TOS Update: INODES

[FortErieDave]

Originally Posted by GatorBrent

I want everyone to please ignore the inode email you received. We aren't enforcing this nor are we going to take action when so many of you are over the 50,000 limit.

The truth is you should have never even received the email. Our abuse department set up a cron to scan the servers for anyone using over 500,000 inodes to contact and work with. Out of over a million hosted site this ends up being like 6 sites. A hostgator employee completely screwed up and accidentally changed the inode number to contact everyone with 50,000 inodes instead of the 500,000.

I'm extremely sorry for this mistake. If provides you some comfort it has cost us thousands in extra support responding to everyone.

Thanks for the frank explanation. You guys continue to impress me.

[slapshotw]

Originally Posted by pjeutr

Doesn't sound the same as GatorBrent, with all respect.

Write back to the ticket, specifically linking to Brent's post.

[SurfBum]

Originally Posted by GatorBrent

A hostgator employee completely screwed up and accidentally changed the inode number to contact everyone with 50,000 inodes instead of the 500,000.

I'm extremely sorry for this mistake.

Was it you? <just kidding>

I always wondered, since you own the company, do your techs still let you have SU access?

[GatorBrent]

pjeutr who said this to you? This is horrible we definitely don't want you finding another company. Your email forwards being done wouldn't be a related issue as far as I know. I haven't heard of anyone else reporting this.


I wish it was me who made the mistake. It's a lot harder swallow when it's someone elses fault you lose thousands. lol

[emomoney]

Originally Posted by INODESTER

Ah. Thank you for the official clarification. That does help. I appreciate the transparency, sincerely. Does this include backing up our sites, or is that still cut off at 50,000?

I can only speak for myself, but when I received the email, I was over 90,000. I started deleting some stuff, one was easy to get rid of which was a online backup I did for our local religious school, which consisted of about 4GB (33,000 plus files, mainly clip art files.) That got me down to just over 60,000, so I started deleting some of the Joomla test sites I have and accidentally deleted the wrong one. I contacted support and they were able to restore the DB from last week. So, even after many months of being over 90,000 inodes, my site was still being backed up.

[slapshotw]

No matter what though--above 50k or below 50k--you should always be pretending that Hostgator/any host you use doesn't do their own backups, and make sure you're doing them yourself. Just in case.

[INODESTER]

True, one should always back up their own stuff. But hey, how about a show of good faith and raise that ol' limit up a bit, hmm? If inode count is truly a separate issue than abuse, why not raise it a smidgen, make us all proud and giddy?

[imabluesman2]

And not only do the backups, but test the restore as well.

[cevamal]

Originally Posted by skeetr

The ToS is always the main place to find all the information you need. You should ALWAYS re-read any Terms of Service that you have agreed to every few months at a minimum. No other place ANYWHERE do you ever have a ToS where they will not say "We reserve the right to change or amend our Terms of Service without notice to the customer".

Really? You'd be okay with your credit card company changing the terms on your account without notifying you? You think it would be okay to go to their web site every couple of months to pour over several pages of legalese to make sure they didn't stick something new in?

Originally Posted by gwyneth

The idea of an opt-in email about TOS changes is very good.

An opt-out email about TOS changes would be even better. If Hostgator changes the TOS so often that this would inconvenience their customers then that's an even bigger problem.

Originally Posted by GatorBrent

I want everyone to please ignore the inode email you received. We aren't enforcing this nor are we going to take action when so many of you are over the 50,000 limit.

Thank you for that. I'm still confused about one thing: are accounts with greater than 50k inodes still being backed up? Since you're telling us to ignore the email I would expect that they are.

It seems like this mis-sent email has brought an important issue to light: the inode limit is too low. I run a small personal site. I host two image galleries, a dozen email accounts, a couple of blogs, a phpbb forum, and several small all-html sites for non-profits. I use a tiny fraction of my allotted space on all counts, yet am 20k over the inode limit. There's no reason for that.

I spent an hour and a half in chat last night with two different techs. The first told me that there was no way to see where the inode problem was concentrated and insisted the problem was in the email. The second (I asked to speak to a supervisor) uploaded a script for me which has been quite helpful. The problem was not in my email (about 7k inodes) but in the image galleries, 40k and 14k. I'm disappointed that an application Hostgator advertises and has on auto-install is the source of the problem!

