FOR EDGEx100 - PLEASE READ, VERY IMPORTANT

[Rose]

I want to preface this by saying that I dont in any way mean to sound rude, however I have a complaint and I really need help with it.

I have a 75 man minecraft server and I plan to get more servers, however this issue is making me consider leaving to another company, and this is the issue:

Please understand, submitting a ticket is always a last resort for me, i am no idiot and know my way around a server, HOWEVER, whenever I submit a ticket i get a response similar to what is in the screenshot below:



As you can see, the techs (not just the one who answered that) always avoid at all costs it seems, helping me. Ive owned my gaming community for 12 1/2 years now, I have had several server hosts in that time. In my experience with all of them, if you support a ticket, they immediately respond by saying "I'm sorry you're having issues, I will look into the problem and let you know." Then the next response is the EXACT issue, regardless if its with a mod or not (which none of them handled either), and then if its a server issue they say: "I will get working on it right away and it should be fixed in ___ minutes/hours" OR if its a mod issue they say: "Your error is in the ______ file. You should be able to find an answer on google, or through our forums." As you notice, they actively help.

Now in the screenshot the tech stated the obvious. I knew that my server was crashing. Not all the responses have done that, however I expect that the techs are paid to resolve issues. If its in the mod, TELL ME its the mod and if possible, what exactly in the mod is causing it. You guys have access to more of the server than i do. Many problems reside in that realm of the server settings that I cannot do a bit about. I would really appreciate if they (like all he techs in other companies) could take just a couple min and check everything in the server for me as I had already done and instead of saying, "well, its probably a issue with the mod and you need to deal with that first", they could at least eliminate the possibility that its something with the server. That should and always has been the troubleshooting procedure. 1. check the server, if the server is not the cause, 2. look at the mods, if its not the mod itself (like for instance, with the craftbukkit installer), 3. check the plugins. Either way it would be much more professional, and much, MUCH more helpful.

I love you guys, you have helped me (tho it was usually always after jumping through hoops to get you to). I think your servers are excellent quality. I simply need a change in the tech support end.

Please help.

Thank you so much,

Rose

[Edge100x]

From Jordan's response, it sounds as though you've opened many duplicate requests with the same question. Is that the case?

I agree that Jordan's specific response here was poorly worded and I will talk to him about that. However, what he said was essentially the same as the "Your error is in the ______ file. You should be able to find an answer on google, or through our forums" response that you mentioned. That is, your problem is likely due to a mod (it's rare for a Minecraft problem to not be plugin-related), and the "Events log" page should show you all of the information that we have by showing the last log lines, which usually provide specific information on what caused the crash. Did you look at the page and view those lines? If so, what did you see there?

[Edge100x]

I took a look at your request history and you had a long discussion with the staff yesterday in which they explained how to troubleshoot plugins and worked with you to try many different steps to fix a similar problem. I also see dozens of previous requests from you in which plugins have been discussed. Thankfully, the one that you quoted here appears to be an aberration.

We can't generally troubleshoot Minecraft plugins directly for customers, because there are so many different plugins with varying levels of quality, and we frankly do not know most of them. This is why we try to provide general steps that can be used to troubleshoot any plugin problem and that will save the customer from having to frequently ask for help, such as recommending that you look at the errors put out by the game and any plugins when the server crashes. If the errors aren't useful, it is usually necessary to either backtrack and remove recent plugins until the problem goes away (telling you which plugin caused the issue) or start over from scratch and add plugins one-by-one until the problem comes back.

The response to your inquiry was not a good one because it did not explain this and help you with the troubleshooting steps.

[kraze]

Let me apologize for my poor response. I should of gone in to greater detail on how to check for issues and how to find the root cause of the problem. This was poor troubleshooting on my part, and I am sorry I gave the impression that I was blowing you off or did not care.

[Rose]

I do understand your position. I always try to make sure not to post double for one issue and i apologize for doing that in the past.

The ticket before the one i showed was for the tekkit crashes which became constant. It ran perfectly for days (it was a new mod we added) and then this stuff started. The one i showed above was for the crashing like once every couple hours now we're back to only bukkit while we get someone we know to fix tekkit. We ran this exact setup for MONTHS with very few problems (not this one at all) and now it all of a sudden happens.

I do troubleshoot like you said. I went to the log, see what its saying the error is coming from, disable it, and its still happening. I really work hard to not bother you guys. When I come to you, Im in a rather desperate situation. Like I said, everything was fine until 3 days ago. It leads me to think that its not within the plugins, but more with a bad interaction with something in the server itself. I mainly just request that you know that I have experience. I do the steps you asked me to do and that I always have done in past years. I simply ask that though you cannot fix mods due to liability or whatever the case is, that you at least tell me the exact file or exact error name.

I dont know why these mods are having issues with your server. We did a trial on a private server and it runs perfectly. We also always make sure we dont get "third party" mods. We get the official ones that are regularly updated and are the offical ones. In the case of the bukkit installer you have, I always assumed that you are keeping that installer up to date. I used it instead of going directly to bukkit since I also figured in testing it on your servers, you found it to work well which is why you provide those exact installers.

The mods we use are currently being used in its genaric form, just as is, aka Vanilla, in hundreds of servers and they work perfectly as well.

I dont know why they seem to dislike just your servers. I heard from a couple people that they had minecraft servers with you and also experienced issues. They said that in your FPS servers such as all counter strike servers are PERFECT. I was friends with the owner of [nTc] Navys training camp. He had a cz server with you for probably 6 yrs and it may still be open, i dont know but it was always full. That server had no lag and was absolutely perfect in every way possible. I loved it and aways wanted servers with you but couldnt afford it. You charge higher prices for yourservers because you provide quality... I know it. I love it and when our server is working great I really am proud to advertise for you. In fact 2 of the people I was talking you guys up to said they were going to buy a server from you since they liked ours.

