503 Service Temporarily Unavailible error on Login

[Mahtan]

Sorry i should have explained it with a bit more clarity,
As a registerd user sometimes when i return and attempt to login it gives the 404 but if i go back on my browser and try again it works fine

Yep, same problem with my 503 error... I've reported it to my host's tech support _yet_ again, quoting TwÃÆ'Ã,­nsX2DÃÆ'Ã,Â¥Ã,,‘ÂÃ,³'s explination that is a server capacity problem... and still my host's tech support says they don't have enough information to fix the problem.  Understandable, I guess, but still extremely extremely frustrating.

[IchBin]

503 is a server error. Any host who is not willing to look into the problem for you is not worth the money you're paying them IMO.

[TwinsX2Dad]

503 is a server error. Any host who is not willing to look into the problem for you is not worth the money you're paying them IMO.

Not true. What is advertised in service offerings is disk space and bandwidth. They don't give you the burst capacity or the load rates, both of which tell you how much can be handled in a given period of time. If your service settings are limited, but your application exceeds those limits, there isn't much the host can do, shy of reconfiguring their server.

Reconfiguring it isn't a big deal, but the cost to offer the service is based on allocated resources. To increase these resources may require purchasing more lines or bandwidth to the backbone or increasing RAM on the server. Usually the physical RAM is already at the maximum allowed by the server design, meaning to increase your RAM would mean fewer accounts on a server. If these things are increased, their costs rise and they have to pass those costs on.

If your service offers variable resource overages, you may have no trouble until your service adds more accounts to your server. If the server was configured to handle 512 accounts, but only 256 are on the server right now, you may be allowed to use more load now. When they fill out the server, you will not have those overages to use - especially if your server has several high load accounts - common now that everyone wants to run php/MySQL message boards and/or blogs.

A static HTML site, like one created by hand, with FP or Dreamweaver, is easy on server loads. PHP message boards and blogs are very taxing.

Looking at a list of the most popular shared services, those which list RAM resources never promise more than 256MB - most are 8-32MB - but all that list promise only peak RAM or burst RAM.

A good VPS offers a guaranteed 256MB RAM, with 1GB maximum.

To reliably run a php/MySQL environment requires at least 256MB. 30-35% of your memory should be allocated to the SQL server, which is why MySQL sites require more resources. SMF happens to be one of the interactive message boards with the higher MySQL loads, its templating system being partly responsible.

Now think about it. Most Web servers max out at 4GB physical memory, with some capable of more. Still, divide 256 accounts into 4GB (4096MB). This leaves 16MB per account. Take it up to 512 accounts and that available RAM dwindles to 8MB. You think the host who is charging you $7.77 per month is going to care if you can't get your SMF site to run reliably? Not if they are in business to make a profit, they aren't. If you want more server, you'll pay more for more server. The 12GB DDR2 memory in my servers costs $4,000. If I offered that at a budget price (512 accounts per server) in a shared environment, you'd still only get 24MB of memory or 7.2MB of memory for your SQL.

A general rule of thumb is that anyone serious about an online presence would never be comfortable with any site which costs less than $25 per month. Even at that level, problems loom. So if you're paying $9.95 or $7.77 or whatever, you're right - they aren't worth much and you need to open your wallet.

[IchBin]

What I was pointing out Twins is that if they're not going to pinpoint what the server load is being caused by, what kind of host are they? I've never been on a host that isn't willing to look into the problem to get more information, especially if it's the server load. In fact, I've never been on a host that has told me they don't have enough information to tell my why I'm getting a 503 error. If he is over loading the server with his site then surely the host should be aware of it, and tell him he is doing so. 503 can be a hardware or software issue. Doesn't necessarily mean it's his site causing it either.

[Mahtan]

It is by no means a cheap package; I am working on setting up a business website for a venture I am involved in, so we're not playing with personal hosting packages here.  In the host's credit, though, they've been modifying the way MySQL is set up on their server and their tech support has been extremely friendly.  If they don't fix it this time, though, after providing them all the information I possibly could, I'm canceling immidiately.

[TwinsX2Dad]

In the host's credit, though, they've been modifying the way MySQL is set up on their server and their tech support has been extremely friendly.

MySQL being reconfigured would explain a 503 error. My problem here is that I can do that across 20 servers in about 20 minutes. Even with problems and errors, 3 hours would be more than sufficient. This has been how long?

Then again, if you're running shared, you may never get it reconfigured to where it would work right. I decided against adding SMF through Fantastico our servers because it would cause far too many tech support issues.

[Mahtan]

Interestingly, the Tech Support reccomended I turn off the "Extra Security" option in their control panel to fix the problem, and it appears to have done so.  I have no idea what the extra security is referring to, as I myself am much more of a software engineer than web administrator, but I'd be curious to find out.

The host is DreamHost btw, for anybody who might have a similar problem.

[TwinsX2Dad]

What you've turned off is ModSecurity, an Apache add-on which is actually a Web server firewall. It operates using rules designed to detect and thwart common Web application attacks or issues specific to various Web applications - especially those found within PHP. DreamHost and many other hosts uses this application to make sites much more resistant to outside attacks. It increases their server load, but for some hosts, client site security makes the tradeoff worthwhile.

There is a large collection of rules available for ModSecurity available here.

I have to make certain exclusions available through ModSecurity so I can run SMF reliably. These same exclusions are not necessary to run most other message board platforms. This is one of the reasons (the biggest one) I've pulled SMF from any production sites and now run it only in a test mode.

There are other server-side firewalls out there, both open-source and proprietary, but all suffer similar compatibility issues with SMF. It seems SMF doesn't play well with secured servers. Until SMF changes their core code, you can have security or you can have SMF - you can't have both.