17 replies to this topic

[travstatesmen]

I am nearly ready to apply for my new hosting account here on Trap17. Before I do though, I have a question. This relates to your 'Excessive Use' policy, and is something that I have been caught out with on a previous web host, so I really want to make sure that this is right this time before I apply.

OpaQue @ Jan 7 2005, on 02:14 PM, said:

EXCESSIVE USE

Trap17.com accounts operate on shared resources. Excessive use or abuse of these shared resources by one customer may have a negative impact on all other customers. Misuse of resources in a manner which impairs network performance is prohibited by this policy and may result in termination of your account.

You are prohibited from excessive consumption of resources, including CPU time, memory, disk space and session time. You may not use resource-intensive programs which may negatively impact other customers or the performance of Trap17.com systems or networks. Trap17.com reserves the right to terminate or limit such activities.

Accounts using up enough server resources, to slow or crash a server, will be shut down without notice.

My question is, how will I know whether what I am about to do is going to exceed the allowable CPU usage limits, and what are those limits? Your AUP states, as quoted above, that "excessive consumption of resources" is against the rules, and that there are "allowable CPU usage limits" which must be met or the account may be "shut down without notice". But it does not detail what the CPU usage limit is, nor how I am to avoid breaching such limits. The last time that I came across this situation, on another web host (not Trap17), I managed to fall foul of their Acceptable Use Policy, exceeding CPU usage limits, just by backing up my data using the cPanel inbuilt backup tool! I had no idea that this was going to put me over the CPU usage limit, and I had no way to gauge what the likely result on CPU performance would be of the action that I was intending to take.

So, before I apply for a web hosting account with Trap17, I guess I would like to know...

• what exactly your "allowable CPU usage limit" is?
  
• how am I expected to measure this?
  
• is this "allowable CPU usage limit" measured at a peak point, or cumulatively over a period of time?
  
• how am I supposed to preempt this limit, pre-calculating a particular action, before I exceed the limit?

I want to abide by your rules, but to do so, you need to tell me what your rules are, and not just some arbitrary and vague "allowable CPU usage limit". If I am putting my time and effort into building a website that is hosted on your services, I don't really want it to be "shut down without notice" for disobeying a rule that I cannot possibly meet, or that I could not possibly avoid breaking.

Can you specify what exactly your definition of a "resource-intensive program" is, and give examples, so that I can avoid them? Also, as I have posted elsewhere on your forums, I intend to make extensive use of the mySQL databases offered by Trap17 on my web hosting account, and I would like to know in advance if such intended use is going to violate your AUP.

Would one of your Admins be prepared to set up a test to see whether my intended use of your services is likely to violate the rules? Perhaps the results of such a test could be used to advise me on the best solution that I could implement, such as possibly limiting the number of Travian servers that I try to keep track of using the map.sql data.

I have a second, completely unrelated question, but which I would like to get answered before I apply for a hosting account please, so I thought I would just add it on here rather than opening a whole new thread. Below is a quote from somebody else's application for a web hosting account, but this looks like a standard reply...

BuffaloHELP @ Aug 21 2008, on 08:47 PM, said:

Activating your hosting account will result in your hosting credits resetting to a default amount so stay active in the forum.

I have been conscientious with my forum posting, and my wife is posting as well, raising our Hosting Credits. We currently have over 100 Credits, and were expecting to keep the remainder of them after activating the web hosting account (assuming that my application is successful). But from the message quoted above it seems that activating a web hosting account on Trap17 may cost more than the advertised 30 Hosting Credits, and we may lose many more Credits down to a "default amount". Is this the Trap in the Trap17 web hosting account application process?

Notice from jlhaslip:

Merged 2 consecutive posts as per Report

[rvalkass]

travstatesmen, on Aug 23 2008, 10:20 AM, said:

what exactly your "allowable CPU usage limit" is?

There is no set (i.e. numerical) limit that I am aware of. The odd spike from a backup is OK, but consistently using 10% of the CPU power obviously isn't.

travstatesmen, on Aug 23 2008, 10:20 AM, said:

how am I expected to measure this?

