TOS Update: INODES

[iddgroup]

heyit gets better.

signup for the SSH account so if you want to check to see if your in compliance, you only have to pay $10 for each of your accounts on the reseller!

let see, i have like 30 domains, so thats, oh wait $300 so i can CHECK to see if im going to get shut off?

this is a joke right?

if you want us to comply, you need to give us a way to check.

[quietFinn]

Originally Posted by iddgroup

heyit gets better.

signup for the SSH account so if you want to check to see if your in compliance, you only have to pay $10 for each of your accounts on the reseller!

let see, i have like 30 domains, so thats, oh wait $300 so i can CHECK to see if im going to get shut off?

this is a joke right?

if you want us to comply, you need to give us a way to check.

There has been several posts in these forums explaining how you can check the inode count using a simple php script, which you can run using your browser.


Here is one: http://forums.hostgator.com/showpost...85&postcount=7

[aftershock2020]

Originally Posted by quietFinn

There has been several posts in these forums explaining how you can check the inode count using a simple php script, which you can run using your browser.


Here is one: http://forums.hostgator.com/showpost...85&postcount=7

That's great but the issue is that Hostgator is using their TOS as grounds for hiding caps on service features and are actually in violation of false advertising as well as many other legal issues due to the fact that there is no possible way anyone can use the FULL potential of their disk space quota, which we all pay for with the number of files restricting that.

It is failure to render pre-purchased services onthe grounds that we pay our monthly fees IN ADVANCE for the quoted package features. If they restrict how many files can be posted and someone only puts smal files on their account, they still have the right as a consumer in purchasing that service to peak their full diskspace amount.

This is a loophole and a lame one at that for hostgator to try and cap their shared server space. That is simply not right nor legal.

did you ever get an email notification on this? I sure didn't until the " warning " email came this mroning, threatening to shut my account down if I didn't refrain from using the diskspace that I purchased access to use. no matter how they word it to be kind and PC, it is still an attempt to make me use less of the space and still pay for it in full or be cut off. That's a scam.

[aftershock2020]

I loved this service for the few years I've been here until this popped up and limited me from not having access to what I'm paying for, which is taking my money for lesser product...hense " false advertising " at the very least.

Let's hear what someone from the hostgator admin. has to say about it. I've emailed them about the situation and suggested that is surely a mistake on their part, being the upstanding and professional company that they have been.

I only have a beef with getting what I pay for and this being the case, none of us are getting it. i don't think that is too much to ask...to get what I am paying for as the listed featured package and not be told that my account risks being closed if I take the chance of using the full disk space quoted to me, which then, they advise me to take an upgrade that I CLEARLY don't need because the quotas within the package I am currently on are still fine, short of that sad attempt to undermind the users of this service by hiding a " SERVICE FEATURE RESTRICTION ", which as consumers, they have to notify us of such changes, in the TOS, which doesn't require said notification. TOS statements are " subject to change without notification." Service changes, such as downgrades, restrictions or limitations are to be given in writing via letter or email per our consumer rights laws in the U.S. Being a Florida based company, hostgator is clearly under those laws.

[CrazyMan72]

i don't think its a cap as you can have 50k 4gb files and that would give you around 200gb

[aftershock2020]

How do you not see it as a cap? It caps you on how many folders you can have, which in turn prevents you from using the disk space that you are paying for to the full potential...that's a cap.

Think about it like this. I knew nothing of this before this morning and I get that email from security telling me that I'm over the 50k file limit.

I pay $12.95/month for 1000gb of disk space and " unlimited " bandwidth...( which we all know is not truly unlimited..just secure to keep you from crashing out. )...

They told me my stats were over... I'm only at just over 350mbs of harddrive space and less than 100mbs of bandwidth transfer use.

How is that not a cap? They are blocking me from using the space that I pay for access to and I am only posting legal content within their guidelines. How is that not capping me and preventing me from accessing the other 9,650mbs that I'm paying for?

See my point?

[aftershock2020]

As far as the file size, I have thousands of image files for my products. I'm capped due to the fact that a database still has to access the images from somewhere to support them in the storefront. I still need all of those files and they count as one inode under this restriction. For an e-commercer like me, they are eating my lunch...ripping me off.

[CrazyMan72]

Almost every company has this limit in their TOS, its not hostgator's problem if you didn't read it... i for one have worried about this for a while, however i cleaned almost 20k useless inodes and am under the limit. its written in black and white and even Brent has a page about why. I read it even before i signed up

[aftershock2020]

Originally Posted by CrazyMan72

Almost every company has this limit in their TOS, its not hostgator's problem if you didn't read it... i for one have worried about this for a while, however i cleaned almost 20k useless inodes and am under the limit. its written in black and white and even Brent has a page about why. I read it even before i signed up

I joined in 2005...this was posted in the forum as of 04/07...it wasn't in the TOS of the time I signed up, nor was I notified.

