Defective 1and1.com server crashed again

I just had to reboot the defective server that 1and1.com is providing again. However, it is a new record, the server stayed up a whole 7 days between crashes. The previous crash was on the 19th. In the beginning it was crashing several times a day. Then it started crashing around once a day. This time it went a whole week before it crashed again.

1and1.com's management insists it's not their problem if a server crashes. How they came up with that I don't know, they provide the server hardware, they chose, configured, and installed the Linux operating system on it, and they provide the network connection. I've been working with Unix and Linux computers as long as they've existed (back to the old Dec minicomputers) and the only reason a Unix/Linux server crashes is either a hardware problem or a problem with the operating system. User programs like the Apache web server can crash themselves but not the whole operating system. 1and1.com's tech support is so inexperienced with Unix/Linux that they claim the web software can and does (at 1and1) often crash the entire server.

The brand new server at 1and1.com is apparently inferior to a 6 year old server running an outdated version of the FreeBsd operating system that I had at Hostway. That server ran these same websites and a lot more and never crashed in 6 years. Around once ever year or so I made some change to the configuration and deliberately rebooted it but other than that it was always up.

1and1.com server didn't stay up long this time

The shitty server 1and1.com provided just crashed again. I rebooted it.

A new record, 1and1.com server up for 4 whole days

I think we have a new worlds record, the 1and1.com server actually stayed up for 4 days! Actually I think we're about 6 hours short of 4 days but who's counting. Of course, a server with a reputable hosting company would stay up for years but for a 1and1.com server this is good. The ancient server I had at Hostway was never down unless I deliberately took it down for software upgrades.

As you may have guessed from the above the server just crashed again and I rebooted it. Nothing on the serial console this time.

1and1.com server crashes again

The server at 1and1.com locked up again and I had to reboot it. How 1and1 can continue to claim it's not their problem escapes me. The servers we had before at Hostway ran for more than 400 days between reboots and those reboots were deliberate because of software updates. The 1and1 servers need to be rebooted daily because of lockups.

Before the reboot the serial console had this on it:

RAID1 conf printout:
--- wd:2 rd:2
disk 0, wo:0, o:1, dev:sda7
disk 1, wo:0, o:1, dev:sdb7
Press any key to continue.
Press any key to continue.
Press any key to continue.
Press any key to continue.
Press any key to continue.
Press any

Down again

The server I rent at 1and1.com just went down again. I just rebooted it. 1and1.com is the most unreliable hosting service in the world.

Down again

The server at 1and1.com just locked up again. I rebooted it again.

Another day, another lockup at 1and1.com

I just had to reboot the server I rent from 1and1.com again. Just like the other times it just locked up. No error messages, nothing. Even the serial console is dead.

It's now been 11 days that the server has been crashing almost daily. Sometimes two or three times a day. 1and1's position is that I have to prove that it's their hardware before they'll replace it. They don't seem to care at all that the server is unreliable. They count on the fact that there's no way to prove it's the hardware. They claim that it's the websites crashing the server. The websites had all been up for over 400 days on a 6 year old server with no downtime. I guess the "new" servers from 1and1.com aren't as good as a 6 year old server from Hostway.

If you're thinking about hosting at 1and1.com I recommend you don't do it. Not only do their technicians not seem to know what they're doing, their management is so unethical that they won't replace a server that continues to crash.

Emailing 1and1.com management again

I just emailed 1and1.com again about the server crashing. Once again I emailed the complaint address I got from tech support, sales, billing, support, and their press contact.

A free month of hosting on an unreliable server that crashes every day really isn't much of a deal. The fact that 1and1's corporate policy is not to replace or fix a server that crashes constantly amazes me. Any reputable hosting company would correct the problem, not offer discounts.

I can only hope that at least a few people will read my blog entries on 1and1 and not do business with you.

Harold Hankins
http://1and1hostingproblems.blogspot.com/

1and1.com server down again

I just had to reboot the server again because it locked up.

Anyone looking for hosting should stay far away from 1and1.com. It's stupid, they want to give me a free month of hosting to make up for the server crashing all the time. They won't fix the server the way any reputable hosting company would, they just want to give me a discount because the server is unreliable. Unbelievable.

Server at 1and1.com down once again

I guess I spoke (typed?) too soon about the server not locking up anymore. It just did it again.

I've been working on websites for 12 years (my first domain was registered in 1997) and I've never have such an unreliable web host. In all the years I was at Rackspace and later Hostway I never had any significant down time. The one time there was a problem Hostway replaced the server immediately. 1and1 doesn't even seem surprised or concerned that the server is locking up. It appears that unreliable servers are the norm at 1and1.com. While their website would make you think they're a commercial web host, their support is more geared toward the casual website. One that it doesn't matter if it's down.

still up!

It's been almost 4 days since the last time the server locked up. I haven't done anything to it and the logs don't show 1and1 having done anything either. It worries me not knowing why it was going down or why it's staying up now.

For now I guess I'll just keep monitoring the server and see what happens.

A reply to my email

I just received a reply to my email to complaints@1and1.com.

Thank you for contacting us.

I understand that you've been upset with our technical
support team. This is something that I can only
apologize for. This is an aspect of our service that
we're always trying to improve. This is why your
feedback is so important to us. We can now look through
and see where and if we made mistakes. Then, we can
look into making sure that this doesn't happen again.
Again, we can only apologize for this frustration that
you've suffered.

We want to apologize for this downtime. As well,
as a sign of good faith in our working relationship,
we have since added a free month of hosting to your
package.

If you have any further questions please do not
hesitate to contact us.

--
Sincerely,
Zachary Lambert
Customer Service
1&1 Internet

1and1.com server dies again!

