Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!


ChicagoVPS - VPS running after cancellation
New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.

All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.

ChicagoVPS - VPS running after cancellation

TritonioTritonio Member
edited November 2014 in Reviews

I use to be a client of ChicagoVPS since they first appeared on lowendtalk IIRC. Initially I was very, VERY pleased with their service. But after some point I started having serious problems with basically everything. And this wasn't the case with the cheap products that they offered. I had a friend that had paid for one of the more expensive packages and she had even more problems than I did. In any case when the problems became weekly (lots of downtime, huge CPU "steal", high system loads with little disk activity I decided to switch to another provider. I thought the trouble was over but it turns our that one month after the cancellation of my last VPS with them, the VPS was turned back on, with all the data in it intact.

You can see a screenshot of the whole ticket here but here's a summary. Note how often they ignore info I give them, how they don't read previous messages, how they avoid answering for days, lower the level of the ticket without even telling me why only to raise it back up again later. It took three week for ME to solve the whole mystery without absolutely no help from them. Nor did they accept any help I tried to offer.

Here we go:

---16th Oct---

Me: My VPS is still running since November 2013. It's IP is: XXX. I can only access it via a Tor hidden service and I can see CPU graphs still getting updated.

Them: Your server is cancelled. The IP is assigned to another client.

Me: I know the IP is not mine anymore, I can only access via Tor. Here's the xxx.onion link which points to my VPS. Here's a screenshot of the latest CPU graph. The characteristics of the machine are the same so I know it's the same VPS.

Them: What was the IP so that we can turn it off.

Me: The panel gives me XXX (as I already said) but this IP is not accessible. I can only access it via Tor.

Them: We are assigning to level 2.

---17th Oct---

Me: Any news? (I offer some info that may help them find the VPS)

---18th Oct---

Them: Your VPS has been cancelled, this IP is not yours anymore.

Me: I can still see graphs getting updated on a machine with the same physical characteristics as the last one I had with you. This is a critical issue. You are running my websites on an outdated system which is not patched for many things. Can you use the info I gave you to detect which one is my VPS?

Them: We are investigating.

---19th Oct---

NOTHING...

---20th Oct---

Me: Any news? I can still see it running. (I offer to give them more info that they could use to find the VPS)

---21st Oct---

NOTHING...

---22nd Oct---

Me: I can still see it running.

---23rd Oct---

Them: Are you able to access it right now?

Me: Yes I can. Here's a screenshot of the latest CPU graphs.

---24th Oct---

NOTHING...

---25th Oct---

NOTHING...

---26th Oct---

NOTHING...

---27th Oct---

Me: I can still see it running, here's another screenshot of the latest graph.

Them: We are assigning to level 2.

---28th Oct---

Them: This is strange, we have removed the VPS with this IP. Can you confirm that the IP was XXX?

Me: Yes that's the IP on my panel but it's not accessible anymore. But it is running a hidden service so regardless of the IP I can still access it using the onion URL therefore that Tor is still running somewhere. It was indeed turned off but it started running again one month after the cancellation. (I offer more info that they could use to find the VPS)

Me: (I remind them that I can give them even more info but they never said if there is any info other than the IP that could help them)

Me: Never mind I found the current IP myself and it's a ChicagoVPS IP. Before you delete the machine could you give me root access to it so that I can check if anyone has logged in during all these months? My root password doesn't seem to work anymore.

---29th Oct---

Them: We are assigning to level 2.

Them: What is the IP that you found so that we can kill it.

---30th Oct---

Me: If I give you the IP, will you give me root to check the logs before you delete it? If not, I'd rather keep the IP to myself till Monday when I'll have access to some old backups and I might be able to find the root password there.

---31th Oct---

NOTHING...

---1st Nov---

NOTHING...

---2nd Nov---

Them: To kill it all I need is the IP and I can delete everything.

Me: Yes I know you can kill it but you avoided answering my question twice. Will you give me root before you do that? I need to look at the log files.

---3rd Nov---

NOTHING...

---4th Nov---

Me: It's been 8 days that you are avoiding to answer my question. You are running my VPS with a public IP, the least you can do is to give me root to let me check the logfiles to allow me to see if any damages have been caused by this. I can prove that the VPS is running on an IP that belongs to ChicagoVPS.

Them: Why do you need root? All I need is the IP and I can delete everything.