You are expected to use discretion. Updating every row of a 1000 row SQL table at 5 minute intervals is likely to be unacceptable, and cause problems. However, updating them once every few hours would probably be OK. If this sort of thing is concerning you, run your scripts locally first. If they cause noticable detriment to your CPU performance, or use considerable amounts of RAM, then they are going to do the same to the Trap17 server. Local testing is the key.

travstatesmen, on Aug 23 2008, 10:20 AM, said:

is this "allowable CPU usage limit" measured at a peak point, or cumulatively over a period of time?

As far as I am aware, it is over a period of time. I have taken many backups and run slightly intensive tasks with no problems. The line is drawn on whether you start affecting other people. If you are causing problems for other people, and ruining their hosting service, then whatever process you're running will be stopped.

travstatesmen, on Aug 23 2008, 10:20 AM, said:

how am I supposed to preempt this limit, pre-calculating a particular action, before I exceed the limit?

Local testing is the key. There are tutorials on setting up Apache, PHP and MySQL locally on the forums, check the Tutorials section. Test your site locally, while monitoring the CPU and RAM usage. If your script causes a large spike then you'll need to fix it so that it is not so intensive.

travstatesmen, on Aug 23 2008, 10:20 AM, said:

Can you specify what exactly your definition of a "resource-intensive program" is, and give examples, so that I can avoid them?

Cron jobs running every few minutes (probably anything more often than once per hour). Sending many hundreds or thousands of emails at once, rather than spacing them out over time. Large SQL commands on poorly designed databases.

travstatesmen, on Aug 23 2008, 10:20 AM, said:

Also, as I have posted elsewhere on your forums, I intend to make extensive use of the mySQL databases offered by Trap17 on my web hosting account, and I would like to know in advance if such intended use is going to violate your AUP.

Downloading, renaming and organising the SQL files would not be a problem. However, 6MB of SQL commands could take a large amount of processor time, especially if they are running as separate INSERT commands, as you seem to suggest. Running lots of these SQL files (for the multiple servers) would escalate the problem. I suggest trying your scripts locally and seeing what happens. Your hosting account shouldn't really be used as a test bed for something like this.

travstatesmen, on Aug 23 2008, 10:20 AM, said:

Would one of your Admins be prepared to set up a test to see whether my intended use of your services is likely to violate the rules? Perhaps the results of such a test could be used to advise me on the best solution that I could implement, such as possibly limiting the number of Travian servers that I try to keep track of using the map.sql data.

As I've suggested, test using a local running process of Apache, MySQL and PHP. There are tutorials here on the Trap17 forums detailing how to do this. If you're using Linux you just need to open your package manager and download the Apache2, MySQL5 and PHP5 packages, and they will be set up and configured for you.

travstatesmen, on Aug 23 2008, 11:16 AM, said:

I have a second, completely unrelated question, but which I would like to get answered before I apply for a hosting account please, so I thought I would just add it on here rather than opening a whole new thread. Below is a quote from somebody else's application for a web hosting account, but this looks like a standard reply...
I have been conscientious with my forum posting, and my wife is posting as well, raising our Hosting Credits. We currently have over 100 Credits, and were expecting to keep the remainder of them after activating the web hosting account (assuming that my application is successful). But from the message quoted above it seems that activating a web hosting account on Trap17 may cost more than the advertised 30 Hosting Credits, and we may lose many more Credits down to a "default amount". Is this the Trap in the Trap17 web hosting account application process?

This is pointed out in numerous places (for example, here, linked from the Readme page), very clearly, that you should apply as soon as you have the 10/30 credits for the package you want, and that after you activate your account, you drop down to around 2 to 4 credits.

[Saint_Michael]

Although rval answered I like to add a little input if I may.

Allowable CPU usage limit is kind of tricky because of the fact that 20% or more will temporary shut your site down, but in order to do that your website and databases need to be loaded and I mean we are taking gigs of data. however, since your using free hosting your never going to break that since your hosting space is tied in with your MySQL space as well and so you could break your hosting account in half as to where the most space would go. Although, once your site gets bigger and bigger MySQL will be taking more as each table starts saving data. So I don't think you will have to worry about that as much as making sure your not running cron jobs ever 2 seconds for all that data because then your bogging down the servers and that will affect everyone.

Quote

how am I expected to measure this?

As rval mention use discretion, but I would say when you see CPU usage exceeded, you know you did something wrong. Of course the best thing to do for your website is use what you really need and not what everyone else has. Make sure your code in y our files are optimize, also make sure your MySQL tables are optimize, using resources like image hosting and file hosting to help lighten the load on your account. With those tips to help it will be unlikely you be breaking that cpu limit.