Are you planning to raise the limit? If not, why not? If so, how will this be announced for those of us who do not frequent the forums?

[slapshotw]

Originally Posted by cevamal

I'm still confused about one thing: are accounts with greater than 50k inodes still being backed up? Since you're telling us to ignore the email I would expect that they are.

It doesn't matter if they are. Everybody on any host--whether they have 1 inode or 100,000--should pretend their hosts don't backup and make sure they have backups for themselves.

[cevamal]

Originally Posted by slapshotw

It doesn't matter if they are. Everybody on any host--whether they have 1 inode or 100,000--should pretend their hosts don't backup and make sure they have backups for themselves.

Condescending much? No one is arguing users shouldn't perform supplemental backups. I am trying to discern what hostgator's official policy is. Brent said "ignore the email" which I believe to be poor advice since it was the first notification to many many customers that the backups they believed were being performed weren't.

[mdgshorty]

Up until recently, I didn't think they made backups at all. I always assumed they didn't and continue on pretending they don't. You are safer to backup your stuff rather than have someone else do the work for you.

[striddy]

The TOS spells it out quite clearly.

5.) Backups and Data Loss
Your use of the service is at your sole risk. HostGator is not responsible for files and/or data residing on your account. You agree to take full responsibility for files and data transferred and to maintain all appropriate backup of files and data stored on HostGator servers.

If your files happen to be backed up by HG, consider that a bonus. However, don't forget the $15 restore fee if you need HG to restore your files.

HG's backups are done weekly, I believe on weekends. So it's highly advisable to have your own backup.

[slapshotw]

Originally Posted by cevamal

Condescending much? No one is arguing users shouldn't perform supplemental backups.

I'm not being condescending, I'm being practical. No matter that it's in the TOS to make your own or that many people (like yourself, apparently) already know to, we get tons of people in this forum complaining about lost data either here or at another host. I try to reiterate the importance of backups as much as possible to make sure people reading (now, and in the future) know the importance.

[Killing Hours]

^^ +1

Great post buddy... specially the wording of T.O.S. It does need to be worded
differently.

The question still remains though... (as INDO brought up)... will the backups cutoff be @ 50,000 or 500,000 inodes? 500,000 is more then plenty and way above what our company will ever need or use and we have 3 backups of the files here on site... but it would be nice to know where the actual cutoff for backups is be clarified as we done with the inodes deal. Thanks.

[RainbowViper]

I don't wish to seem condescending, either, but what does it matter where the cutoff is?

EVERYONE should be making their own backups, on a DAILY basis if your site is operating an eCommerce application and (perhaps) less often if it's only a static site holding your vacation pictures.

As was pointed out, it's in the TOS. And it only makes good sense.

[cevamal]

My point was that the email should not be ignored, that it contained information registering with many of us for the first time. Since Brent said "ignore the email" I asked whether that meant to ignore the 50k limit too which is what a literally reading of his post would mean.

That people should do their own backups is completely beside the point. It seems like folks here are too busy rabidly berating others about backups for anyone else to discuss what Hostgator is or is not doing.

[Killing Hours]

"I don't wish to seem condescending, either, but what does it matter where the cutoff is?"

Well... being that we "pay" for something... we like to know what all that "something" entails. (Including their backup service) Make sense? Backups don't matter to us as we have everything backed up here on site... but it's nice to know "IN CASE" we have a huge meltdown here that we can or cannot call them. Better to know now vs. finding out later when it's a rock and a hard place.

[RainbowViper]

First, I agree, you DO have a valid point. And like you, I also keep everything backed up to a location off-site from HG.

However, from a strictly personal viewpoint learned (sometimes painfully!) over 30 years of dealing with computers in general, I just pretend that HG doesn't EVER back up ANY of my data, and make my own contingency plans.

Nevertheless, as you pointed out, there SHOULD be a more clear definition of this subject in the TOS, and a clarification of the email referenced.

50,000 inodes is almost nothing, relative to a typical Forum, Gallery, or small eCommerce installation.

