Would you give up cPanel for better uptime?

[garrettroyce]

first off: people would have to give their site as both :80 and var).

What if this was handled internally server side? There has to be some way to redirect from one port to another.

Second: two Apache servers would just ruin the servers completely. Apache already has a high load, we don't need 2x load.

What if the 2nd server was started and stopped as needed, instead of running constantly? Doesn't Apache use a script to load and unload the server, so couldn't these scripts be modified to link to the other instance?

 

[leafypiggy]

yes, but the amount of times server two would be stopped, started, stopped, started, etc, would just waste the RAM.

 

[galaxyAbstractor]

yes, but the amount of times server two would be stopped, started, stopped, started, etc, would just waste the RAM.

Answer could be lighttpd or nginx, only downpart would be no .htaccess support or regular mod_rewrite while apache is rebooting

 

[garrettroyce]

yes, but the amount of times server two would be stopped, started, stopped, started, etc, would just waste the RAM.

Yeah, I can definitely see that being a problem. I suppose this idea could at least be a last-ditch effort to save cpanel

 

[Livewire]

Answer could be lighttpd or nginx, only downpart would be no .htaccess support or regular mod_rewrite while apache is rebooting

I believe we had a rather heated discussion in IRC about this actually, and my argument boiled down to this simply: .htaccess files are present in vb, IPB, phpbb3, smf, joomla, wordpress, and just about every other CMS under the sun. It'd really suck if their core configuration files suddenly weren't protected by a .htaccess anymore


And yes I know you mentioned there's an nginx conf file but you still have to move every .htaccess -into- that file. Unless x10 automates that, x10 pretty much destroys every CMS on the planet and makes it un-runnable on x10.

Which might not be the worst thing, except that I bet the userbase would almost instantly dwindle :S

 

[leafypiggy]

I'm not all that attached to cPanel anyways. I can just put a folder on my site called: /panel/ and have a suite of things that I need. Like PHPmyAdmin, etc

 

[garrettroyce]

I think we also have to think of the other side of the coin as well. Not only do users have to have access to their site configuration, but staff too. I'm not sure if a lot of these tools come with administrative features such as limiting the number of databases a user can create.

 

[galaxyAbstractor]

I believe we had a rather heated discussion in IRC about this actually, and my argument boiled down to this simply: .htaccess files are present in vb, IPB, phpbb3, smf, joomla, wordpress, and just about every other CMS under the sun. It'd really suck if their core configuration files suddenly weren't protected by a .htaccess anymore


And yes I know you mentioned there's an nginx conf file but you still have to move every .htaccess -into- that file. Unless x10 automates that, x10 pretty much destroys every CMS on the planet and makes it un-runnable on x10.

Which might not be the worst thing, except that I bet the userbase would almost instantly dwindle :S

Wordpress, phpBB and vbulletin works under nginx. I proved that for you yesterday. wordpress.com, penny-arcade.com and gravatar.com/ are 3 sites running it already

 

[Smith6612]

I believe we had a rather heated discussion in IRC about this actually, and my argument boiled down to this simply: .htaccess files are present in vb, IPB, phpbb3, smf, joomla, wordpress, and just about every other CMS under the sun. It'd really suck if their core configuration files suddenly weren't protected by a .htaccess anymore


And yes I know you mentioned there's an nginx conf file but you still have to move every .htaccess -into- that file. Unless x10 automates that, x10 pretty much destroys every CMS on the planet and makes it un-runnable on x10.

Which might not be the worst thing, except that I bet the userbase would almost instantly dwindle :S

There's other ways you can make a folder and files non-accessible to the public than through a .htaccess even though a .htaccess is the most flexible way to do that. Don't fear losing cPanel/Apache at all.

 

[Livewire]

There's other ways you can make a folder and files non-accessible to the public than through a .htaccess even though a .htaccess is the most flexible way to do that. Don't fear losing cPanel/Apache at all.

I'm not, cause I'm on paid; I'm more wondering whether it does it off of a fresh install, otherwise I imagine the support ticket count would increase from users who don't check the forums to see if someone's already got a tutorial up for it.


Edit: Should clarify, long as it works with base install on anything using a .htaccess or mod_rewrite, I say go for it, but if it's not going to work with it or it can't support as many accounts as we'd need, it might not work just for that.

 

[galaxyAbstractor]

I'm not, cause I'm on paid; I'm more wondering whether it does it off of a fresh install, otherwise I imagine the support ticket count would increase from users who don't check the forums to see if someone's already got a tutorial up for it.


Edit: Should clarify, long as it works with base install on anything using a .htaccess or mod_rewrite, I say go for it, but if it's not going to work with it or it can't support as many accounts as we'd need, it might not work just for that.