At 1:02 pm I noticed the server was down again and restarted it. I've lost count of how many times it's locked up. I think it's now locked up more times after 1and1 "repaired" the server than before they worked on it. It's certainly locking up more often now.

1and1 still hasn't contacted me about the problems I emailed them about last night. I guess they never will. At any reputable hosting company a server that crashes again and again would be a top priority. 1and1.com's management apparently doesn't care about their customers.

No response to my emailed complaint

There's still no response to the complaint I emailed 1and1 last night. 1and1 management apparently doesn't care enough to even respond to complaints about poor service and servers crashing constantly. Or maybe they get so many complaints like this that they can't respond to them all. You'd think one of the six recipients would be professional enough to respond.

And it's locked up again!

At 5:00 am I got up to check on the server and it was down again. I restarted it and went back to bed. This getting up every few hours to check on the server gets old quick.

Feb 5 05:05:07 ns1 syslogd 1.4.1: restart.

Down again

At 9:20 pm I noticed the server was down again and restarted it.

Feb 4 21:24:33 ns1 syslogd 1.4.1: restart.

Emailing 1and.com management about the server problems

At 7:10 pm I emailed everyone I could think of at 1and1 telling them about the problems. I emailed the complaint address I got from tech support. I also sent the email to sales, billing, support, and their press contact. I even sent a copy to the press contact in Germany since that's where their main office is.

from Harold Hankins
to complaints@1and1.com, info@1and1.com, billing@1and1.com, support@1and1.com
cc press@1and1.com, presse@united-internet.de
date Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 7:10 PM
subject Poor support - Customer ID 8544991

I've been a 1and1 customer for domain registrations for around 5 years. The server I was using at Hostway was getting old, we'd had it for 6 or 8 years. I decided to switch to 1and1 for hosting since the domain registrations were there. BIG MISTAKE. Since I started loading websites on your server 3 days ago the server has been down more than it's been up.

Your company has no competent support. The technicians in the data center replaced the ram in my server yesterday around 3 am and never even bothered to check if the server booted up when they were done. It was still down when I got up at 6 am. I called tech support and got the only good support I've gotten from you. The tech booted the server in recovery mode, found that the file system was corrupt and couldn't be fixed with fsck. He had me make a backup that was current and put in an order for the data center techs to replace the drives and re-image the server. They worked on what should have been a 2 hour job for 11 hours. From 7:30 am until around 6 pm. Any competent tech having that much trouble trying to load the os would have realized there were problems with the server and replaced it. I then spent a couple of hours getting the most critical websites back up. It ran until around 11:30 am and locked up again. I found out around 3 pm and called tech support again. He wanted me to back up the server again and reimage it. Said that you need proof that it's a hardware problem before replacing the server. That was just stupid, it took the techs on site 11 hours to reimage it because they had problems. After talking a while the best he could suggest was that I order another server and move to it and that he'd waive the cancellation fees on this server and credit back the startup costs. That's even stupider. Why should I put out the money to order another server and wait for it to be credited back. Any reputable hosting company would fix the problem.

You can probably guess what I'm going to be posting on my blog and other forums about 1and1.

Harold Hankins
(702)xxx-xxxx

--------------

1and1.com server down again

At 3:49 pm I found server was locked up again. I rebooted the server and checked it's log files. From the log entries it locked up at around 11:40 am. As with the previous lock ups there were no entries in the log to explain why the server locked up.

I called 1and1 tech support again and told them the server was still having the same problem as before they worked on it. He wanted me to backup the server again and to re-image the operating system again. He claims there's no proof that the server is bad so they won't replace the server unless I order another one. Apparently at 1and1 a server that crashes three or four times a day is still considered a good server.

I told him I'd contact the company's management tomorrow morning and complain about the bad service.

For now I'll have to just get up every few hours all night and check the server.

1and1.com techs are incompetent

Around 3 am 1and1.com's data center tech replaced the ram in the 1and1.com server and never bothered to check if server booted back up when he was done. It didn't. Anyone even marginally qualified to work on a server would have made sure the server came back up.

When I got up around 6:30 am I noticed that the server was down and called 1and1.com's tech support. The tech found that the file system was corrupt and tried to fix it using the fsck utility. It couldn't be fixed so he asked that I make a current backup so they could replace the disk drives and re-image the server's operating system. He estimated that it would take about 2 hours to complete the drive replacement and re-image. This was the only person at 1and1.com I've talked to who seemed to know what he was doing.

I made the best backups I could with the damaged file system and at 7:30 am I called 1and1.com tech support and told them the backup was done and they could work on the server. The data center tech spent all day replacing the drives and re-imaging the server. I called them every few hours to check on the status of the repair and was told they were having problems getting server to re-image. They spent all day (10.5 hours) trying to get the server back up. Any good technician would have realized that the server had more hardware problems and replaced it with a new server. Not at 1and1.com, you have to prove that the hardware is bad before they'll replace the server. They won't accept the fact that it locks up three or four times a day as proof that the server is bad.

They were supposed to phone and email me when they finished but they never did. At around 6:00 pm I noticed that server had just come back up and I reloaded the most critical websites and got them back online.

1and1.com finally emailed me at 10:55 am the next morning to let me know that they were done.

The start of problems with 1and1.com hosting

I found the server down and called tech support at 1and1.com. He told me how to reboot through control panel and said they would run diagnostics on the server. I asked that they work on it midnight - 3 am pacific time when usage is lower.

Feb 2 07:15:38 ns1 syslogd 1.4.1: restart.

I also noticed in the logs the following reboots earlier:

Jan 5 15:35:09 ns1 syslogd 1.4.1: restart.

Jan 28 08:47:39 ns1 syslogd 1.4.1: restart.

Jan 31 18:36:35 ns1 syslogd 1.4.1: restart.

Feb 1 11:01:23 ns1 syslogd 1.4.1: restart.