Lousy Client ISP Frustration

A client needed me to install some basic scripts onto their site last night, as they have a meeting today. Things didn't need to be perfect, or have that site's look and feel- just had to have some filler data and have it working as a "proof of concept" type of thing for a dog and pony show.

I know the scripts pretty well, and have installed them on multiple servers with no issue. Turned out they have used Communitech.net as their hosting provider for a few years, and God I hope that changes soon.

These folks just have real, serious issues. What should have taken an hour total ended up taking almost five stupid damn hours. Wish I was kidding, but damn am I in a foul mood and damn if I'm not going to get them switched away as soon as possible.

Admittedly, I didn't have perfect information: just the control panel url, and customer id/pass. But still, shouldn't have been a big deal. I simply needed to know five things:

The path to Perl
Current mySQL database name and user/pass, and ability to set higher grant permissions for that user if need be.
Local path for files, ie /home/virtual/mydomain/public_html/
What perl modules were available, to check against the list of needed modules.
FTP user/pass, or SSH user/pass

I'm not a complete newb when it comes to this, and I figure through the information in the control panel, and the forums and knowledge base on their site getting the info I need shouldn't be a big deal.

So... without further ado I check out the site in question. Sorta slow, yet not very complex... figure it's just my cable modem acting up again (Comcast just took over... not so good) and dont think much of it. Log into the site control panel via Safari, which works well but its dead slow. Switch to Camino... a little faster, but it crashes a few pages in. Mozilla is a little faster yet, and handles it fine but it's still dead slow. At this point I'm just assuming that whatever the hell they're using for a control panel (they seem to be a Sun shop) is heavily IE-oriented and doens't play well with other browsers. No biggie, kinda used to it.

Poke around, and the information on Perl modules is very easy to find... which means I don't have to worry about perldiver.cgi or some such, as I don't want to go through the hassle of everything else if the modules needed aren't available, as since it's a virtual account I doubt they'll let me head over to cpan and make them. All the modules I'm after except one are there, and it's more of an extra, so things are ok at this point. Path to perl is right there to. Lookin good.

So, onto mySQL. You can add databases and users (and grant access for the user) fairly simply. No worries there. But before I go mucking about with the dbase, even though its not being utilized heavily I want to do a dump, just in case.

Next stop, SSH so hopefully I do a dump of mysql, wget the files in I need, untar and pico -w them to where they need to be. No such luck. Oh sure, there's an SSH section, but the links aren't working correctly and you can't get to the setup area. Assume there is something wrong my with my browser, so I hop to a machine with IE. No go. Find some other broken links (such as their forums), have someone else double-check to make sure I'm not missing something... no go.

I do find a different username (not numerical) listed within the control panel, and start using that to see if I can SSH in. Took awhile, and had to use the IP address and not the domain, but I got in. Slower than hell. IE, my machine and network is pretty much idling and its taking a quarter to half a second for each character to return. I'm getting pretty disgusted at this point, so I disconnect and run a traceroute. Seems fine, normal amount of hops and latency is ~50-80ms per hop, with one spike at 120ms. Not a big deal. I am realizing that their site number is above 900, and hope to god they don't have over 900 sites on this one Sun box (pluto).

Have a feeling they're just piling it on to eke out more profit per server, to the point where its overloaded. Ah well, even if it's annoying it's a problem for another time. It's a bit after 2am now and I'm getting a bit annoyed, as I should have been in bed an hour ago. Pot of coffee to the rescue, and I'm a little rosier.

As it turns out, getting in via FTP is a little different than SSH, but wasn't too difficult, just trying combinations (IP, numerical username, domain, other username, etc) and I'm in. No worries, and ftp seems to be a little zipper than SSH. No worries. SSH is so slow I just edit the files locally, then put them where they need to be. Then the weird ass permissions stuff starts. I don't have an explanation for it, and used two different programs, and finally SSH'd back in and chmod'd them. I'd set to 755, then select and check them, then come back 5 minutes later and they'd be 000 or 444. Just weird. They seemed to become tame after 20 minutes, so that was that.

Last thing I needed, since the scripts involved a bunch of uploading was the path to local files. Normally this would be something like:

/home/virtual/site10/var/www/html/

$pwd was disabled for the account, so I was off to their site as well, what hosting company wouldn't have the path to their files up online? Have to log into their site to get to the real help, but no worries... except it wasn't there. No forum, and the knowledgebase was all goofy. I did a quick google search for + "communitech.net" "path to files" hoping to get lucky... but no such luck. Slogged through their site again for awhile, but there really wasn't much there and they really seem to want you to call them. Support information is scarce as can be, but their support number is everywhere, along with taglines along the lines of "real human support".

I just don't get that. Seems to me it's a lot more efficient (and cost-effective) to try to reduce the actual contact you have to have with customers by letting them get what they need. Just sort gave me the willies, as damnit when I buy a VCR there is a booklet with the basic things you need to know to program the thing right there- I don't have to call sony to learn the magical button combo that turns off the blinking 12:00.

I end up spending more time than necessary going through and making sure I wasn't just missing something...

...so I gave up, have it their way. They aren't the cheapest game in town, and they offer 24/7 support via 800 number, so lets use up their dime. Long button pushing (1 for this, 3 for that) later I hear a ring, then a disconnect. Go through it again. Talk to a guy for 5 minutes, explain that I need the path to the local files to input into a few cgi's... he's very polite, verifies I'm supposed to have access to the information, decides I should, and then puts me on hold while he looks it up.