I am with rval on how its measure, however, I do think there is a peak for cpu usage as well, because I know this one website that always spiked when I was going through their forums. Although, when I see OpaQue I have to ask him about the CPU usage because to be quite honest your the first member to really bring this question up .

Quote

how am I supposed to preempt this limit, pre-calculating a particular action, before I exceed the limit?

Make sure your code and tables are optimize, meaning you have no spaces where none is needed, making sure your loops are closed properly, limit your cron jobs i.e. every 4 hours or maybe once a day.

Quote

Can you specify what exactly your definition of a "resource-intensive program" is, and give examples, so that I can avoid them?

To be quite honest besides the cron jobs but almost every software that you can install such as forums and blogs can be resource-intensive program once you have a lot of content, like a few million posts in a forum, thousands of blog entries, and thousands of large images in a gallery. If you had a combination like that expect to breaking that cpu usage limit. So you can't avoid them persay, but that is the the wonders of staff to keep the spam down, turning your big images into smaller ones to reduce file size but keeping the quality and archiving old blog entries.

Quote

Also, as I have posted elsewhere on your forums, I intend to make extensive use of the mySQL databases offered by Trap17 on my web hosting account, and I would like to know in advance if such intended use is going to violate your AUP.

Like rval mention you would need to cause serious downtime for you to start violating the AUP when it comes to MySQL databases, but like rval said if you set up something like XAMPP and test your stuff on that before testing a hosting account you will have an idea what to expect. However, expect those results to nearly double or triple as your visitor increase and what not.

Quote

Would one of your Admins be prepared to set up a test to see whether my intended use of your services is likely to violate the rules? Perhaps the results of such a test could be used to advise me on the best solution that I could implement, such as possibly limiting the number of Travian servers that I try to keep track of using the map.sql data.

I find it unlikely that will happen because of how volunteer the staff is and the work load of OpaQue so you would be really on your own on that one. However, my recommendation and I am being quite honest, what I recommend since it seems your using your account for a gaming server of some sorts, is go to paid hosting and get a VPS account at computinghost.com (paid hosting company that runs trap17), expensive but you get a lot more support and a lot more room to play with. Also you will be able to talk to the support directly (when they are online) and let you know what kind of damage your doing .


I saw your topic and it said that you had over 100 credits, I was like wow because that is quick to get that many credits, most likely because of the dynamic dualness of the account. However I recommend that you save up 280 credits and I tell you why. You will be able to get a free domain for 250 credits and for the other 30 credits your get your hosting account. Like rval mention you will lose all over them except for 2 or 4, that is how the system works.

So I would recommend that you save up to 280 and you will be better off that way, and also you need to make sure to have at least 250 by the end of the year of that domain's yearly cycle to renew it. ie if you got it today then you would need 250 credit in 2009 on the same date to renew it.

Edited by Saint_Michael, 23 August 2008 - 12:44 PM.

[travstatesmen]

Thank you for your reply, rvalkass. I will look into setting up an Apache server, PHP, and mySQL server on my local machine. Thanks for the advice.

As for the reply regarding the impending loss of my Credits, I still have not found on the Readme the link that you mentioned, and had you not posted that link above to the Flash tutorial I would probably still be looking for it now. The documentation on Trap17 seems to be very disorganized, including links to posts on the forums which seem to form a part of the rules. After reading through the documentation that jlhaslip linked me to in reply to my very first post on the Trap17 forums, I was still completely unaware of this caveat about the disappearing Credits. This type of information needs to be more prominently displayed on your site, rather than being hidden in some fine print in some hopelessly complex Readme file. When people such as myself choose to accept in good faith your offer of free web hosting in exchange for our participation in your forums, and then to post intelligent, relevant, and spam-free posts on your forum, upholding our end of the agreement, you should also uphold your end and act in good faith also. Hiding important information like the fact that opening a web hosting account will cost us ALL of our Credits, and not just the advertised 10 Credits (Package 1), or 30 Credits (Package 2) is not acting in good faith.

For instance, in the information linked by jlhaslip, under the subtitle of Trap17 Hosting FAQ, there is a link to The Bottom Line, which goes to a post on the forums, under Have your say > Support and Feedback > Questions & Queries. The Bottom Line" is that...

