Hi there, I had my site shut down last night as it was causing "resource issues" on the server. The report said that I was running BlogEngine.Net and helpfully provided me with a link to a page about BlogEngine 1.6 ping spam causing load issues. The thing is, I am using version 2.0 of BlogEngine.Net, and would like to obtain some more information about the error to have it resolved with the team on Codeplex. So far your support people have been unable to provide any accurate information about what is going on. Someone today mentioned that "pingback spam can create a loop and the process of continually writing to my BlogEngine.NET files consumes a tremendous amount of server resources". However, I am using a database for the data storage, so nothing should be written to the server at all. Could someone from DiscountASP.Net please take a look at ticket 3B7-14DB34ED-D125 for me? I really would like to understand what was going on that caused my account to be frozen. I would like a more detailed response than "davewhite.net is causing resource issues on our web server". Kind Regards, Dave
Thanks for all the help on this. I have looked at the logs as your support staff suggested and it seems that this wasn't a resource issue at all. Someone in Rosemead California crawled my site at an accelerated rate which seems to have taken down the server. I'd love to apologise, but it was a freak random event beyond my control that seems to have gotten me suspended. For doing what a web server should do. That's really not acceptable, and I'll be looking elsewhere for a host when renewal time comes around.
That is not a "random event," it is behavior specifically targeted at BlogEngine installations. And it is indeed a resource issue when that spider hits a BlogEngine installation. It consumes enough resources to slow down the entire server. We block those spiders as best we can, but they are like cockroaches. Kill one and a dozen more come to take its place. So, knowing that this BlogEngine "attack" has an extremely negative impact on the server, and that it is virtually impossible to block all known carriers of the spider, aside from suspending the site that is being targeted, what would you suggest that we do? Suspending the site is our only option. We have policies in place that prevent us from touching customer code, so we can't disable the pingback when one of these attacks occurs. All we can do is instruct the customer to do it. But we cannot leave the target site up in the meantime, as it slows down hundreds of other sites. Is it a perfect solution? No. But as you can see, it's all we've got.
