[Closed] 99% uptime?

[nate_s_]

Somebody recompiled PHP last night around 10pm, according to phpinfo(). Since then, all of our sites have been broken due to the fact that they yet again did not compile sablotron's XSLT module into the PHP binary despite the fact that we've had to remind them twice to do so, in addition to the initial request for this module which we were assured would be no problem.

This is the third time we have dealt with this issue and it is starting to cost us money now. One of our sites has been running a conference registration which relies on this module, and now it's down and has been for the past 12.5 hours.

First time it happened was around March 04, 2004.
Second time was June 07, 2004.
Now, it's happened again, at 22:01.22 last night.

If there really is a 99% uptime guarantee, take the average month of 30 days x 24 hours = 720 hours. 720 - 12 = 708; 708/720 = 98.33% uptime. I think we are due a refund for this month.

I would not ordinarly ask for this, but I've been extraordinarily patient while our sites have been repeatedly broken, and my last few trouble tickets I've actually had to solve myself despite the fact that they were indeed problems on Hostgator's end. I would send this email to sales or support, however, previous such emails expressing dissatisfaction have gone ignored.

Please have your server administrator make a note that whenever PHP is recompiled on our server, we MUST have the Sablotron module compiled with it, otherwise all of our sites break!

Nathan Simpson

Crucible.net account
69.93.8.194

[GatorJustin]

Nate, has this been resolved for you? I do recall your requirements for the sablotron mod, but unfortunately our technician must have forgotten. I will see to it that this does not happen again, and I do apologize for the inconvenience.

If you would please submit an email to sales@hostgator.com with a copy of your message, I am sure you will qualify for a partial or full refund.

Again, my apologies.

-Justin

[nate_s_]

The issue has been resolved, although I am left with one puzzling question. We were given a partial refund due to large portions of our sites being broken; however, the sales response said, in part, "It [PHP] was recompiled with this [the sablotron xslt module], but wasn't compatible with the new version of php. Because sablotron is something you had us install especially for you we can't really be responsible when it isn't compatible with the newer versions when we recompile it."

I spent about 10 minutes doing a google scan for PHP and Sablotron incompatibilities (the existence of which I've never heard), and then did a scan specifically for PHP 4.3.8 and Sablotron to see if anyone was reporting trouble anywhere. Nada. I didn't quite go so far as to install & test this locally myself, although I am tempted to. This excuse, frankly, sounds like BS to me, given the search results, and especially considering I've ran dozens of variants of LAMP[HP] and had no problems like this. On the other hand, I suppose the chances are somewhat like lightning striking that Hostgator is running the only server to have had these problems; unlikely, but certainly a possibility however remote.

Ah well. A minor complaint; after all, the sites are up and running again. Thanks for your concern, Justin - nice to know that I'm not being completely brushed off.:-)