And I thought this, if nginx would do the serving while apache is restarting, static pages and pages without .htaccess will still be served. So that would still be better than no pages at all, would it?

 

[Livewire]

And I thought this, if nginx would do the serving while apache is restarting, static pages and pages without .htaccess will still be served. So that would still be better than no pages at all, would it?

Long as it doesn't serve pages that are supposed to be protected by a .htaccess while apache is rebooting

I don't get the point to changing to a different server type instead of apache though, since it's not apache that's actually broken right now - it's cPanel not being designed to let a hosting provider queue the accounts and do them in batches (Corey mentioned it's doing them one by one instead of being able to do them in batches). I just don't get the idea to rocking the boat and changing everything over when all that -really- needs to get gutted is cPanel.



And yes I gather it reboots faster; I'm curious how much faster than apache it'd be with the account load x10 has, cause if it only cuts it in half, that's still one and a half minutes per reboot :S

 

[garrettroyce]

Here's why CPanel takes so dang long to do everything:

http://www.cpanel.net/documentation/easyapache/ea3_overview.html

What if we found a way to run the CPanel routines before Apache is stopped. Presumably, Apache locks it's own configuration files while it is in use. But, what if we duplicated the configuration files, ran CPanel's processes on the copied files, stopped Apache, copied the modified files over, then restarted Apache?

 

[Livewire]

Here's why CPanel takes so dang long to do everything:

http://www.cpanel.net/documentation/easyapache/ea3_overview.html

What if we found a way to run the CPanel routines before Apache is stopped. Presumably, Apache locks it's own configuration files while it is in use. But, what if we duplicated the configuration files, ran CPanel's processes on the copied files, stopped Apache, copied the modified files over, then restarted Apache?

I've got my money on that being somehow locked up in the cpanel encrypted code area, in particular the part where we tell cpanel to do the processes on the copied files.

Great idea if it'll work though

 

[garrettroyce]

I've got my money on that being somehow locked up in the cpanel encrypted code area, in particular the part where we tell cpanel to do the processes on the copied files.

Great idea if it'll work though

thanks. I've been spending my entire day picking my brain on how to accomplish this.

Maybe the friendly people at CPanel will help us. I wouldn't think we're the only customer they'll (potentially) lose because they can't support such a large host without problems.

The other solution I was thinking of (but won't happen) is redundant hardware. But, that's like squashing an ant with a large expensive sledgehammer, especially for a free server.

 

[Livewire]

Only problem is Corey's indicated that cPanel has essentially told us that we're up a chocolate creek without any marshmellows, which sounds like cPanel's just said "we're done, it's not designed for this, deal with it."

Not the best business decision on their part, but if we had access to the encrypted part it'd all be a null issue anyways

 

[Russ]

First off, we're not getting rid of apache, we are looking at cPanel. basically the way it works now is, usera makes a new account, the command is sent to WHM, which is the backend of cPanel, WHM adds the account to the apache server config file, and does a graceful restart of apache, a graceful restart basically means that apache waits for the open sockets (Websites getting visits at that time) to end, and closes them, and not allowing any new connections, so if there are 50 sites on the server getting visits when it restarts, it waits for those 50 to close, and not allowing anymore in at that time, which takes time, then if in the restart there is an error in the config file, boom. you have your crash. Basically right now, cPanel does not need to restart apache every time, there are 2 options, one would be to simply reload the config file, (rehash) it, the other would be to only do a graceful restart like once an hour, because right now, it does them so much its not funny. We are playing with a few ideas, and will keep you all posted.

 

[garrettroyce]

Thanks, Russ!

I'm glad the problem is not the same as I envisioned it, because I really was starting to think we were better off without CPanel. The real problem actually makes more sense, but it is much harder to solve

 

[Sunflower-Products]

I won't pretend to understand the entire issue - but is this a time problem? Can you restrict updates to set times, like once a day?

Can you explain to new users that additions are done at set times? e.g. "Thank you for joining x10hosting. We update our user base daily starting at Midnight Zulu and the process may take until 0030 Zulu. During this time our system may not be available."

 

[galaxyAbstractor]

Here's why CPanel takes so dang long to do everything:

http://www.cpanel.net/documentation/easyapache/ea3_overview.html

What if we found a way to run the CPanel routines before Apache is stopped. Presumably, Apache locks it's own configuration files while it is in use. But, what if we duplicated the configuration files, ran CPanel's processes on the copied files, stopped Apache, copied the modified files over, then restarted Apache?

I would think that would require modifying cPanel's source files, and I don't think you are allowed to modify proprietary software. Remember, cPanel is NOT open source.

Aslo, Corey mentioned that cPanel is encoded. So there is no way of changing the way cPanel works without forcing the cPanel devs to do something about it