Me: I have explained at least 4 times why I need root: to check the logfiles for unauthorized entries. The VPS is running unattended and unpatched for 6+ months with a public IP.

---5th Nov---

Them: Please give me name/lastname/email/phone/zip and the current IP and I will give you root access. And then I will terminate it.

Me: No need after all. I found an old SSH key (in my backups) and I used that to log in and deleted all my data. I checked and didn't see any unauthorized entries to my VPS. You may now delete it. The IP is XXX.

Thanked by 2emg Chuck
«13

Comments

  • I have a similar experience. The support staff are limited to one sentence replies like "Try it now", "Should be working now", "Try now"

    Awful provider

  • netomxnetomx Moderator, Veteran

    We need a CVPS meme

    Thanked by 1eLohkCalb
  • Sounds like you had a good experience, I'm glad you are happy with them.

  • AmitzAmitz Member
    edited November 2014

    Meh. I am too stupid for Vanilla's Markdown.

    Thanked by 1linuxthefish
  • edited November 2014

    @Tritonio said:

    LOL!!!!!!!! , Thats the best meme I've ever seen.

    Thanked by 1netomx
  • its funny that active clients complain that their vps isnt running and a past client complaining that his vps is still running... anyway good that u sorted it out yourself..

    Thanked by 1geekalot
  • @upfreak said:
    its funny that active clients complain that their vps isnt running and a past client complaining that his vps is still running... anyway good that u sorted it out yourself..

    By examining the munin graphs, I can tell you that it was more stable the last two months or so than when I was actually paying for it. Although before those two months it still had weekly or so restarts...

  • @Tritonio said:
    By examining the munin graphs, I can tell you that it was more stable the last two months or so than when I was actually paying for it. Although before those two months it still had weekly or so restarts...

    lesson learned : install backdoor when cancelling vps. wake up after one month.. free vps

    Thanked by 1ValdikSS
  • @upfreak said:
    lesson learned : install backdoor when cancelling vps. wake up after one month.. free vps

    I was thinking about doing that. Since they couldn't find it on their own, I could keep the IP to myself and have a free VPS...

    It's still ON btw... Although they will shut it down when they see the IP on the ticket.

  • mikhomikho Member, Host Rep

    So you are the reason why cvps customers have experienced broken server!?

    The support staff have been trying to find your server.

  • AnthonySmithAnthonySmith Member, Patron Provider

    And this is long after they apparently got rid of the outsourced support and hired 'quality' support staff.

    Thanked by 1netomx
  • So, am I the only person who wipes and does a fresh reinstall of a VPS before cancelling the plan?

  • Who put the tor in it?

  • @MikHo said:
    So you are the reason why cvps customers have experienced broken server!?

    The support staff have been trying to find your server.

    Funny you mention that, because I did finally get a reply other than "try again" a day or two ago, and they said they'd terminated an abusive client on the node

  • @MikHo said:
    So you are the reason why cvps customers have experienced broken server!?

    The support staff have been trying to find your server.

    Nah... My server was hardly using any CPU and disk IO.

    @Nekki said:
    So, am I the only person who wipes and does a fresh reinstall of a VPS before cancelling the plan?

    Yeap. But now I'll join you for sure... I never guessed I would need to do that. And to be honest if I didn't know there was a danger, I wouldn't do it in case I had forgotten to copy something from that VPS to my dedicated server, who knows, maybe they would still have the image for a couple of days. It turns out they had the image and ran it for months. Hehe...

    @vRozenSch00n said:
    Who put the tor in it?

    I did. I was hosting one of my websites both with a regular and with an onion domain.

    @hostnoob said:
    Funny you mention that, because I did finally get a reply other than "try again" a day or two ago, and they said they'd terminated an abusive client on the node

    No guarantee but I doubt my VPS could be causing trouble. The CPU usage was low, the disk IO was only high for less than 30min per day (during the daily backup) and generally system load was low. To be honest though some script of mine had crashed and I had thousands (really) processes idling (or maybe they were zombies, didn't check). But load was very low so I don't know if the sheer number of them could cause problems. When I logged in with SSH it seems pretty fast to me, nothing strange other than the number of processes.

