Moodle in English: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

Hello Everybody, I have bought a Moodle Hosting at www.lunarpages.com
But they have disabled file.php and view.php ... PLEASE, what can I do?

ORIGINAL MESSAGE:

Hello,

The following script was disabled because it was causing issues to the server:

/home/campu14/public_html/course/view.php
/home/campu14/public_html/file.php

Here are the log details:

13850
DOCUMENT_ROOT=/home/campu14/public_html
GATEWAY_INTERFACE=CGI/1.1
HTTP_ACCEPT=*/*
HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING=gzip, deflate
HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE=es
HTTP_CONNECTION=Keep-Alive
HTTP_COOKIE=MoodleSession=17d1bded61cedc7de595cd91ab5f20f7; MoodleSessionTest=XJcm9WarnT; MOODLEID_=%25E9%25D9%251FB%25B0%257C%25A2%2502%25EFT%25E64%25E2Z%25DBe%25C7%25DFm%2527
HTTP_HOST=www.campus-virtual.es
HTTP_REFERER=http://www.campus-virtual.es/course/category.php?id=124
HTTP_USER_AGENT=Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; InfoPath.1)
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin
PHPRC=/home/campu14/public_html
QUERY_STRING=id=149
REDIRECT_STATUS=200
REMOTE_ADDR=193.146.93.1
REMOTE_PORT=44894
REQUEST_METHOD=GET
REQUEST_URI=/course/view.php?id=149
SCRIPT_FILENAME=/home/campu14/public_html/course/view.php
SCRIPT_NAME=/course/view.php
SERVER_ADDR=67.210.99.123
SERVER_ADMIN=webmaster@campus-virtual.es
SERVER_NAME=campus-virtual.es
SERVER_PORT=80
SERVER_PROTOCOL=HTTP/1.1
SERVER_SIGNATURE=<ADDRESS>Apache/1.3.39 Server at campus-virtual.es Port 80</ADDRESS>

SERVER_SOFTWARE=Apache/1.3.39 (Unix) mod_fastcgi/2.4.2 mod_bwlimited/1.4 mod_auth_passthrough/1.8 mod_log_bytes/1.2 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 mod_ssl/2.8.30 OpenSSL/0.9.7a
UNIQUE_ID=R057r0PSYg8AAEElXDk

11353
DOCUMENT_ROOT=/home/campu14/public_html
GATEWAY_INTERFACE=CGI/1.1
HTTP_ACCEPT=*/*
HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING=gzip, deflate
HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE=es
HTTP_CONNECTION=Keep-Alive
HTTP_COOKIE=MoodleSession=33610d584eddb23b0817b23725b3e41f; MoodleSessionTest=oPA7Ov6ku9; MOODLEID_=%25E6%25C8%250BM%25A1y%25BF%2509%25F2F%25EF%2527%25E7%255D%25D6m%25CF
HTTP_HOST=www.campus-virtual.es
HTTP_REFERER=http://www.campus-virtual.es/course/view.php?id=149
HTTP_USER_AGENT=Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; InfoPath.1)
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin
PATH_INFO=/149/word/practicasyteoria/practicadiagrama.pdf
PATH_TRANSLATED=/home/campu14/public_html/file.php
PHPRC=/home/campu14/public_html
QUERY_STRING=
REDIRECT_STATUS=200
REMOTE_ADDR=193.146.93.1
REMOTE_PORT=30574
REQUEST_METHOD=GET
REQUEST_URI=/file.php/149/word/practicasyteoria/practicadiagrama.pdf
SCRIPT_FILENAME=/home/campu14/public_html/file.php
SCRIPT_NAME=/file.php
SERVER_ADDR=67.210.99.123
SERVER_ADMIN=webmaster@campus-virtual.es
SERVER_NAME=campus-virtual.es
SERVER_PORT=80
SERVER_PROTOCOL=HTTP/1.1
SERVER_SIGNATURE=<ADDRESS>Apache/1.3.39 Server at campus-virtual.es Port 80</ADDRESS>

SERVER_SOFTWARE=Apache/1.3.39 (Unix) mod_fastcgi/2.4.2 mod_bwlimited/1.4 mod_auth_passthrough/1.8 mod_log_bytes/1.2 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 mod_ssl/2.8.30 OpenSSL/0.9.7a
UNIQUE_ID=R06BJUPSYg8AACXjd-c

Your resource usage is also high. Here are your resource usage details at this time:

User: xxx
Domain: campus-virtual.es
CPU%: 17.39
MEM: 0.75
MySQL: 0.3
Top Process %CPU 77.0 /usr/local/php5/bin/php-cgi
Top Process %CPU 49.0 [php-cgi]
Top Process %CPU 31.0 /usr/local/php5/bin/php-cgi

Please upgrade all third party scripts to the latest version and remove any scripts that are no longer in use. Also, make any appropriate modifications to reduce your resource usage.

