Dealing with Hostmonster CPU errors

If you have a Hostmonster account, chances are more than not you’ve run into the less-than-friendly account suspension / CPU Quota Overload gray screen of death. Figuring out the process for un-suspending it isn’t readily available on the Hostmonster knowledge base and Googling for it isn’t much help either. Don’t even bother sending in a support ticket, since it’ll take about three days to hear back from a person. Here’s the auto response you get if you do send a CPU support request through email or through the online chat window, and then some additional steps you can try that have worked for me.

CPU Quota/Suspension Errors are triggered by a single process taking more than 30 CPU seconds to run or if your total processes take more than 40 CPU seconds in any 60 second window. They are set up like this to avoid server lockups if too many people are logging on to the same server at once. Your site will generally come back up after 5-10 minutes of suspension. If this is a repetetive issue we encourage you to investigate further the reason you are receiving these CPU Quota Suspension/Errors. Please have the Site Administrator or Programer review your log files:

You can locate these log files by:

• 1. Log into your HostMonster Control Panel.
• 2. Locate the Files menu.
• 3. Locate and click on the File Manager icon.
• 4. When the Directory Selection menu loads select the Home Directory option.
• 5. This will take you to the Root(/) directory of your File Manager.
• 6. Locate and double click on the tmp folder.
• 7. Inside this folder there are two folders that may have information pertaining to this issue; the cpu_exceeded_logs and mysql_slow_queries.
• 8. The cpu_exceeded_logs folder will contain individual log files listed in order by date. If you wish to view the details of these log files right click on the file you would like to open and select View from the drop down list.
  

Important:The cpu_exceeded_logs contain important information about which processes you were running and their lengths that co-inside with your cpu exceeded errors.

Example:

Fri Jul 7 17:07:36 2006: used 716.27 seconds of cpu time for HTTP Request: yourdomain.com: GET /img_yourproducts/shop_images_026.jpg HTTP/1.1

Fri Jul 7 17:07:37 2006: used 0.18 seconds of cpu time for HTTP Request: yourdomain.com: GET /img_yourproducts/shop_images_027.jpg HTTP/1.1

• 9. The mysql_slow_queries folder will contain individual log files listed in order by date. If you wish to view the details of these log files right click on the file you would like to open and select View from the drop down list.

Important:

The mysql_slow_queries contain important information about which queries you were running and their lengths that co-inside with your mysql_slow_queries errors. These will appear much like the above logs only providing details on your particular mysql queries.

 

After you’ve done that and may or may not have found the script giving you grief, you should optimize the tables of the database(s) used on the suspended site in question. Here’s how to do it in Cpanel:

1. Login to Hostmonster’s Cpanel at www.hostmonster.com with the main domain on your account and the account password, in the upper right corner.
2. Scroll down to Databases and Click on PHPMyAdmin.
3. In the upper left hand corner, select the database on the suspended site from the dropdown box.
4. When the tables come up in the right hand panel, scroll all the way down to the bottom and select “Check All,” then from the dropdown box that reads “With selected:” change it to “Optimize.” If you have any other databases on the site, do the same thing for them.

If you’re still faced with issues after doing those two things, send a message to Hostmonster with their special form, although he aware that it will probably take them three or more days to get back to you, and they will only provide you with more detailed information; they will likely not be able to solve your problem for you.

(CPU Exceeded Error Form).

Hope that helps!