with an index.html and wait. (or just suspend them from WHM)

If there are no scripts to be hit the load may not go up and you'd have something more to go on as to what the problem could be.

[frychiko]

Yep, backing the sites up as we speak. I just deleted both index.php files for now. Still can't access CPanel so backing up with FTP (must be a faster way! seems really slow)

[Infopro]

Yep, backing the sites up as we speak. I just deleted both index.php files for now. Still can't access CPanel so backing up with FTP (must be a faster way! seems really slow)

If you're backing up the files from the account via FTP sure its slow. Generating that backup and downloading the single file is far quicker.

Deleting the index.php will only help to fill your logs with errors as the site is hit by traffic (good or bad). Not the best way to go if you're wanting to troubleshoot a problem and looking to parse the logs for tell tale signs of real issues.

[frychiko]

Thanks for the advice.

I have backed up my content via FTP after 6 hours or so. I can't access CPanel to do the backup. I tried that before with my last backup and it never worked properly though. (for one site it just kept downloading forever, 2 gigs+ (for example)

I will move my websites out of public_html.