The point of having limitations and restrictions are fine by me...again, that's not the problem. What the problem is, is that hostgator is now restricting people from peaking our the space they are paying for and preventing them from using it to the best benefit of the consumer's ability.

This is clearly a " service alteration ", which I'm saying that I'm not going to stand for paying for 350mb caps when the advertised package is for a full terabyte of space. If you want to be okay with it, that's your choice and that's absolutely fine. I'm just not interested in being lied to nor cheated because it is a principle of not getting what i'm paying for, which is consumer fraud in the eyes of the law.

You can't post a series of features, charge for them and then fail to provide at the min. of that standard. Furthermore, you can't post " service alterations " in the TOS, as I've said before...TOS is " subject to change without notice ", where service alterations must be given to customers in written notification of letter or email w/ confirmation by consumer protection laws, which do hold up online as well as offline for ANY business in the U.S. Unless texas, (keep wanting to think they are based in florida ) has jumped to a new country, they are still under that same series of laws.

Fair enough?

[slapshotw]

Originally Posted by aftershock2020

Seeing how databases are only text based and still have to have an image file, you will be hard pressed to pull this one off.

Before you give a sarcastic remark, you should look into binary database objects, which MySQL supports and does actually let you store images in the database.

[aftershock2020]

Originally Posted by slapshotw

Before you give a sarcastic remark, you should look into binary database objects, which MySQL supports and does actually let you store images in the database.

Didn't mean to come across sarcastically. If I did come across that way, I apologize. Nothing rude intended at all in that statement.

[aftershock2020]

As for the whole issue with the inodes, admin contacted me back and said that the whole thing is a big misunderstanding and should have never come to a ton of the people it did. They are currently working to fix the issue, as it got sent to the wrong list originally.

Furthermore, they went on to explain that this is merely for email and not for the overall site content. They are going to send a mass email explaining how this was a mistake and what the terms really mean as they have explained to me. So, at least they are doing something about it.

[slapshotw]

Originally Posted by aftershock2020

Didn't mean to come across sarcastically. If I did come across that way, I apologize. Nothing rude intended at all in that statement.

OK. Then I apologize for being defensive.

[pamster2008]

Originally Posted by aftershock2020

As for the whole issue with the inodes, admin contacted me back and said that the whole thing is a big misunderstanding and should have never come to a ton of the people it did. They are currently working to fix the issue, as it got sent to the wrong list originally.

Furthermore, they went on to explain that this is merely for email and not for the overall site content. They are going to send a mass email explaining how this was a mistake and what the terms really mean as they have explained to me. So, at least they are doing something about it.

Wow - this response is amazing to me.

The warning INODE email I received today caused me to come here and search for messages related to INODES. Apparently this has been going on for over a year and a half. There are a lot of messages related to how any INODES there are on a site, how to find out how many there are, and anecdotes about sites being removed from the backup because of exceeding the INODE level. I saw nothing in any of the messages I read that says that it ONLY applies to emails.

In one of the messages, a HG Staff person said that they were going to put the script to obtain your INODE count on the cPanel under Extra Feature, but I couldn't find it. Is it there?

I would be VERY interested in hearing if it IS just email INODES that can cause the backups to be stopped. That's can be managed differently than if it is the entire site.

We got the warning message today because our site had 135,000 INODES (disk usage 2791 - so I'm in total agreement with those who say that 50K INODES is essentially a service cap), but most of them are static, files that rarely if ever get changed. We did have 23591 in email, and we've gotten rid of half of those, and will be clearing out more. Is that going to be enough? Does it really just apply to email files? Or does it apply to the total files? Has our site been removed from backups? How would we find that out?

Thanks,

Pam

[slapshotw]

Originally Posted by aftershock2020

As for the whole issue with the inodes, admin contacted me back and said that the whole thing is a big misunderstanding and should have never come to a ton of the people it did.

Was this a ticket? You should get clarification from an upper-level admin (ask for Tier III) just because there's been some contradictory information coming from them at this point.

If you would like to check the heaviest inode concentration for your account, and you have SSH access, please use this script:

user=YOUR_CPANEL_USERNAME; echo ; echo "inodes: $user (folders with 1,000+):" ; echo ; for folder in `cd /home/$user ; find /home/$user/public_html /home/$user/mail -type d -maxdepth 2`; do inodes=$(find $folder|wc -l) ; echo "$inodes $folder" ; done |sort -rn|grep -E "^[1-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]"

[frecuenciaprimera]

Then Why HOST GATOR dont publish in their main advertisment detail of the hosting 600 GB space, and 50000 file storage (inodes) max? Will be very clear to know prior signing up. I reject to buy a dedicated or a reseller account. But I could be able to PAY extra for more inodes. No more space, no more traffic, Just more inodes, how much would it be? Or maybe reducing my space and or traffic for more inodes.

