Ordering problem being experienced today - web space problem?

[PA.com]

Hi all, any advice on the following would be warmly received. I've searched through the forums and not found anything definitively relating to this combination of symptons.

My website is hosted by a company called Internetters, part of Iomart. I have not uploaded any changes to my site for about a fortnight, and customer ordering has been fine up to yesterday. However...

1) This morning I have received Actinic generated emails informing me of an error:

"Following error has been displayed to a customer: An error occurred while creating the order number lock file (./acatalog/OrderLock.num). The error was No space left on device. Actinic ecommerce can not create a unique order number and can not continue. Please contact us directly with your order."

I attempted an order on my site and got the same message, on the first checkout page.


2) When I perform the Advanced - Network Setup - Test within Actinic v.7 I now get the following message.

"You do not have write permissions to the cgi-bin directory "/******/html/cgi-bin/" or it does not exist."


3) When I look for my error log file i.e. the page ****/acatalog/error.err, it returns a 404 error page, suggesting it does not exist.


Does all this suggest that my webhosts are simply having a tinkering session with their servers, or might there be something I should be looking into at my end? The error message in point 1), suggests that maybe there is an issue with space. I have a 5Gb hosting limit and my entire Site1 folder only comes to 4.2Gb total so I doubt this can be the case (there are no other files I upload outside this folder), and besides which I have not uploaded anything since yesterday when it was working fine.

Naturally enough these problems only ever occur first thing on a Saturday morning, after my webhosters' telephone support team have downed tools for the weekend. Therefore I was wondering if anyone here could offer advice until I get the chance to call them.

Thanks, Paul

[pinbrook]

this thread may help

http://community.actinic.com/showthr...=OrderLock.num

[PA.com]

Thanks Jo, that's useful info to read. However, in the case of both of those related threads the error is slightly different to mine:

"Following error has been displayed to a customer: An error occurred while creating the order number lock file (./acatalog/OrderLock.num). The error was Permission denied

whereas my error message is:

"Following error has been displayed to a customer: An error occurred while creating the order number lock file (./acatalog/OrderLock.num). The error was No space left on device


If it wasn't for the fact that my Network Setup Test is failing (i.e. not having write permissions to the cgi-directory) then it would suggest that my 4.2Gb is ballooning to 5Gb on the server, but its the fact that I can't write to the cgi-bin that is muddying the waters somewhat for me.

One question I do have, if this does turn out to be a webspace issue, is whether deleting products and hence their corresponding digital download files within Actinic is enough to purge them from the host server, or do I need to follow this up by using a dedicated ftp package such as CuteFTP to go in and delete them from the server instead to regain that space?

Paul

[Duncan Rounding]

It does sound like a server space issue. Removing the products should also remove the digital download files - but you could confirm this with CuteFTP or SmartFTP or similar. It might be worth FTPing into your server anyway to see if there are some files that have got left behind in the past.

The size you see on your local hard disk for the files may not be the actual size used on the disk on the server. The size used on the server will also depend on the type of format the partition has on the server hard drive. For example a lot of small files on a FAT32 partition will take up considerably more space than they would on an NTFS partition. Usually you have a control panel or some way to configure your hosting that may also tell you how much space you're using.

[PA.com]

Thanks Duncan, that's really useful food for thought. I do have a control panel, and in several places it tells me I can check my webspace, only for me to click there and be told that feature is no longer supported. Infuriating!

Looks like I might have reached the end of the road for expanding my website then . Shame, I thought I had room for another 50 or so works, d'oh. Additional webspace is prohibitively expensive, though I certainly shouldn't complain at having been provided with 5Gb in the first place. I think I might go ahead and delete some products, though I've no idea if I'll be able to get anywhere with an upload if I no longer have write permissions to the cgi-bin etc. I'll report back.

[PA.com]

Well I think I can confirm this is a webspace issue, since an attempted upload, after deleting 50Mb worth of digital download products, resulted in the following message:

200 Type set to I.
227 Entering Passive Mode (84,22,184,105,19,124).
550 diffprod.fil: There is not enough space on the disk.

Deducing that there was no other way to access or influence the content of my site, I have just downloaded the trial version of WS_FTP Professional in order to look at the contents of the website. Everything seemed in order until I looked at my DD folder, where the digital download files are kept. 3100+ files totalling 7.57 Gb, and I'm only supposed to have a limit of 5 Gb. The good news is that the size of each file on the server corresponds to the file size on my local hard disk, the bad news is that they appear to be duplicated in the folder, so each file is in there twice, with a prefix of 1! or 2! before the duplicate file name.

