Can you say crappy server?

I knew you could. At least you can if you rent a server from 1and1 hosting at 1and1.com. 1and1's servers are the most unreliable servers on the internet. The one I rent has crashed 25 times since the 2nd of February. That works out to around a crash every 3 1/2 days. 1and1's so called tech support claims that you have to prove it's a hardware problem before they'll repair or replace the server. Of course, there's no way to prove it without having physical access to the server. And only they have access to the data center the server is located in.

Crash number 24

The server I rent from 1and1 hosting (www.1and1.com) crashed again. The name 1and1 hosting is a synonym for unreliable hosting. :^(

This is the 24th crash in three months. 1and1 won't repair or replace the server because it can't be proved that it's their fault. They claim that Linux (CentOS 5.2 actually) is so unreliable that websites crash it. The same websites ran without a problem for over five years on the FreeBSD operating system. I have several other Linux servers (including one using CentOS 5.2) and none of them have any problems. The problem here is either their hardware or something they did wrong in setting up the OS on the computer.

Down again, naturally

The 1and1 Hosting server locked up again about 10 minutes ago. I waited to reboot it to see if it would unlock in 5 minutes the way it did the last time. It didn't so I rebooted it a minute or so ago.

1and1.com must be the worst hosting company in the world. This server has been crashing periodically since I started trying to use it in late January. The problem was reported to 1and1.com tech support on February 2nd but their attitude is "not our problem". They claim you have to prove it's their fault the server is crashing before they'll do anything. Let's see, it's their server, they installed the software on it, and it's in their data center. Whose fault could it be? 1and1 Hosting just refuses to accept responsibility for the servers it provides.

Oh, by the way, this is the 23rd time the server has locked up since I started counting in early February. If you're looking for an unreliable hosting company, look no further than 1and1.com. If you actually want your website to stay up (unreasonable expectation, I know) then go somewhere else.

Locked up and unlocked without rebooting

The 1and1 server stopped responding about 5 minutes ago. I tried to ping it and got no response. Then I tried to ssh into it, unable to connect. When I connected to the serial console it had the same thing on it as some of the other lockups:

RAID1 conf printout:
--- wd:2 rd:2
disk 0, wo:0, o:1, dev:sda7
disk 1, wo:0, o:1, dev:sdb7

and it wouldn't respond either.

By the time that I logged into the 1and1 control panel to tell it to reboot the server the server started responding again. It began to respond to pings and let me ssh into it. I thought maybe it had been rebooted by someone else but the uptime command says 25 days so it didn't reboot.

I don't know what could make it stop responding for 5 minutes and then resume normal operation. With both the network and serial console not responding it should have been dead until a reboot. I hate this crummy server. I've got to make time to move the remaining sites to another server so I can dump this one.