I'm treated to some nice muzak for 3 minutes or so, and he comes back on saying "thank you for holding I'm waiting to talk to someone on another line who I think will know", and sends me back to the muzak while he waits. Disconnect. Call back, go through the whole thing again. At this point it's after 3am, and I'm terrified of being put back in muzak land. I could rant for an hour about automated phone systems, but I'm pretty sure everyone hates them... so what's the point.

So I try to chat him up for a bit, hoping he'll not want to be rude and won't put me on hold again while he waits for his higher up to finish. I tell him I've been trying to access the forums, and that they're not working, and the KB archive seems to be having issues also (blank pages returned). He feigns disbelief, and assures me that the forums are most definetly up. He finally admits defeat when I politely ask him to actually type in the url and log in... and he gets the directory denied error also. Nothing accomplished, just trying not to get disconnected again.

Seems to work, he's a nice guy, and if they just had the local path to files on the damn sheet he was reading from I'd be all set. The 2nd level tech comes on, and I'm close. I can just feel it. All I need is the local path, input some filler data, make sure things are working and I'm off to bed. I'm even getting a little cheerful in anticipation. I'm not normally one who looks forward to sleep, but it's after 3am now and the pots of coffee, nicotine and frustration are taking their toll.

Still, it isn't as though it was the tech's fault he was hired to read from a sheet, so be polite, don't take it out on him... but keep him there to keep from getting disconnected as we're close to a solution.

Turned out to be a bit of cruel joke. The 2nd level tech can't seem to wrap his head around the fact that /public_html/ was not the path to local files, and I'm dutifully doing my best to explain the concept to him. Conversation goes something like this:

Tech:
No sir, /public_html/ is the public path to files. Everything you put in there is what someone will see when they view your domain name.

Me:
I understand that, but that isn't the path I'm looking for. I need the path that apache needs to traverse in order to get from /cgi-bin/ back to /public_html/. Normally this is something like (insert path explanation)... and I need the files to be generated into the directory /upcoming/ in /public_html/. These are the path variants I've tried, and this is the error message I'm getting... so I don't have the right path.

Tech:
No sir, all you have to do is use /public_html/, that is the path to files. See, your /upcoming/ directory is already there, and the error is saying it can't create the file as no such file or directory exists, so you need to put your file within /news/ and you'll be set.

Me:
...

Tech:
Sir?

Me:
Sorry, I think we're miscommunicating. I've tried /public_html/, as well as /home/public_html/, but I believe I'm missing a path component... the /upcoming/ directory is there because I put it there, and the error is saying it can't find the /upcoming/ directory where I'm saying it should be. I just need to know the local path to /public_html/ from /cgi-bin/.

Tech:
Oh, you just need to use /public_html/ as that is the first thing you see when you FTP in.

Me:
*sigh* Ok. I know that is the first thing most people see when they FTP in, but that is because they are being dropped there. Apache itself has to traverse back up the tree and back down to /public_html/ to get to the directory I need. Again, normally this would be something like...

Tech:
Oh, so /public_html/ isn't working? You're sure? That's what it should be.

Me:
I'm so very sure. Here are the files themselves- here is the login, here is the command to run them, and you'll have a better idea of what's going on. Remember that with a virtual account the domain name itself is just a pointer, with the domain being within a sandbox holding mail, stats, etc... and the public html folder. Apache needs to know how to get from one directory to the other, and if you are going out from the cgi-bin you can't have a relative link.

Tech:
Oh. So /public_html/ won't work?

Me:
Exactly. Is there someone there you can ask what the path to local files is, that's all I need.

Tech:
I will have to advance it up to the next level.

Me:
Ok, just set the phone down so I don't get disconnected and I'll wait while you do it.

Tech:
There's no one here though, they will have to call you.

Me:
But it's past 3am, and I have to have this out in the early morning.

Tech:
I'll make sure they get it and get in touch with you before that.

Me:
...but it's already almost early morning, and like you said, no one is there.

Tech:
But they'll call you.

Me:
Do you have a timeframe?

Tech:
No, but I'm sure it will be as soon as possible. Let me double check your contact information.

Me:
*sigh*. I appreciate it. Thank you for your time.

This obviously wasn't a solution, so I did what most people would do... drilled google down as far as I could go. Unfortunately for as many sites as they appear to have on their servers, they aren't mentioned much on the web in regards to their scripts.

I got lucky though, and one of their resellers actually had it up in their FAQ... took a long time to find it though, and was fairly simple, involving the domain of the account (minutes the .tld, which was odd). Bingo-bango, done and working fine, albiet very slowly.

I probably could have been smarter in my searching, ie in figuring out exactly what OS they are running (assuming solaris) and searching more on its specifics rather than Communitech's, but their control panel was a little odd and who knows what custom thing they're running and I really wasn't in the mood for a wild goose chase.

The moral of the story is simply that there are a lot of good hosting providers out there, there's simply no reason for (barring some odd things like your provider registered your domain in their name and won't let you leave or access your files or something) for not checking out the competition and getting the best performance, documentation and service you can find.

Oh, and please, for the love of god, something has to be done about these phone systems. I suppose they would give some people a sense of purpose in clicking through options instead of just being on hold, but when you have to go through them over and over (they seem really prone to disconnect) it just gets to be a joke.

And I swear it isn't as though the options you select really seem to make much of a difference farther down the phone chain- as you always end up having to repeat the information anyways.

For the record, they didn't call. But at 6am after an hour and a half of sleep I did get an form email via their support system (ie, it gets generated whenever a tech puts it in) letting me know that it had been escalated to their specialized group and they would be in contact as soon as a solution had been found.

Escalated. to. their. specialized. group. for. the. damn. path. to. local. files!

As of 9:30pm, no contact.

*sigh*