When browsing your web site, your normal page is now displaying a 'Service Unavailable' error message.

Cause

Each web site runs in it's own IIS Application Pool. An application pool isolates web sites from each other even though they are being hosted on a common server. Each application pool is given its own set of server resources. That way, if a web site crashes, it won’t effect sites in other application pools.

If your web site is showing the 'Service Unavailable' error then it means that your Application Pool has crashed. Application Pools can crash for a number of reasons, such things as buggy code, memory leaks, or random unexpected errors encountered by your scripts. If it only happens once every six months, then it may not be anything to worry about. If it is happening several times a week then it is something you will probably want to look into further.

Solution

The immediate solution is to restart your Application Pool in the Plesk Control Panel. Follow the steps listed in this article to Start your Application Pool.

Issue

Each web site runs in it's own IIS Application Pool for script isolation. If your IIS Application Pool has stopped or crashed you will see a 'Service Unavailable' notice when browsing your web site.

Solution

Start the IIS Application Pool using Plesk.

To start the Application Pool follow these steps:

1. Login to Plesk Server Administrator.
2. Select the domain name you are having the problem with.
3. Click on the IIS Application Pool button.
   
   
4. Click on the Start button.
   
   
   

After a few seconds the page will reload and the Work Process will have been started. Your web site should now be back online.

You have encountered an issue installing an application or PHP Module that is attempting to execute files that have been copied into the /tmp directory.

Reason

As a security precaution, /tmp and /var/tmp are mounted with noexec, nsuid and nodev to prevent the many simple exploits uploaded via vulnerable PHP applications from being able to execute commands in /tmp and/or /var/tmp.

Solution

In some cases you may need to have /tmp executable. Depending on what function you are using, there are a few options to bypass this restriction.

If you are using apt-get/aptitude, you can run a simple one-liner command to use /var/local/tmp instead of /tmp:

If you are attempting to install PECL extensions, setup a new temporary directory where the extensions are compiled by running the following commands:

If you're simply running ./configure to compile something, most Linux utilities will honor the TMPDIR option. TMPDIR is the canonical Unix environment variable that points to user scratch space. This will denote the scratch area for temporary files instead of the common default of /tmp. Other forms sometimes accepted are TEMP, TEMPDIR, and TMP but these are used more commonly by non-POSIX operating systems

Finally, if you are still having trouble you can bind /tmp and /var/tmp to another directory with executable permissions using the following example :

Do the substitute directories exist? If not then create them:

Then bind /tmp and /var/tmp to these new directories:

Keep in mind that if you reboot your VPS after you have done this, /tmp and var/tmp will return to 'noexec'

When you are finished, umount the new ~/tmp directory with the following command:

If you have arranged to have your virtual disk space increased for your Cloud VM you will need to expand the partition in Windows Server 2008 before you can make use of the space.

Solution

In the example below, we have increased the VMs 20GB disk by 10GB and will now go through the steps so that Windows recognises this new space.

1. Navigate the Start Menu and find Server Manager.

2. Find the Storage node, expand it and select Disk Management. Right click Disk Management and use either Refresh or Rescan Disks, both should work fine. When the refresh is finished, you should see the newly added extra 10 GB as unallocated space on the disk you expanded. In our case it's Disk 0, as thats the only virtual disk that is attached to this particular server.

3. Right click the c:\ volume, and select Extend Volume and the "Extend Volume Wizard" should appear. This is quite straight forward, but click next and you will be presented with a the tool that allows the volume expansion.

4. By default, the wizard will select all available space in the Selected column, but you can adjust those settings if you like. When you have done a selection you're comfortable with, click Next and a summary screen will appear outlining the changes you have made. If you are satisfied with your choices, click Finish, 

You would like to use the Plesk Windows Scheduler to call a particular ASP or ASP.NET script on your web site that will perform a function.

Solution

1. Click on 'Scheduled Tasks' in Plesk

2. Click on 'Add New Task'

3. Enter a description and notification email if required

4. In the 'Path to executable file' field, enter the following path: C:\Windows\system32\cscript.exe

5. In the 'Arguments' field enter the following: D:\vhosts\mysite.co.nz\httpdocs\schedule.vbs  (replacing mysite.co.nz with your domain name)

6. Because cscript.exe won't execute an asp file, we'll need to create a vbs script, that will then call the asp script. In the schedule.vbs script, we'll use the xmlhttp request to open a web page. Copy and paste the script below and save to a file called schedule.vbs and upload this to your site.

7. Now you can create your scheduledtasks.asp page, or whatever you would like to name it to perform the tasks you require to be scheduled.

The Windows RRAS VPN service will not install and/or will not work properly once installed.

Cause

VPN Server functionality is enabled on a per-VPS basis as the Virtuozzo system needs to set up rules to enable the correct connection translations to your VPS.

Solution

Contact Net24 Customer Service to enable VPN server functionality for your VPS.

Issue

NTFS compression support has been disabled.

Cause

Normally file compression starts automatically when the disk space is close to its quota. Since Virtuozzo doesn't support ntfs compression, the compressed virtual-private-server will not start after this. To avoid this, we have disabled automatic compression within all virtual-private-servers.

What updates should I apply to my VPS?

Solution

Any operating system updates are handled by Net24 as part of our server patching regime.

Any applications you install after the creation of your VPS will need to be managed yourself.

As such, if you installed IIS, .NET and SQL server you would ONLY apply updates for these applications.

How to configure Passive Mode FTP in IIS7

Solution

You need to define a port range in IIS7 and the Windows Firewall.

IIS7 Port range configuration

The port range is defined at the Root level of the IIS7 Manager under "FTP Firewall Support".
"0-0" is the default port (20).
Enter in a range here that defines what passive port range you require.
Enter in the IP address of your VPS under the "External IP Address of Firewall" section.

Windows Firewall Port range configuration

Open up "Windows Firewall with Advanced Security".
Under "Inbound Rules" configure the "FTP Connection" rule setup by IIS7 to allow the same port range you defined in IIS7.

I get an error stating that there is a lack of disk space when I attempt to run an installation program.

Solution

DEP (Data Execution Prevention) in the OS sometimes prevents a self-extractor program from running.

To fix:

Run My Computer -> Properties -> Advanced -> Performance Settings -> Data Execution Prevention
Browse and add the installer exe to the list of allowed programs.