Dooga @ May 2 2005, on 08:12 AM, said:

*You have to have POSITIVE credits to stay active
*You lose one credit per day
*You get one credit for 300 characters in your post (100 posts with 1 letter each will not even get you one credit)
*You don't lose credits before you get hosted. After you get hosted, you lose 1 credit per day

That's all the basics.

There is nothing in "The Bottom Line" about losing ALL Credits when activating a hosting account. And yes, I see the disclaimer in Dooga's signature that says "Please note: This post and all the other posts I make do not represent the overall opinion of Trap17, nor does it represent an accurate reference." For this reason alone I would again question the validity of Trap17's documentation, and this irrational use of links to forum posts to make up the content of your rules and regulations.

I am quite perturbed about this, and will be considering my choice of web host carefully in light of this new information.

[travstatesmen]

Thanks also, Saint_Michael, for elaborating. Sorry, I was writing a reply to rvalkass when your post came in. You also have made some very useful suggestions that I will try to implement to help me stay within this mythical "allowable CPU usage limit". Optimizing my code may be difficult though, as I am not a coding guru and it will be difficult enough for me to get my scripts to work, let alone getting them to work in an efficient manner. The idea of saving up the 280 Credits and starting like that is very intriguing also, thanks for that. As for my CRON jobs, they will only be running once per day to collect the map.sql files from each server that my members are active on, so hopefully this should not impinge on my CPU usage.

EDIT: I see that you have suggested the idea about the loss of Credits in the Suggestions For Version 3 Of The Credit System. Thank you. I think that the system you have proposed in that thread is a much fairer system.

Saint_Michael, on Aug 24 2008, 01:38 AM, said:

Another Idea that has come to mind is fixing the loss of credits when a person gets accepted for a free hosting account. that has always plagued trap17 because everyone was caught off guard when they lost a whole bunch of credits and so what I recommend is that instead of just losing all the credits they lost the exact amount of credit i.e. if they had 50 credits and get a 30 credit hosting package that person will have exactly 20 credits left.

Edited by travstatesmen, 23 August 2008 - 02:21 PM.

[shadowx]

In regards to the credit system i think you would be able to transfer 70 or so credits to a trusted member of the forums (id be willing to act as a bank and you could easily ask a mod who you know you can trust), then spend your 30 or so credits to get the hosting and have that member transfer back your 70 credits.

I think that should work, ive been off for a while but as far as i know we are still able to transfer credits between members (although it may require that both members are hosted, in which case this wont work) and back again.

Ill wait for a mod to confirm that but it should be possible and not against the TOC as you seem to be a valuable poster and a good member of the forums unlike some who just post trash to keep credits.

And in regards to the documentation i think its fairly simple, its shown, i think, when registering and the link is prominent just above the shoutbox, which is an area where members regularly look to see if anything interesting is happening.

As far as i know the credit warning is also shown. I do agree its a pain that you loose all credits, i had around 60 i think and of course lost them all, which was annoying but it needs to be this way to keep the forums active, and of course forum activity is what pays for the free hosting, so if everyone just build up 300 credits in a month and then left the forums for a year it wouldnt really work out.

Edited by shadowx, 23 August 2008 - 02:13 PM.

[travstatesmen]

shadowx, what you have proposed sounds like a good idea to me, and I will also be keen to see what a Moderator replies to your post. Your suggestion would not work for everybody though, as I'm sure there will be many other new members signing up who haven't had the good fortune that I have in meeting some of the best people of Trap17 as quickly as I have, and they will therefore not have developed such friendships already, such that they would be willing to trust someone with their hard-earned Credits.

[shadowx]

Aye, we will wait to see what a mod says but in theory its possible, i just dont know if we are able to transfer credits between a hosted (me/mod) and a non hosted(you) account.

mods? Any clarification?

[jlhaslip]

Transfer of Credits can only be arranged between Hosted members, otherwise situations would develop which would not be conducive to good Forum citizenship.

In the long run, I would suggest that you "bite the bullet" and apply for your Hosted Status ASAP, taking the hit for the credits now, before they get larger in number.

[rvalkass]

travstatesmen, on Aug 23 2008, 01:56 PM, said:

Thank you for your reply, rvalkass. I will look into setting up an Apache server, PHP, and mySQL server on my local machine. Thanks for the advice.