Please keep us updated on your progress.

Thank you for your cooperation
--
Do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions

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Re: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

Visvanath Ratnaweera - 2007年11月30日星期五 04:23

This is not going to help you with the immediate problem. But the load may be genuine, Moodle needs some power!

Without knowing the Moodle version or what exactly happening at that particular time (how many users trying what?) nobody could be sure.

Still check this posting: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=85344#p377139 (visit the links given there)

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Re: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

Ralph Patterson - 2007年11月30日星期五 06:17

I had a similar issue with the host I was using; it was more to do with php than with moodle. If your working with a virtual hosting company you can expect to have issues as you have little to no control over how php, apache or moodle are configured. I seem to recall there are some settings to control the amount of cpu utilization, you might try searching the threads for such information. Making such adjustments might address your issue.

For me, I didn't have the time to fiddle around with trying to find the issue and then haggling via email with the hosting company on how to fix the problem. My solution was to build myself a server and use it instead. EdUbuntu was an easy and logical choice. My original installation is still running without any issues at all. EdUbuntu now comes with moodle, apache, and php on the cd ... you merely have to tell it to install.

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Re: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

Carlos Morales Socorro - 2007年11月30日星期五 07:12

Ok, thanks. Yes, I set up my server www.campus-virtual.es at home and It worked fine during the last year. But I had no bandwith for me! ... So I decided to try a hosting solution...

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Re: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

Michael Penney - 2007年11月30日星期五 08:27

Hi Carlos, many partners provide hosting as noted here: www.moodle.com/hosting.

And an added benefit is that we contribute back to help Martin keep writing the code

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Re: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

Ralph Patterson - 2007年11月30日星期五 08:56

Carlos ... If it worked once for you, I'm curious if your seeing the high processor usage when you are viewing statistics and reports while students are taking quizzes or using other processor intensive scripts? I was able to "cobble" along by not logging in while students were logged in until I got my server built. Other things to consider is, has simultaneous student access increased? and have you adjusted the "keep alive" setting? These are things you can control on your side ... I had 30 students at a time and broke them up into two groups and functioned "o.k." Lowering the "keep alive" also seemed to reduce system "hangs" and processor usage. The thing that drove the stake into the shared host I had was a cron job and the hosts' unwillingness to help me address the problem (their feeling was MySQL was working without issue before I started using Moodle, so the problem had to lie with Moodle and not their configuration settings).

We now have 4 instructors using our in house server with upwards of 40-60 students at a time simultaneously. A modest 800MHz Intel box with 256 MB ram running Edubuntu, Apache, MySQL, PHP, eAccelerator and Moodle 1.6.2 has met out needs. Granted I am expanding to an X2 AMD processor, 4 Gig of ram, dual SATA drives, etc for our next server (I'm waiting to see what happens with Moodle 1.9.x, 2.0.x) ... guess what I'm trying to say, is that if you can set up and configure Moodle on a shared host, there's no reason you can't do it in house also. There's a learning curve, but it is modest.

If you do decide to go the dedicated server route and are going to pay someone else to manage it, try to go with a linux box. Windows will work, but I think you'll find most linux users have the best success and greater flexibility (especially when using Apache as their webserver). Also find out if they have any problems "tweaking" MySQL or Apache for you or granting you access to do it yourself.

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Re: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

Ken Gibson - 2007年11月30日星期五 07:16

We had similar issues with our Moodle Installation (using too much horsepower for a share hosting plan). Our solution (although this may not be feasible for you) was to upgrade to a dedicated VPS account. This gave use the horsepower kick we needed as well as 100% control over all the scripts. The cost is more - but worth it for our program. We use siteground VPS: http://www.siteground.com/vps.htm

Ken

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Re: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

Rod Spears - 2007年12月15日星期六 03:50

Ken,

How have things been going since you switched to VPS with Siteground? I used 1and1 as a host for 3 years with no serious problems, but last summer when I wanted to upgrade to the latest stable version of Moodle they did not offer the correct version of MySQL so I switched to Siteground. Support from 1and1 is also terrible.

After switching to Siteground, who promoted themselves as a great host for Moodle, we had a problem with "too many connections from same IP" the first day we used it in our lab last August with as many as 30 students connected at the same time, but they corrected it and I was able to continue with them until a couple of weeks ago when they told me there was no way around the problem with too many connections from the same IP. They would not explain how it was able to work for almost 4 months without a problem. They just told me I would have to upgrade to VPS.

Then I changed to Bluehost. I asked them questions about the problem of too many connections and they said that would not be a problem. The first day in the lab went OK, but near the end of the second day the site went down because "This account has exceeded its CPU quota." Of course, this was not mentioned when I wanted to sign up. They also could not explain why we had no problems for 3 hours and then suddenly this would happen. It happened this morning in the first 5 minutes with less than 20 students signed in.

