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[Philip Goddard]

It seems that F9 regard webspace logfiles as very low priority. As I'm the owner of a particularly extensive site with significant content, prompt view of my custom daily site statistics, with actual checking of various things actually in the logfiles, is part of essential management of my site, and is thus a high priority matter.

For over a year now there have been periodic interruptions in the supply of logfiles, always with a great reluctance on the part of F9 to acknowledge in Service Statue that there was an issue. Last Friday, however, when I raised a ticket on the no-logfiles issue, I was promptly told that they were already aware of the issue and engineers were looking into it.  Yet this didn't show in service Status till earlier this week, and then almost at once it went back to green for webspace issues, as though the issue had been resolved. I'm STILL waiting for logfiles to start appearing again. The very least that F9 could do in this sort of situation is to post frequent and honest updates on their progress or otherwise in fixing the issue.

[dgdclynx]

PN have been busy retrieving portal webstats all week and these are now up-to-date as of yesterday. They must have forgotten about logs. I assume you put in a ticket. The number for the problem was something like 3503. (I will check that). I hope Josh sees this.
 

[dgdclynx]

PN have been busy retrieving portal webstats all week and these are now up-to-date as of yesterday. They must have forgotten about logs. I assume you put in a ticket. The number for the problem was something like 32905. (I will check that). I hope Josh sees this.
 

32905 it was.

[Philip Goddard]

I not only raised a ticket, as I indicate above, but I continued to nag there.

[parish]

Me too

Last logfile was last Thursday, 8th June.

[portmoak]

I not only raised a ticket, as I indicate above, but I continued to nag there.

Like Phil I have an extensive site of over 100Mb and not only me but many of my users use the statistics from the logfiles through a webalizer link from a ccgi site.

I've raised a ticket and the response was 'check the service status'. I checked it - all green. I raised another ticket and the response was 'engineers are busy doing something else, logfiles come later'. Really helpful. The actual webstats are there now and seem up to date but my users can't see these, only me, and they don't give all of the data.

So no logfiles for over a week. No feedback on what's happening. And F9 continuing to claim that there are no problems. Impressive - not!

[mbeckett]

Hi Guys

Service Status has now been updated to reflect the current situation.

We are now fully caught up with webstats, and raw logs from yesterday are present. There was an issue with the raw logs caused by the weekends move, which was resolved yesterday, unfortunately logs since the weekend cannot be retrieved.

Regards
Mand

[parish]

There was an issue with the raw logs caused by the weekends move, which was resolved yesterday, unfortunately logs since the weekend cannot be retrieved.

Terrific.

Two little words for your sysadmins.....

Backup
Testing

[dgdclynx]

I have just been grumbling about what happened in newsgroup p.s.c-f and in the Discussion Forums. It seems that for some reason CS didnt include 'webstats logfiles' with 'portal webstats' in Problem 32905 and for inexplicable reasons this wasnt picked up later and has only been realised today losing ten days logfiles. I would have expected this of CS, not higher up the hierarchy. Very shoddy PN.

[mikeb]

Service Status has now been updated to reflect the current situation.

We are now fully caught up with webstats, and raw logs from yesterday are present. There was an issue with the raw logs caused by the weekends move, which was resolved yesterday, unfortunately logs since the weekend cannot be retrieved.

Sorry but I think that's complete tosh - it was showing green not long after the first "we are investigating reports of ..." announcement.  Quite possibly the day after - it was certainly only amber or maybe red for a very short time and only then after much nagging.  I was told in my ticket raised on Saturday which specifically mentioned ftp log files and not Portal stats btw:

There is no service status posting as this issue does not appear to be effecting a large enough section of the userbase.

We will resolve the issue as soon as possible.

Also, I note that there is still no data after 07/06/06.  Are you suggesting that there should be and it is only the data 'intentionally' lost whilst trying to fix the problem during this week or do you mean everything since 07/06/06 has been lost ?

Oh, and BTW, does the word 'backup' not mean anything at all north of Watford ? I cannot seriously believe that data is lost/unrecoverable even with the apparent shambles of a data centre and what I would generally consider as gross incompetence of those concerned if I were in charge of the place. In any case, if it was true then how did you manage to manually produce and apparently update the portal stats ?

As you probably guessed, I'm not exactly impressed that (as per $%*^%$£ usual) Customer reports of definite, proven and totally obvious PN problems are completely ignored and am looking for a sensible response. I would also add once again that there is still no data available since 07/06/06 so perhaps you could also advise when 'current' data will start being generated and appear again ... if at all that is   

And finally, just out of morbid curiosity, what exactly is this mysterious 'hardware issue/bug' that apparenty caused all the problems with various systems after a relatively simple task of moving a few servers to a Co-Loc ? Simply not plugged in or just not able to connect to systems on the original part of the network due to routing errors perhaps ? My money is on screwed-up configuration and/or gross stupidity together with no real planning beforehand and no formal testing of the installation after but please do feel free to prove me wrong

[Philip Goddard]

Well, so far I see no signs of any attempt to improve customer relations. I'll need to see a major change in this soon or I'll be another one starting to look for another ISP.

[dtomlinson]

Hi,

I'm sorry that the raw stats have been lost, if the stats aren't there now then will not be retrievable. I don't personally know exactly what the cause of the problem was outside of what Mand has already posted. So can't really add anything to that.

I no it isn't any consolation, but I should note that in the case where there are problems priority would be given to ensure that customers' sites were available and effort was concentrated on ensuring that the email problems were resolved. Unfortunately something like webstats will always get a lower priority than things like Homepages and email.

[parish]

Unfortunately something like webstats will always get a lower priority than things like Homepages and email.

That I can understand and accept, but data loss, even of relatively minor data, is unforgivable I'm afraid. PN are an IT company and so a large majority of your staff are, or should be, IT professionals. If data loss occurred in a small, non-IT company it would be understandable - even expected - but not from a company "in the trade".

[parish]

In any case, if it was true then how did you manage to manually produce and apparently update the portal stats ?

IIRC, the logs are used to create the portal webstats then copied to another location (the users log/ directory?) - maybe even another machine - before being deleted and it appears from what Mand said that the copy operation was not being performed.

[carrot63]

I can only echo mikeb's sentiments. This problem has reared its head in one form or another every few months for the the 5 years I've been with PN. In 2003 it seemed to be a monthly event for most of the year, usually fixed fairly quickly and resulting in 2 or 3 missing log files, and another 3 or 4 either partial or mixed together. It seems no lessons have been learned and this time its a record 10 days worth.

It's easy enough for PN to declaim the 'extras' such as webspace and logs as freebies for which they have no liability to provide, but for some like me, these extras were a good part of the reason we signed up in the first place - sad though it may be to be obsessed with such things.

This is just very, very poor management of services, and gives the distinct sense the wheels are falling off. The 'cut and paste' CS answers inspire zero confidence it is being addressed, and we won't be back to the monthly ticket to CS for some time to come.

Shoddy.