[lordcenon]

Originally Posted by GatorZach

If you would like to check the heaviest inode concentration for your account, and you have SSH access, please use this script:

I have requested an SSH and I was later told that it's been activated. There is no additional charge for this, right? Because I was not advised that I will be billed for it?

So how do I use this SSH? Or, is there any icon from the cpanel to click and determine my inode status etc?

thanks...

[GvilleRick]

You will need an SSH program to connect. If you are running Windows then PuTTy is a free program that works well. You would set it to connect using port 2222 and log in using your cPanel username and password. Then you would copy the script GatorZach gave above and change it to use your username to check the inodes.

[striddy]

Originally Posted by lordcenon

So how do I use this SSH? Or, is there any icon from the cpanel to click and determine my inode status etc?

To connect via SSH you need a terminal program like "putty". It's a free download, just google it.

[gwyneth]

Obviously Rick and David posted at the same time.

Here's where you download Putty: putty

Also, isn't the biggest consequence of exceeding the inodes limit is not being included in the HG backup? If that's true, then fussing about denial of advertised service seems a little overstated.

[lordcenon]

Originally Posted by gwyneth

Obviously Rick and David posted at the same time.

Here's where you download Putty: putty

Also, isn't the biggest consequence of exceeding the inodes limit is not being included in the HG backup? If that's true, then fussing about denial of advertised service seems a little overstated.

thanks so much gwyneth, appreciate this, and I had it downloaded just now, at the same time i received email from HG telling me not to worry about my iNodes, i just dont know if the content varies to each user,hope it's ok to quote the msg here from my email:

From my email:
Update to ticket OBK-2827760

Monday, July 28, 2008 10:56 AM

From:
"tickets@hostgator.com" <tickets@hostgator.com>
To: lordcenon@yahoo.com



Hello,We apologize for any confusion or inconvenience that the inode usage email may have caused. We want to assure you that your account is in good standing and will remain active even though you have received the inode usage warning. The email that you have received can be disregarded as we are actively reviewing the inode limits per account.

Email catchalls are the main cause for inode usage. We will be checking the accounts catchall and if it has not been logged into within the last 10 days, a backup will be made and the catchall will be disabled. If you actively use the catchall then it will remain enabled on your account. Doing so will help drop the usage and get the majority of the accounts below 50,000 inodes. Again we are very sorry for the inconvenience.

So to my understanding it's about email. wow, thanks guys. it's great to be in a peace of mind.

[Styler]

Originally Posted by Styler

Hi,

I got a Inode warning from Hostgator today for 2 of my client Accounts under the reseller hosting.

These domains are primarily being used for Mail, with one domain having about 350 Email Ids. The website itself is very small. I think the culprit is the Email.

I found the following issues were there, and tried to correct them as follows :

1. I noticed that the spam boxes were enabled, and people were not cleaning their spam boxes.
I cleared the spam boxes, and disabled them all together.

2. The catch all account was enabled for one of the domains, i disabled it by setting the default account to :blackhole:
I Cannot see the catchall account under the mail accounts. Would it automatically be deleted, or do i need to do something to delete it ?

3. I need one more clarification : Does Each Email constitute 1 Inode, or does the entire Inbox in a POP3 Account constitute 1 Inode ?

Can anybody suggest any other steps that i need to take.

I do not presently have SSH, i will ask for it to support so that i can check the Inodes.

Once i get the SSH access for the primary reseller account will i be able to check the Inodes for each Domain account under me. Or will i have to take SSH access for each of the troublesome accounts to check them ? Hostgator Charges $10 to enable SSH for each Account.

Last, i have been advised by the hostgator Email as follows

"Reduce the number of inodes/files. This change must be permanent; if you have a high number of cache files or similar, and you expect them to naturally exceed the inode limit again in the future, the configuration must be changed to limit the total number of cached files."

How do i change the limit of cache files, and what cache files are they talking about ?

I'm having sleepless nights, because the accounts are exceeding the Inode limit by5X, and i can in no circumstances afford the Dedicated server. I will have to refund their money and close the accounts. These accounts have been the backbone of my revenue for the reseller accounts.

I am not blaming Hostgator for anything, it's just that it makes it unviable for me to buy a dedicated server.

Any help on this matter will be really appreciated.

Regards

Amit Kalra

One of my accounts which primarily uses Mail had gone to 379000 Inodes at the time of warning. After removing and disabling the catch all account and spam boxes it has come back to 80000 still over the limit.
I guess it is a real problem for mail users, as each mail is counted as 1 Inode. Will it be possible request Hostgator and shift to MBOX, where each folder is counted as 1 INode. That will surely resolve my problem.

Amit Kalra

[slapshotw]

Don't expect a switch to mbox from maildir anytime soon. cPanel has been moving towards maildir for quite a while.

[Styler]

If we have Inode Limits ...then having Mbox makes sense.