I really like a lot of things about Bluehost, but if I can't bring 30 students in the lab at one time to use my Moodle then it is worthless to me.

Before I make the investment in upgrading to VPS, I want to get some feedback from others who are using it in a similar situation to see if it is going to work. I also don't like the way that Siteground promotes itself as a low-cost Moodle host, allowed my site to work for so long and then pulled the plug when I needed it the most.

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Re: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

Michael Penney - 2007年12月15日星期六 04:48

Just to point out that neither Bluehost nor Siteground contribute back to the Moodle project the way Moodle partners do & you are going to a VPS anyway, a partner probably won't cost that much more (maybe less, d.o.p.

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Re: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

Rod Spears - 2007年12月15日星期六 05:42

I like the idea of using Moodle Partners, however, when I check what they have to offer I find that they charge more than what I would have to pay for a virtual server. They have limits on how many students I can have or how many courses I can offer. Please correct me if I have missed something.

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Re: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

Michael Penney - 2007年12月15日星期六 07:50

The VPS provider has limits also, but since they are not run by Moodle experts they don't know what the limits are.

With partners, the limits are to ensure that you get the service level you pay for at a cost point where the partner can afford to continue to provide the service (which includes the cost of hiring and training Moodle specialists and contributing to the continued development of the core code).

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Re: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

Howard Miller - 2007年12月15日星期六 17:53

You are paying for a lot more than the hosting by going with a Moodle Partner. The general purpose host is not going to support Moodle as a specialism. Many cannot even do backups for you. It's cool if you can do that for yourself but with a partner you pay to "make moodle work - properly" not just paying for hosting.

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Re: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

Manish Verma - 2007年12月18日星期二 16:47

Moodle partner program should possibly include self-managed moodle hosting as well. This will make them a cost effective choice for those who can self-manage and may allow moodle partners' business to grow in leaps and bounds.

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Re: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

Howard Miller - 2007年12月23日星期日 17:04

I'm not convinced that's really any different. Putting my Moodle Partner hat on, we seem more expensive because we use servers that are dedicated to, and setup specially for running Moodle. This is more expensive than just buying space on a cheap shared host and this cost gets passed on to the customer. The big difference is that it actually works. Moodle isn't a trivial little script, most shared hosting or even VPS (shared hosting in a sparkly dress) accounts don't have the horse-power to do the job properly.

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Re: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

Manish Verma - 2007年12月23日星期日 20:48

Shared hosting:

I believe an application host can happily host Moodle with chat and can support fairly large no. of concurrent users for around $10 a month. Many hosts these days are geared towards handling scripts required by applications and Moodle is one of many applications. Perhaps cluster hosting can take shared hosting further into new dimensions.

Dedicated hosting:

A self-managed entry level reliable server from a reputed company just costs around $70 a month these days. If name of the hosting company is not a consideration then it can go to around $50 per month.

I see the advantage of Moodle Partner program in hosting as far as Moodle management is a requirement. More insight into this is appreciated.

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Re: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

Matt Gibson - 2007年12月19日星期三 18:16

I've been running Moodle on a VPS account at www.vpslink.com for a while and for low usage its fine. Its a bargain basement unsupported account and although powerful, I did have to configure the entire server myself (I quite enjoyed it) but I have loads of capacity as a trade off.

As mentioned by others, I have no support for anyone in getting Moodle running and backups are my problem as well as crashes etc. Also, as a self-managed VPS server, I have little support if I screw up php or mysql by fiddling with it (not that unlikely

). I have not hit the memory/processor limit yet, and I'm not sure what will happen when I do, but I think you need to think of the whole thing in terms of trade off - if you want to pay less for your hosting in cash terms, you can expect to pay correspondingly more in personal time to learn how to administer it and how to fix it if it screws up.

Incidentally, I also thought that the cost of Moodle partner hosting was a bit steep, but now that I have learned the hard way how much work is involved to make things watertight and how unpleasant it is when things screw up, I would definitely recommend it for anyone who is less than 100% confident configuring their own server and/or for whom Moodle is mission (or learning objective ;) ) critical.

Having said that, having a VPS or, perhaps better, an old decomissioned computer to use as a testing box to fiddle with is a great way to learn how to setup and administer a Moodle install.

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Re: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

Roger Duran - 2008年02月2日星期六 07:57

Hi matt, do you mind sharing more details about your Moodle instalation?.
I was looking for a vps solution, I check vpslink.com an it seems like the right choise because I need very little support on how to set up a webserver, but my concern is about the resources limit vs the resources needed by moodle. So it will be help full if you tell us how many users are you working with (simultaneous and total) and which one of the vps packages you chose.

thanks in advance for any help.

