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I'm on a shared hosting plan with a Wiki and a Bulletin Board installation. After upgrading the Wiki to the latest release my users are not able to upload files with the integrated "media manager" anymore. Server logs show:

mod_fcgid: can't apply process slot for
/var/www/cgi-bin/cgi_wrapper/cgi_wrapper, referer:
http://www.myurl.com/path/to/wiki/

I contacted the hosting company and the supporter answered that he fooled around with 

FcgidMaxProcessesPerClass
FcgidMaxProcesses

to no avail. He also changed some suexec rights, no success. mod_security is not installed.

HTTP File uploads are broken for the entire host, users from the bulletin board are not able to upload files, too (503 Service Temporarily Unavailable when trying to upload something). Everything else is working fine. Page loading speed is ok, users can edit, create and delete sites etc. Uploading files per FTP is working too. There are <30 active users on this sites so I don't think I'm out of processes or something. I am not able to change the apache settings directly. Any ideas what I can tell the support to look into?

EDIT: The bulletin board has a shoutbox which adds some load to the site. I cleared all messages and reduced the amount of kept messages. I also deactivated all wiki plugins. Still no success.

duenni
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  • IF http file upload doesn't work, it is surely a trivial permission problem, and your hosting company isn't on the top. Which is quite understable - professional system administrator wages at such hosting companies are very, very low and practically nobody wants work there. If you have a root access, you could find the cause of the problem for yourself, probably by stracing apache in a simplified php file upload scenario. Good luck! – peterh Aug 07 '14 at 07:37
  • Thanks for your comment. I looked at the "data" dir where uploads for the wiki are stored in, its permissions are "777". If it would be a permission issue why are 2 installations affected from which only one was updated? Unfortunately I don't have root access. – duenni Aug 07 '14 at 07:41
  • This could be a permission error, take a look at /var/log/httpd it Apache can still write there. – Marc Stürmer Aug 10 '14 at 19:54
  • Sad that your webhost is making you do their job for them - especially considering that without direct access to the server, your hands are more or less tied. – Joe Sniderman Aug 12 '14 at 00:15

2 Answers2

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Problem is solved. Hosting company changed PHP Version. At first PHP was at Version 5.2.x and as the problem arised was bumped to 5.4.x. Now, PHP was changed to 5.3.3 for testing purposes and everything works. I still don't know what caused this, both installations should run fine on PHP >5.2. So maybe there were some PHP settings that differed but sadly I can not figure this out anymore.

duenni
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  • And you shouldnt have to be the one to figure out. Had I been in your situation I would have fired the webhost real quick. You are clearly a far more tolerant and forgiving person than myself. : ) – Joe Sniderman Aug 16 '14 at 03:31
  • Yeah, you're right. Maybe it's time to think over and go for a VPS. If things go wrong there then I know it was my fault. ;-) – duenni Aug 16 '14 at 08:31
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Solution: Ditch your webhost.

In terms of what to ask support to look into: a refund.

Your webhost is the only one who can diagnose and fix the server. It is also part of what you pay them to do. You don't have root, and as it is a shared hosting environment, you shouldn't have root.

The server could be oversold, misconfigured, or more likely, both. For the server's administrators (your webhost) there is a valid technical question with a valid technical solution. For you, their customer, it is purely a customer service issue that demands an appropriate customer service resolution.

Joe Sniderman
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