Several of my sites hosted by Siteocity.com have been down for the past 2-3 days. Apparently, my account has been suspended for some reason. And, someone from tech support sent me this note as an explanation:
We have noticed that the database chrysali_ncls1 is causing lot of issues with our shared server. Load is spiking out and on monitoring further, what I could notice is that your database is causing the issue. We are very hard on the server stability matter and don’t allow any users to cause the problem with the server.
Honestly, I’m not techy enough to translate the meaning of that note. And, I’m being asked to fix the problem before they restore SIX of my sites. Argh. I wonder if anyone here can give me a hand in sorting this out?
The only thing I know is that that’s the database I’m using for my AboutWeblogs.com site – using Nucleus as the blogging software/CMS. I’m now wondering whether there’s something in Nucleus’s system that makes the database unstable, as I believe that this has happened to me in the past too.
Anyway, I’ve sent a ticket to Tech Support and had been trying to email someone about it, to no avail. I’m now trying to talk to someone from their Live Support. Hopefully, that will help.
For now, I’m stuck. So, I’d really, really appreciate any help from Tech gurus out there who can guide me in fixing this issue.
UPDATE: (11/5/06) Scott from Live Support offered help and lifted the suspension. My sites are all back up, but I still have no idea why it all happened and how I can prevent it from happening in the future. Anyway, here’s to hoping that all will go well from here.
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I’m afraid that I don’t know your exact setup, thus I can only surmise. Nevertheless, the “_ncls1″ strongly suggests that it is Nucleus that is causing the problems, one way or the other. The spiking load could refer to getting tons of hits recently – but I’d be surprised if you could get sufficient hits to cause this sort of complaint from the ISP unless they are rather small. It is possible, though. More likely there is a corrupted record or something similar which is *far* too big, and when accessed slows everything down. Or, as a really bad senario, someone has hacked into you database and is using it to do Very Bad Things (extremely unlikely, but possible).
I’m not sure what the best option is, but I’d lean towards getting someone to have a look at your database and seeing if there is a problem with any of the records. If it is a single corrupted record it should stand out. I’d also suggest checking for upgrades to Nucleus (probably won’t fix it, but it is worth a shot). If it is simply a case of becoming very popular, you might want to move over to something which doesn’t rely so heavily on the database for the CMS.
Sorry that I can’t help more – I don’t have any experience with Nucleus, I’m afraid, and it is hard to track down these problems without accessing the data.
I’ve been enjoying your blog though.
Hopefully this won’t cause any problems.
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Oh boy. We need that db to finish the b5 migration. Nothing can happen to it. Can we get a backup?
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Bilby: Thanks for the insights and for trying to help. I appreciate it. I still have no idea how to prevent the situation from happening again, but at least things seem to be okay right now. I did a database repair as soon as I got access to my control panel. Hopefully, if I run such repairs every now and then, it will prevent such things from happening again.
Oh, and on enjoying your blog: I don’t think that should cause any problems. Why do you think it would?
BTW, I noticed your UniSA email and blog addy. Are you studying or working there?
Aaron: Yep – that’s why I’m hoping we can finish the migration ASAP. Thanks!
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Sorry, what I meant was that I hoped the database problems don’t cause any hassles with your blog, making your blog suddenly disappear so that I miss out on reading it.
Fortunately it sounds like everything is cool again.
As to UniSA: a bit of each. I’m one of the academic staff in information systems/computing, teaching programming, databases and web development type stuff, but I’m also finishing off my doctorate. Of course, I expect to be finishing off my doctorate for a *very* long time to come.
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Bilby: Ahhhh… that makes sense! And, that is so nice of you to say. Thanks!
And, wow – you must be very busy trying to juggle both your work and your PhD. Hmmm… this might be a bit much to ask, but are you based in Mawson Lakes, then?
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My office is at City West, but I’m spending a lot of time at Mawson Lakes. The IS staff are City West, but as I’m half IS and half IT I get to move between the two.
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