Arrrgh! hosting company accusing us of "not closing sesssions"

Can anyone explain to me what my hosting company are going on about?

Basically we are being accused of running scripts that are not closing their sessions properly ... We are only using vbulletin, a few hacks, a gallery and a portal. It is on a shared server, but normally runs trouble free.

It started at the weekend with vb giving us the following SQL error:

MySQL Error : Error writing file '/tmp/MYORhmER' (Errcode: 28) Error Number : 3

On certain pages. We also cannot get into phpmyadmin. That gives us this error:

Warning: session_write_close(): write failed: No space left on device (28) in /usr/local/cpanel/base/3rdparty/phpMyAdmin/index.php on line 44

Warning: session_write_close(): Failed to write session data (files). Please verify that the current setting of session.save_path is correct (/tmp) in /usr/local/cpanel/base/3rdparty/phpMyAdmin/index.php on line 44


We submitted a ticket, but within 20 minutes of doing so they suspended our site saying that our sessions "weren't closing", we have persistent connections turned off. The site has been running trouble free for over a year before this.

We spent a whole day negotiating with them and they finally allowed us back on after emptying the 'tmp' directory and saying it was us that was filling it up.

Thing is, it's happened again today. We've turned our forum off while we investigate, but we know that as soon as we raise the issue they will blame us again.

Can anyone tell us what we need to say to convince them it isn't us?

Or is it us and if so what can we do?

----

Ha, and now we've been suspended again.

*moans at the 'automerge' feature, that was supposed to be 2 posts*

[rhino56]

first thing id do is find a different host.

[LouiseDM]

I agree, i suggest contacting Distance
he runs a Hosting company and has quite a few VB Forums runs & is also a coder of VB Mods which is a good thing for problems

[moonclamp]

Yeah we've thought about moving hosts a few times, but can't find anything suitable that is based in the UK (either due to price or their TOS). Outside the UK is totally out of the question for us because of legal implications, unfortunately I've already thrashed that one to death.

Anyway, transferring a 360 meg database to another host is a complete pain in the arse that I really don't want to deal with, I just haven't got the time right now.

At the moment the host has unsuspended us and told us they will "keep an eye on us". All I want to do is settle the argument and fully understand what they are actually accusing us off, and if it is actually possible for us to be causing this problem.

[snakes1100]

Distance is a good guy, you might want to follow louise's advice there.

I dont see what a pain in the arse xfer'ing a 360mb db could be, i just xfer'd a 4.5gb db, that db dont have any images in it either.

I can't understand what they are complaining about phpmyadmin sessions for, thats installed with cpanel. Tell them to increase the tmp table size or link it to another partition if its to small as it appears to be.

[Reeve of shinra]

It might help to know exactly what hacks, which gallery, and which portal you are running

[moonclamp]

Originally Posted by snakes1100

I dont see what a pain in the arse xfer'ing a 360mb db could be, i just xfer'd a 4.5gb db, that db dont have any images in it either.

My lack of knowledge more than anything, in my experience transferring a db with phpMyadmin usually times out at 50 megs. We have no shell access as we are on a shared server.

Originally Posted by snakes1100

I can't understand what they are complaining about phpmyadmin sessions for, thats installed with cpanel. Tell them to increase the tmp table size or link it to another partition if its to small as it appears to be.

That makes more sense and was the kind of answer I was after. I'm just trying to find out what else could be causing the problem ... Like when they accuse us of causing the problem, I need to get some ammo to be able to defend ourselves.

Originally Posted by Reeve of shinra

It might help to know exactly what hacks, which gallery, and which portal you are running

VB 3.5.x - Vba portal, vbaphotopost gallery, age lock hack, rules and user agreement, vba links directory, vbjournal, kick user from a thread, admin log in as user, miserable users, gallery pics on forum home, and a few other template hacks that I cannot begin to remember. As far as I know all our templates are caching just fine.

We have avatars and photos in the file system and are using fulltext searching. Roughly 200 members visiting per day ... Threads: 14,348, Posts: 280,628, Members: 1,993

- PHP 5.21 and MySQL 5.0.27

Thing is, we have had these hacks for ages and been relatively trouble free for a long time.

[SoftDux]

If the DB is so large, and you do have cPanel, then use the backup to remote server via FTP feature instead. I have succesfully transferred 1GB backup files like that before from one host to another, even from the UK to the USA.

[LouiseDM]

If your Host has any value in customer service they would do it for you via there root

[Reeve of shinra]

This may not be related to your issue but edit your postbit template and delete the changes you made for vbjournal. There is/was (not sure) an issue where your query count would sky rocket if it was a large thread with a lot of posts.