Category: Hosting

Standard ColdFusion Install and Multiple Virtual Websites

Over the last 4 weeks I've seen some odd issues where the wrong page will be served up by my VPS with HostMySite. I at first attributed it to IIS, then the some weird header molestation when Apache didn't fix it. Thankfully when I posted about this issue yesterday, joshua cyr was quick to post up an old TechNote from MX6/MX7.

In short the problem is with the cacheRealPath attribute in jrun.xml. Almost 100% of the time I install the multi-version instance of ColdFusion; however my VPS is the single instance default install. Why does this matter? The multi or j2ee installs of CF8 default this attribute to false, whereas the default install sets it to true. This results in InstanceA being able to mistakenly server up InstanceB's Index.cfm file causing lots of fun issues when you have multiple virtual web servers (IIS/Apache) and template caching turned on....

0 comments - Posted by Russell Brown at 11:17 AM - Categories: Hosting | Server Config | Development

Very Strange Error and Request For Help

I have several ColdFusion sites on the same VPS box. SiteA (this blog) has a CFLOCATION in the "/index.cfm" file that points to "/blog/". SiteB about once a day will start throwing 404 errors. When your go to www.SiteB.com i get the index.cfm file from SiteA (this has been verified with a dump/abort); that cflocation tries to send you to /blog. Except magically it's in the correct folder now and /blog doesn't exist. It is very important to note that while I'm currently running Apache 2.2 on windows, this happened on IIS as well. This event is what caused me to switch to Apache thinking it was IIS Stability issue. The problem goes away instantly on a reboot of either service respectfully.

My folder structure is as follows:

Hard Drive Root
      wwwroot
            SiteA Base Folder
                  Blog
            SiteB Base Folder

My Apache setup order is

1. Default Virtual Host
2. SiteB Virtual Host
3. SiteA Virtual Host

The last time this error occured I outputed the client header information (from CF) and everything looks as though it should. Despite the fact that I was getting content out of the base folder for SiteA, I was in fact calling correctly for SiteB. If someone was to explain this error to me I think I would call them nuts.

Can someone PLEASE help me with this?

6 comments - Posted by Russell Brown at 12:56 PM - Categories: Hosting | Server Config | ColdFusion | Debugging | Development | General News | Microsoft

HostMySite Contacted me about my review on their VPS

So the long winded title says it all. A couple days ago I wrote a review about my experience with HostMySite.com's lower end VPS package. I was basically completly unimpressed with the initial roll-out of my VPS image and it's config settings and I briefly covered a few of the things I needed to do in order to get my apps running right.

Well yesterday afternoon HostMySite took the initiative and had someone call me! I'm not sure how high up the food chain the person I spoke with was, but I believe he sayed he was in charge of maintaining the VPS servers. In short he wanted me to give him my take on the configuration changes that they needed to make and in our short 21 minute phone call covered changes that should be made to IIS, MSSQL and ColdFusion. I also made some alternative software load suggestions.

He said he would give me an update at some point and if I get one I'll post it here; thumbs up to HostMySite for at least taking a small step forward. Like I said on the phone, if they were to make these changes I think they would have happier initial customers who thought they were getting a much better product and as well as a cut in support calls. I know my issues alone generated several support tickets.

2 comments - Posted by Russell Brown at 11:24 AM - Categories: Hosting | Server Config | ColdFusion

Review: 2 Months with HostMySite VPS

After months of issues with HostMySite's shared hosting and issues related to their inability to not rekick my server 15 times a day I moved 2 of my sites to their lower end VPS hosting package. I looked long and hard for alternative solutions, but it was hard to compete with their prices and to be honest they have had the best customer service sales and support wise I've ever experienced with a hosting provider. The test sites include this blog and a new application that I will be doing a seperate press release on in the coming weeks. Mango Blog has it's own framework and my new venture is a decent size MachII ColdSpring application.

Considering HostMySite just rolls out images of only 3 seperate completly non customizable VPS package, I was completly suprised by how absolutly poor and pathetic the initial setup of my site was. My VPS has limited HD space and only 512 megs of memory. MSSQL, ColdFusion+IIS were setup as if they were running on seperate boxes with tons of memory. Simply starting up my blog site took so much memory that if something crashed, there wasn't enough left for either ColdFusion or IIS to even start back up.

I also suffered from major IIS stability issues; for some reason a secondary IIS site (the one for my new app) kept crashing. It would throw no errors and would partially work, but the root folder of my site would for some reason go to a different IIS site, which got me a 404 due to my blogs cflocation.

Last night was the first time in 2 months I've been completly happy with my VPS and some of it involved doing things that HostMySite wasn't too keen on.

1. Tune MSSQL memory usage
2. Tune ColdFusion JVM args
3. Disable mail server website (Google Hosts all of my company's mail services)
4. Disable SmartStats completly
5. Disable IIS Admin, Windows FTP and IIS www
6. Install Cerbus FTP (half the mem usage of iis admin and ftp)
7. Install Apache with a VERY trimmed down and tuned out config file

I know Apache on Windows has it's own issues and HMS tech support apparently has religious issues with it, but the new setup breaths so much better and as of now I currently have 178ish megs of free physically memory which is huge considering I only have 512 to begin with. Prior to 100% of all these changes, I was lucky to have 5-20 free megs...

So at the end of the day, after tutoring and HMS staying late after school I give them an adjusted grade of A- after their initial grade of a C. I plan on reaching out to them in the coming days to inform them how piss poor their default roll-out is, but I'm guessing nothing will be done any time soon... I know that a VPS is already geared towards the knowledgable, but with 15 minutes they could at least configuer IIS, MSSQL and CF8 JVM args to something that doesn't fall over and die.

Anyone else using HMS VPS? What have your experiences been?

3 comments - Posted by Russell Brown at 7:01 AM - Categories: Hosting | Server Config | ColdFusion | Reviews | Development