Feel free to PM/email me for help, or post on the forums - many members have detailed knowledge of setting up and configuring Apache, PHP and MySQL.

travstatesmen, on Aug 23 2008, 01:56 PM, said:

As for the reply regarding the impending loss of my Credits, I still have not found on the Readme the link that you mentioned, and had you not posted that link above to the Flash tutorial I would probably still be looking for it now. The documentation on Trap17 seems to be very disorganized, including links to posts on the forums which seem to form a part of the rules. After reading through the documentation that jlhaslip linked me to in reply to my very first post on the Trap17 forums, I was still completely unaware of this caveat about the disappearing Credits. This type of information needs to be more prominently displayed on your site, rather than being hidden in some fine print in some hopelessly complex Readme file. When people such as myself choose to accept in good faith your offer of free web hosting in exchange for our participation in your forums, and then to post intelligent, relevant, and spam-free posts on your forum, upholding our end of the agreement, you should also uphold your end and act in good faith also. Hiding important information like the fact that opening a web hosting account will cost us ALL of our Credits, and not just the advertised 10 Credits (Package 1), or 30 Credits (Package 2) is not acting in good faith.

I agree the documentation is somewhat disorganised, and some form of central organised documentation is desperately required. However, as we are all volunteers, we do not necessarily have the time we can dedicate to such a massive task. This has resulted in successive edits and updates causing the somewhat disjointed documenation we have today. The Flash tutorials were my attempt to create some simple, organised documentation, but after I switched to Linux I lost the ability to create Flash files.

If you had applied when you had 30 credits, you would have lost only 30 credits, so I cannot see how Trap17 is not acting in good faith.

travstatesmen, on Aug 23 2008, 01:56 PM, said:

And yes, I see the disclaimer in Dooga's signature that says "Please note: This post and all the other posts I make do not represent the overall opinion of Trap17, nor does it represent an accurate reference." For this reason alone I would again question the validity of Trap17's documentation, and this irrational use of links to forum posts to make up the content of your rules and regulations.

Dooga's disclaimer, as far as I know, is simply emphasising the fact we are volunteers, not employees of Xisto or Trap17.

travstatesmen, on Aug 23 2008, 03:01 PM, said:

[...]to help me stay within this mythical "allowable CPU usage limit".

"Mythical" is not the right word. I have never had a problem with the limit, and I have been here a while and run a wide variety of complex and intensive scripts. Proper testing should keep you OK. Most of the people causing massive CPU and RAM usage are either spammers, or do it entirely by accident with a bug or something in their script.

travstatesmen, on Aug 23 2008, 03:01 PM, said:

Optimizing my code may be difficult though, as I am not a coding guru and it will be difficult enough for me to get my scripts to work, let alone getting them to work in an efficient manner. The idea of saving up the 280 Credits and starting like that is very intriguing also, thanks for that. As for my CRON jobs, they will only be running once per day to collect the map.sql files from each server that my members are active on, so hopefully this should not impinge on my CPU usage.

Feel free to ask for help optimising your scripts. The collective mind power of Trap17 should make them fairly well optimised. Trap17's servers also run optimisation software to help keep scripts as lean as possible. As I previously mentioned, downloading and organising the map.sql files will not take much RAM or CPU at all. What may take time is running them against your database. Try it once on your local machine and see what happens.

shadowx, on Aug 23 2008, 03:10 PM, said:

As far as i know the credit warning is also shown. I do agree its a pain that you loose all credits, i had around 60 i think and of course lost them all, which was annoying but it needs to be this way to keep the forums active, and of course forum activity is what pays for the free hosting, so if everyone just build up 300 credits in a month and then left the forums for a year it wouldnt really work out.

I also believe credits are easier to earn before you are hosted, so it would be slightly unfair to let people earn many thousands of credits, get hosted, and disappear for years.

shadowx, on Aug 23 2008, 03:36 PM, said:

Aye, we will wait to see what a mod says but in theory its possible, i just dont know if we are able to transfer credits between a hosted (me/mod) and a non hosted(you) account.

mods? Any clarification?

You cannot transfer credits between hosted and non-hosted members, mainly due to credits being easier to earn for non-hosted members, but also to avoid duplicate accounts etc.