This might explain why there is no space for any cgi-scripts to be written on the site, and I am now getting the dreaded Error loading configuration file ./acatalog/A000.cat when I try to add any product to the cart. WS-FTP confirms my permission settings are 777 for each folder, so it's not that.

I have a nasty feeling things are going to get worse before they get better, and this includes having to speak to the helpdesk on Monday morning.

[Duncan Rounding]

The 1! and 2! sound like duplicate product references - what you would expect on your site. Sounds like perhaps there's a bug that may cause the product to be uploaded twice if it is used in a duplicate.

[PA.com]

Yeah, I was wondering about just that point regarding duplicate products.
But ever since I set the site up there have been more than 3 Gb of MP3 files on there - and if this has been doubled from the start to 6Gb on the server surely they wouldn't have let me renew last year without alerting me I had to pay for extra space.
When you say bug, are you referring to a bug in Actinic or with the server software? I'm using Actinic v.7.02 - does anyone know if this is a resolvable issue with an upgrade to v.7.06 perhaps?

Thanks for the continued help, especially Duncan!

[Duncan Rounding]

I would not expect Actinic to upload multiple copies of the same dd file just because you have duplicate products in the store. I don't think so many pwoplw use dd so it may not have been picked up.

As you suggest perhaps someone knows more...

[PA.com]

It does seem, from looking at my server folders using my FTP package, that indeed all duplicate products are sending up duplicate DD files. For instances, there are two products that I have duplicated 4 times under different sections and surprise surprise these corresponding MP3 downloads appear under 1!, 2!, 3! and 4! prefixes.

Arrrrrgh...

I hope I can get round this by the following method, but as it's probably going to take me several days work I was wondering if anyone could confirm if this is likely to work or not. Needless to say any advice would be warmly received.

1) Ask my webhosters to delete all the digital download files prefixed by 1! or 2! etc., thereby clearing approx 4Gb of webspace.

2) Delete all my product duplicates, thereby deleting the rogue digital download files.

3) Copy (rather than duplicating) my original products to replace the product duplicates, then delete the references to the digital download files from these copied products.

4) Use components (which hopefully refer to the original products) in order to facilitate the ordering of the digital download files from the copied product pages.


Actually, concerning point 1), is this something I should be able to do myself using my WS_FTP package, bearing in mind I can't currently use Actinic to delete files as I can't get beyond the disk full error message.
I'm sorry if this sounds like the most naive question ever, but what happens if I delete files using an FTP package and then start uploading again through Actinic? Is this likely to cause confusion within Actinic (i.e. with the diffprod.fil files etc.) and would it mean I have to fully refresh the site?

Thanks for any advice, and apologies for asking so many novice-y questions!

Paul

[pinbrook]

Actually, concerning point 1), is this something I should be able to do myself using my WS_FTP package

Yes you should do this yourself, then you can be absolutely sure the correct files get deleted.

Also get in touch with Actinic re the dulicate file uploading, they may say it is WAD, but I feel there should only be one file per product regardless of whether it is duplicated.

If you want a working site today, I'd also remove the duplicate products. this you will have one product and one download file and be within your hosting plan

[PA.com]

Thanks Jo, that did indeed work!

FTP-ing into my site's server and deleting the duplicated files (those prefixed by 1! and 2!) enabled 4Gb of space to be regained. This was enough for my Advanced - Network Setup Test within Actinic to pass all its tests, encouraging me that I could now write to the CGI-bin again.

While the site still wasn't working online at this point (adding to cart still produced a general script error), uploading the site again, having deleted all the pages and products referring to duplicate products, resulted in a fully functioning site, albeit a few pages leaner than before.

Thanks for all the help, I should be able to take on the re-structuring of pages by myself now!!

[pinbrook]

you may also want to add some 301 forwarding from thepage names you removed to point people back to the current page where those products live, so you don't loose visitors/orders.

a forum search on 301 redirects will find the how to for you

[PA.com]

Thanks again for the advice Jo. However, I think I am limited in that regard by the fact that my site is hosted on a Windows server (I know - I should have read up about this first!). Therefore, as I understand it, I cannot add an .htaccess file with 301 redirects to the root directory as only Linux/Unix servers accept this technique.