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Re: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

Manish Verma - 2008年02月2日星期六 18:08

A cPanel based VPS moodle installation management was quite like typical shared hosting installation management for me. A control panel based VPS can be a little more expensive but can save lot of time of those not familiar with shell commands.

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Re: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

Ken Gibson - 2007年12月18日星期二 05:14

Rod,

We switched early on (with siteground) from the shared hosting plan to the VPS. The reason for the switch was unrealiable (slow) performance based on what other shared users were doing. Since switching to VPS (16 months ago), we have had zero issues of that sort.

The thing I most like about siteground is their 24/7 live tech support. I have placed numerous help tickets up and they always get answered (and usually fixed) in several minutes. I've used alot of hosts in the past and these guys are just tops in being there and fixing things (many of which I broke ;>)

Ken

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Re: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

Carlos Morales Socorro - 2007年12月18日星期二 06:15

Hello everybody... I've decided to try a Dedicated Server (1GB RAM, 80GB disk...) 75$/mo!!

Thanks,
Carlos

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Re: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

Rod Spears - 2007年12月18日星期二 09:31

Carlos,

Were did you find a dedicated server for that price?

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Re: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

Carlos Morales Socorro - 2007年12月18日星期二 23:18

Hostgator: www.hostgator.com
It is not published... But you can ask for it!

Carlos

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Re: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

Manish Verma - 2007年12月19日星期三 02:24

Would it be possible to share the technical specs like CPU/OS/Server Management/Control Panel.

I can think of self-managed P4 or Celeron Linux based servers without control panel at that price. Theplanet is offering the specs that I mentioned in that price range. $20 off promo on P4 is going on there making it cost just $69.

Mosso.com seems to be providing horsepower shared hosting for $100.

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Re: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

Carlos Morales Socorro - 2007年12月23日星期日 09:56

Here we go...

Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.40GHz
1 GB RAM
80 GB Disk

WHM 11.11.0 cPanel 11.16.0-S18450
CENTOS Enterprise 4.6 i686 on standard - WHM X v3.1.0

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Re: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

Manish Verma - 2008年02月2日星期六 18:16

Thank you for sharing this information. I think you have got a good deal. Let us know how is it working out for you. I have been doing some research on entry level dedicated servers and have been thinking about what you have opted for along with serveraday.com which is owned by olm.net . Olm.net owns datacentre and includes cPanel in the plans as I understand.

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Re: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

Howard Miller - 2007年12月23日星期日 17:07

Mmm.... surely that would buy you a nice hosting deal with a Moodle Partner

(sorry)

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Re: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

Steve Hyndman - 2008年02月4日星期一 01:40

Sure it would...but why would he want to do that when he has a dedicated server to himself...humm $75 for an account on a server vs $75 for a server...humm wink

Steve

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Re: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

elearning edu - 2008年02月4日星期一 01:08

Hi,

I earlier colocated Moodle servers in a Tier II data center at Atlanta and I paid a monthly fee of USD 450. The RAM was 2 GB. Recently after my removal as Moodle partner for India, I handed over my servers to an EX IBM researcher located at NewYork. Recently I heard from him that he has a rack space at a data center at New York (Tier II) and arranement to colocate dedicated servers (with 4 GB as recommended by me) for a cost of USD 399 per month. I understand that he will be able to offer VPS but not shared web hosting.

Any one interested can reach him at shain@shain.com

Nagarajan

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Re: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

Rod Spears - 2007年12月18日星期二 09:38

Thanks for the info Ken. It is good to hear that you are satisfied. I was pleased with the support from Siteground until we had this problem. Their response time was good, but sometimes it is necessary to talk to a person on the phone. I don't think they offer phone support. I even gave them my phone number and they would not call me back.

We signed up with Moodlerooms over the weekend. They came through for me when I really needed it. I took my students to the lab today and we had no problems with as many as 28 connected at the same time. All of them were taking quizzes. They were very helpful this weekend and it did not take me long to get my site back online.

I am still interested in looking at VPS and possibly a dedicated server for other things. I would like to use LAMS with my Moodle but I could not host it on my shared server. I am pretty certain that I could do it on a VPS. Does anyone have experience with that?

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Re: CRITICAL PROBLEM WITH MOODLE HOSTING!!!!

Manish Verma - 2007年12月18日星期二 16:58

Ken,

VPS is also a form of shared hosting as you must be aware. Most VPS providers provide guaranteed RAM with equal sharing of CPU. This can cause problems. In fact many resellers buy VPS plans and pack a number of clients so you may end up sharing your resources with many people. These of course are general points about VPS and I am not aware what policy your host follows. Perhaps, they provide guaranteed CPU also or you are lucky to be on not so resource hungry node.

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