    Thanked by 1vRozenSch00n
  • emgemg Veteran
    edited November 2014

    I read Tritonio's original post in stunned amazement. Thank you for an entertaining read. I wonder how many other "zombie" VPSs are running under Chicago VPS's purview? I can imagine a lot of frustrated Chicago VPS customers who cancelled their accounts and walked away, leaving their VPSs still running.

    One interesting point - Tritonio's VPS stayed up since November 2013. Did it have some automatic mechanism to restart it if the VPS crashed or the host node rebooted? My VPSs stay down if the host node goes down.

  • I have issues yesterday but resolved now. I don't know how long it took, but it's for a while. I guess you should only consider the service if you are okay with occasional long down time.

  • emg said: automatic mechanism to restart it if the VPS crashed or the host node rebooted? My VPSs stay down if the host node goes down.

    This feature will be enabled when you cancel the service /joke

    Thanked by 1zafouhar
  • @emg said:
    I read Tritonio's original post in stunned amazement. Thank you for an entertaining read. I wonder how many other "zombie" VPSs are running under Chicago VPS's purview? I can imagine a lot of frustrated Chicago VPS customers who cancelled their accounts and walked away, leaving their VPSs still running.

    One interesting point - Tritonio's VPS stayed up since November 2013. Did it have some automatic mechanism to restart it if the VPS crashed or the host node rebooted? My VPSs stay down if the host node goes down.

    Please note that I was talking about zombie processes; I was not calling the VPS a zombie, although it wouldn't be an imprecise word to describe it, heheh. The VPS itself was running just fine, I just didn't have it attached to my panel anymore so there was no indication that it was still running. Now if there are more VPSes running without them knowing, I can't say. To be honest I never thought it would be possible if they are careful how many guests are running on each host. Or maybe it's not that easy, I can't say, I've never run OpenVZ on my own.

    Now as for the VPS starting up suddenly a month after the cancellation: My guess is that the forced some restart on the host node and that forces all VPSes to wake up for some reason instead of waking up those that were already running. Again, I can only guess as I don't have any experience running my own OpenVZ.

    @jcaleb said:
    I guess you should only consider the service if you are okay with occasional long down time.

    Don't forget the surprise uptime! ;-)

    Thanked by 1emg
  • Tritonio said: Don't forget the surprise uptime! ;-)

    Uptime is good. Except for half a day or more downtime yesterday

  • But it's a 9 dollar/year I think server with 2GB RAM + swap and ssd space. very good for testing stuff and such.

  • mikhomikho Member, Host Rep

    @Tritonio said:
    Nah... My server was hardly using any CPU and disk IO.

    I was joking about the fact that lately people have been complaining on how their vps suddenly goes online and when they check it, it is corrupt in some way.

    My point was that while support was trying to find and shut your server down, the others were collateral damage.

    It is true, if you need to explain the joke, it wasn't funny or good.

  • DalCompDalComp Member
    edited November 2014

    @Nekki said:
    So, am I the only person who wipes and does a fresh reinstall of a VPS before cancelling the plan?

    @emg said:
    "zombie" VPSs

    (I think) I did a reinstall before cancelling a VPS and then it became zombie, one year later received a $100 invoice for repeated DDoS attack. Wut? [Not with CVPS].

  • @jcaleb said:
    But it's a 9 dollar/year I think server with 2GB RAM + swap and ssd space. very good for testing stuff and such.

    Same plan I have. Apparently they put "us people" on shitty nodes. Mine drops pings every single day (and not 1 or 2, actual blocks of timed out requests. When I asked if I could be moved to a different node they refused, so either we did get put on shitty nodes, or all of their nodes are that bad.

  • jcalebjcaleb Member
    edited November 2014

    hostnoob said: Same plan I have. Apparently they put "us people" on shitty nodes. Mine drops pings every single day (and not 1 or 2, actual blocks of timed out requests. When I asked if I could be moved to a different node they refused, so either we did get put on shitty nodes, or all of their nodes are that bad.

    And I have shitty ip too. How about you?

  • @jcaleb said:
    And I have shitty ip too. How about you?

    Surprisingly no :o it's clean

    Thanked by 1jcaleb
  • @hostnoob said:
    Surprisingly no :o it's clean

    location?

  • MattKCMattKC Member
    edited November 2014

    Looks like the thread titles are being "softened" for cvps again. Unless the op edited it himself, this is not the same title the thread started with. Bad support is still in the post tags though so at least that didn't get stripped too.

Sign In or Register to comment.