Unable to Connect....IP Issue?

12 posts / 0 new
Last post
#1 Thu, 12/27/2012 - 14:22
calvin

Unable to Connect....IP Issue?

Hello, very frequently I get the following browser error:

Unable to connect
Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at mars.mydomain.net:10000.

I'm just adding virtual servers and changing around usual/standard options. In order to regain access I have to reboot the VPS -- which is not great for my websites. I also added allow=myip into the miniserv.conf file. Is there a global setting somewhere to permanently white-list my IP? this is rather annoying.

thank you :D

edit:
Needless to say this is a really urgent issue....Any help would be really appreciated. Now even with restart of webmin I cannot gain access. I also tried no_testing_cookie=1 in the webmin config file but that didn't help either.

Thu, 12/27/2012 - 16:42
Locutus

This error message from Firefox can have any number of reasons. When it occurs, the first thing you need to check is if the name resolution still works (nslookup mars.mydomain.net), if you can ping the hostname (ping mars.mydomain.net), if you can ping the IP (ping [IP]), if you can connect to port 10000 (telnet [IP] 10000).

Depending on outcome, the server might have crashed. Then try to connect to the server's shell (possibly after reboot) and check log files for possible hints what has happened.

Being specifically blocked by Webmin cannot be the reason, because Webmin would then display an explanatory message (like "Your IP has been blocked" or so).

Thu, 12/27/2012 - 17:01
calvin

Hi Locutus, thanks for your response. Pinging the hostname and the IP address returns normal/expected responses. I will look into the logs....though I didn't see anything our of the ordinary earlier.

Thu, 12/27/2012 - 17:13
andreychek

Howdy,

Are you by chance using an OpenVZ-based VPS? If so, can you paste in the contents of your /proc/user_beancounters file?

-Eric

Thu, 12/27/2012 - 17:20
calvin

Yes, I am using an OpenVZ VPS -- 1gb ram. Please see here http://pastebin.com/JkmwatyF and/or attached. thank you very much. Attachment is organized much better * If it makes a different -- I am running nginx instead of apache and that works just fine.

Thu, 12/27/2012 - 17:32
Locutus

Which once more confirms my opinion that OpenVZ is the biggest piece of crap since the inception of virtualization software.

Eric, you should create a "Troubleshooting" page, and let the catch-all "Other inexplicable problems occur?" entry have the solution "Use a REAL Virtualization software instead of OpenVZ". You'd be correct with that in 99% of all cases. :P

Thu, 12/27/2012 - 17:26
calvin

Are you saying that Webmin/Virtualmin is incompatible with OpenVZ? If so, that wouldn't be good :-0.

Thu, 12/27/2012 - 17:30
Locutus

Nope, it's not "incompatible" per se.

It's just that OpenVZ and its rather "colorful" resource management -- most notably its tendency to start killing random processes when you reach some more of less random percentage of your memory or other limits -- is a bitch to debug and has caused incomprehensible trouble for Virtualmin users on numerous occasions in the past.

Thu, 12/27/2012 - 18:10 (Reply to #8)
calvin

That's not good....As you can tell, I am new to the whole unmanaged server thing. The basics like getting stuff installed and creating virtual sites, etc, etc, is not difficult but debugging is beyond me at this point. I purchased a 512/1024mb OpenVZ VPS through Hostigation for $30/year recurring -- a very good Christmas discount from Tim. Do you have any suggestions what i do?

Fri, 12/28/2012 - 05:04
Locutus

I'm assuming that "512/1024" means that you have 512 MB guaranteed and 1024 MB for load spikes.

That means if you're consuming more than 512 MB for an extended period, which can easily happen when you have the usual Virtualmin services like ClamAV, SpamAssassin and the Email Domain Lookup Service enabled and are hosting an number of sites with PHP, the thing will start killing random processes until your memory consumption is below the lower limit again. Webmin's miniserv is probably among those on a regular basis.

So you can do three things: Get a VPS with more memory (I recommend at least 1 GB guaranteed, and don't rely on the "spike limit" thing), go through the "Virtualmin in low memory situations" documentation https://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/system/low-memory and try to apply those suggestions, or get a VPS from a hoster that uses a better virtualization system like VMware or KVM.

(OpenVZ is popular with cheap hosters, since it's an OS-level virtualization, allowing them to put a great number of VPS on one physical machine with very few memory overhead. Disadvantages are... well, you've encountered them yourself. ;) )

Of course you won't find a worthwhile and stable VPS solution for $30 per year, that's for sure. "You get what you pay for." :)

Fri, 12/28/2012 - 10:54 (Reply to #10)
calvin

That's strange. I just had one 10 page Twitter Bootstrap site on the VPS, no DNS or Mail or Filtering running and nginx instead of apache. I never saw my memory consumption go above 250mb in HTOP. I suppose for my purposes now I don't really need a control panel anyway -- though it would have been nice.

Fri, 12/28/2012 - 20:57
calvin

My host was generous enough to increase the privvmpages on my VPS 10 fold which has seemed to solve the issue! Hostigation.com for the win :-)

Topic locked