[chr1831]

Personally i could care less about the backups i run my own (when i become unlazy i will have a cron to email it to me when its done (8gb should be enough for a backup right?), but my problem is that hg keeps changing its stance they send emails out at 50k live chat (witch in my opinion is use less and cant do anything just like the phone support....) says if i go over 50k i will be suspended but the hg staff has said to ignore the warnings and you wont... please hg give us guidence amend the toss to actually say 500k or even 150k (witch would be fine if you ask me) but having a tos item that you selectively enforce is kinda wrong morally and from a business stand point, I understand if a site is destroying your server causing disk io errors and what naught but if you have a rule enforce it for everyone to the letter or change it and still enforce it to the letter but saying that james can have 65k inodes but if mark has 51k but uses high amount of writing mark will be suspended.... while james never has a problem and still uses more inodes by the day...


sorry about the rant its just it is kinda stupid to have something but not follow it to the t i understand why you would have it but it does not change the fact you guys hold the power to destroy a site at any time...




-Chris

[Solomon]

I just tried to run a cpanel full backup, something I've certainly done with over 50,000 inodes before. Now I get this message in the auto email cpanel sends:

re: Full Backup Completed

[ ! ] ************************************************** ************* [ ! ]
[ ! ] WARNING: Your account is TOO LARGE (Over 50,000 Inodes) for cPanel backups. Please contact support. [ ! ]

[ ! ] ************************************************** ************* [ ! ]

block_curr 2863720
block_soft 1048576000
block_hard 1048576000
block_timelimit 0
inode_curr 65679
inode_soft 0
inode_hard 0
inode_timelimit 0

Now what? Manually backing up each database and ftping all the files? And what about account and email settings, etc...

[Solomon]

Response from support:

It failed because you have over 50,000 inodes on your account. The inode restriction has been added to the cpanel backup function to prevent very large accounts from creating excessive load on the server.

If you would like we can go ahead and create the backup file for you and place it in your home directory


Please let us know if you have any questions or require further assistance.



Thank You,

So now it's a weekly support ticket to make a backup.

[lxndr]

Until 24 hours ago I was blissfully unaware of what an Inode was. Then I noticed the Inode bar on the new CPanel layout and decided I'd better come here and see if it had been discussed. Having read this thread I'd like to make the following comments:

1. Hostgator may be legally within their rights to not notify users of this change to the TOS but that doesn't make it right or professional practice. A minor change to the TOS one could maybe say is no big deal but I'm sorry this is a total and fundamental change with potentially severe consequences and should definitely have been brought to the attention of existing users via email.

2. Whoever posted in this thread and said the vast majority of people would get nowhere near 50,000 Inodes was frankly ill-informed. I have a very basic site that provides a forum for family history enthusiasts. It uses very little bandwidth and very little diskspace, however, it does use YaBB forum software which I believe is also now bundled in CPanel. YaBB uses a flat file system and as it stands each registered user will have 7 files created before they even begin posting so including the actual forum source files etc anything over 7,000 users (the vast majority of which can be dormant) is going to smash the 50,000 Inode limit. If this Inode limit had been brought to my attention at the time it was surreptiously introduced I may well have used alternative forum software but having written numerous php scripts to integrate with YaBB it would be an extremely time consuming and technically difficult exercise to do it now.

I notice from a quick Google search that there are hosting companies out there that don't impose this 50,000 Inode limit .. does anyone have any experience of them and could recommend one to me. Backup is not an issue for me as I'm quite happy to do that myself but I do need to be able to run my very modest forum without fear of being suspended because I've gone over the Inode limit.

__

[claygorman]

Originally Posted by Solomon

I just tried to run a cpanel full backup, something I've certainly done with over 50,000 inodes before. Now I get this message in the auto email cpanel sends:



Now what? Manually backing up each database and ftping all the files? And what about account and email settings, etc...

mine says something very similar. Mine says my site is over 4 gigs but i only have 32000 inodes.

[cevamal]

This morning I logged into the new cpanel for the first time and was pleased to discover a new inode limit of 250k.

The 50k limit had almost driven me to a new host but I'm glad I held out. Hostgator listened to its customers and responded.