I do not want you to think im just trying to be trouble. I have a great respect for you and all your staff. I wasnt trying to jump on any particular staff im just saying all the staff is giving the impression that you sell the servers and thats it, everything else is on you.

I just now checked the log again since we had 3 server stops in the last 3 hrs and here is what it says......

Code: Select all

2012-09-22 21:43:48 [WARNING] **** FAILED TO BIND TO PORT!
2012-09-22 21:43:48 [WARNING] The exception was: java.net.BindException: Address already in use
2012-09-22 21:43:48 [WARNING] Perhaps a server is already running on that port?

Thats sounding like a server issue that I dont have permissions to fix.

[Rose]

I do not want you to think im just trying to be trouble. I have a great respect for you and all your staff. I wasnt trying to jump on any particular staff im just saying all the staff is giving the impression that you sell the servers and thats it, everything else is on you.

By you i mean me and other server renters.

[Edge100x]

I really wish that it were as simple as just being able to tell you what plugin is the cause of a server problem. But, it's not always that simple. The steps that we give you for troubleshooting plugins are the same ones that we would need to follow to investigate them.

The "FAILED TO BIND TO PORT" error showed up for you on Saturday and occurred because you had accidentally replaced the server.properties file with one that did not specify the server's IP address (http://www.nfoservers.com/forums/viewto ... =69&t=5529). It appears that you fixed this shortly afterward, as the error didn't happen more than once.

I actually don't see any crashes for your server on Sunday (September 23). I do see that you have the server set to restart every 6 hours, via your "Server control" page, and I discussed that with Jordan earlier tonight. Are you certain that these scheduled restarts aren't what you're thinking of with the shutdowns? Any scheduled restart will not show as a crash on the "Events log" page, since they're pre-arranged by the renter and performed gracefully.

[Rose]

Yeah Im sure. We've been getting the shutdowns one every hour. We're going to shut off the restarts, however there are 3 issues we just mentioned. All point to ports. We cant do anything with that.

We did have shutdowns yesterday. I promise you that.

Why in the control panel is it showing todays date as 9/22 instead of 9/24, yesterday being 9/23? The logs are also dated wrong.

[Rose]

When i read the server.log file its showing the right date and 2 days worth of logs since the 22nd. So i apologize its showing the right dates now.

[Rose]

Heres the evidence....

2012-09-24 02:01:01 [INFO] CONSOLE: Stopping the server..
2012-09-24 02:01:01 [INFO] Stopping server

2012-09-24 02:01:04 [INFO] Stopping server
2012-09-24 02:01:04 [INFO] Saving players

2012-09-24 02:27:54 [INFO] CONSOLE: Stopping the server..
2012-09-24 02:27:54 [INFO] Stopping server

I have no idea why the restarts were checked. We are having this particular problem between lastnight and today.

[Rose]

Who is the host you're using in chicago? I know there are companies there that are saying they have server computer banks etc, that they're an internet provider, etc, however they in actuality are using poor rate towers and even in some cases are running them out of their homes or on home use computers. If this is the case, this can be one of the issues.

[Edge100x]

The logs visible through the FTP will match the timezone of the server. The control panel doesn't show the current time anywhere, but any timestamps that you see there will refer to Pacific time (we signify this by calling it "PT", "PST/PDT", or "Pacific"). In your case, the last errors were from the 22nd and indicated some plugin problems, in addition to the one you quoted.

If your server stopped on the 23rd, someone must have been triggering that through the "Server control" page, because the system didn't generate any crash events for that day -- only graceful NFO-triggered server stop operations will be recognized as non-crash events.

[Edge100x]

Heres the evidence....

These stops correspond to the server stop that you had scheduled to occur at midnight PDT, and a restart that Kraze performed for you at 12:27am PDT (that he reported doing inside the support request).

Who is the host you're using in chicago? I know there are companies there that are saying they have server computer banks etc, that they're an internet provider, etc, however they in actuality are using poor rate towers and even in some cases are running them out of their homes or on home use computers. If this is the case, this can be one of the issues.

We use InterNAP bandwidth directly and our servers in Chicago are in an Equinix datacenter. We use only NFO-owned, high-end server-grade hardware, and it entirely consists of 1u rackmounted machines.

Most hosts resell servers from dedicated servers or VPSes leased from other companies such as us -- even big ones. You're also correct that some hosts use their own low-end gear on low-end connections.

[Rose]

Who is stopping it then? I looked at the access log and events log and perhaps one was triggered by the scheduled restarts however 2 were not shown. No one on our end stopped it that I can tell.

I really appreciate your being detailed in your descriptions right now of the issues. Thats what i was talking about.Thank you for that.

I hope we can get these resolved.

The stops on the 22 were the ones that werent letting the server auto-reboot. We dont know what was happening there. Its why we took tekkit out to work on it however the 3 errors i intially mentioned from the 22 about the port issues i believe are a significant hint. Can you please look into it so we can install tekkit back and see if its working again.

Something like a port issue would definately fit the symptoms. It was working fine and then all of a sudden had issues. No changes made that would cause it. Please, PLEASE check into that as well. Like i said thats the second issue.

[Rose]

The first one at 2:01:01 is the scheduled one, you explaind the one at 2:27 however the middle one.... what was that from?



Thank you for using your own equipment. I know you care and do your research. Some companies use lower grade equipment for their minecraft servers tho because they think it requires less resources than the FPS servers however it doesnt.