Remember when FQ support answered your questions?

[JoeT]

Hey Deb and Justin,
It seems that FQ support has become less responsive now that they have the "Knowledge Base", I haven't got a response to my last two e mails, one I sent over two weeks ago.
Is this what we are looking forward to?[nbsp]

[sheila]

That's funny. I got responses to the ones I sent last week within a few hours. Are you sure they got your support request?

[Justin]

When did you email and not receive a response? Did you receive the auto-reply from our EMS? Did you double-check your email address when requesting support?

Let us know what date/time you sent an email and did not get a response, and if possible please provide us with a reference number. Since our EMS was brought online, I don't believe we have ever failed to respond to an email. That is the main goal of the EMS - it tracks everything, and helps us to avoid ever having an unresolved issue.

Please let us know the above information, as we strive to provide the best possible support - unanswered emails are against our policy, and we would never intentionally ignore any issue from any site owner.

------------------
Justin Nelson
FutureQuest (http://www.FutureQuest.net/index.php) Support

[JoeT]

Hey, thanks for responding, I did get the auto response confirmations that FQ received my requests. That is all, no follow up. I don't have the confirmation #'s, but my questions were:
1) This was about 10 days ago - I am transfering the domain I originally used in the account that I have with FQ, gio.com. I have another domain pointing to the same account, besides changing paths in scripts, my e mail etc., will I have any problems?
2) Yesterday I requested a DNS change to my MX records.

Thanks
Joe train

[Lori]

Hello Joe,

If you would send a copy of your auto responses you received to Support@FutureQuest.net I can use those to look further into it.

As Justin said, now that we have the EMS in place we have yet to encounter an email that has not received a response that we know of as that is the goal of the system in the first place.

I do show an incident for 7/31/00 that was responded to with an elapsed time for the response of 16 minutes. So far I am yet to find a second email.

Lori

[This message has been edited by Lori (edited 08-15-00@5:28 pm)]

[JoeRT]

Now I know why I couldn't get JoeT![nbsp][nbsp]:)

Anyway, I've been pleased with the new system.[nbsp][nbsp]Responses have always been timely, and the systematic approach to adding information I found made it easier to get "between the e-mail" updates to FQ if I found more info before they had a chance to reply.

---------------
Joe Torsitano (a.k.a. JoeRT)
www.weatherforyou.com (http://www.weatherforyou.com)
www.tiswest.com (http://www.tiswest.com)

[UserName]

I've been rather frustrated myself.[nbsp][nbsp]I have a simple 'include' with PHP that stopped working since the move.[nbsp][nbsp]It now gives an error but worked 106 times on 2 pages last week before the move.[nbsp][nbsp]When I emailed supprt, Deb sent me a reply back to the effect of "look in the forums and ask developers there, as the service desk does not offer HTML support or training."

Needless to say I was rather offended by that response.[nbsp][nbsp]I am a career programmer and that[nbsp][nbsp]response made me feel degraded.[nbsp][nbsp]My simple question was why did the 'include' work last week for 106 times, but this week it's not working.[nbsp][nbsp]No mods were made to the script.[nbsp][nbsp]I run a development machine with the same versions of php and apache and it still works on my machine but fails at futurequest.

Also, when I sent a reply back on this I never did receive the autoresponse as I usually do.[nbsp][nbsp]It usually comes to me in seconds but it's been almost 5 hours and the auto-response hasn't come in yet.[nbsp][nbsp]Is this a problem on FQ's end?

Can anyone help?[nbsp][nbsp]Has anyone else had an include script fail since the move?[nbsp][nbsp]Has anyone else not received auto-reponses?

Thanks

[UserName]

...and sure enough, as SOON as I press send on the last topic I had a reply from Terra solving the whole thing....except I never did get the autoresponse on the last two replies I sent....just to keep in mind,

:)

[Deb]

Your response to me was quite insistent that the problem was within the server core.[nbsp][nbsp]You had stated quite clearly that the problem couldn't be with your code.[nbsp][nbsp]As such, I chose to trust your instinct in the area and assign the incident to the Sys Admin so that he could respond to you firsthand.[nbsp][nbsp]Once an incident has escalated to that level you can plan on it taking a bit longer to be responded to.[nbsp][nbsp]

Incident Created at 4:30pm
Responded to at 5:08pm (38mins)
Your reply was received at 6:05pm
And the Sys Admin responded at 10:33 PM (4 and 1/2 hr)

Once the corrections were made to the code it seems to have solved the incident.[nbsp][nbsp]In all fairness I believe an issue from beginning to end, especially when it is considered to be a "core system level problem" to be handled in less than 6 hours is still quite nice.[nbsp][nbsp]

I'm happy that it did turn out to be a code edit within your file that was needed, rather than a core problem, because a core problem does tend to take longer.[nbsp][nbsp] Waiting for a response is never easy, and we do try to ensure a quick response, however at times it can take a while.[nbsp][nbsp]Please allow up to 24 hours....and as I noted in my first response sharing in the forums can help.[nbsp][nbsp]There are others using PHP on the same IP as you who may have been able to offer some advice in the area sooner.

Deb
[nbsp]10 Ways To Improve Tech Support (http://www.aota.net/Troubleshooting/tsguide.php3)

P.S. I do not believe the EMS auto responds to Replies but only to new incidents.....
[This message has been edited by Deb (edited 09-06-00@11:26 pm)]

[Terra]

I will expand on this a bit:

You share the same Apache daemon (x21) as our lead FutureQuest PHP developer, Justin Nelson...

You can view his site at: vdj.net

He uses this domain for 'Real World' PHP testing and the SAFE_MODE was in fact intact both before and after the move requiring all PHP includes to *not* use the '/big/dom' in a directory path as it is automatically prepended by PHP while in SAFE_MODE...[nbsp][nbsp]This keeps PHP code within a specific tree, sort of like a pseudo chroot() jail...

After I sent out the email, I took extra time to make sure all T's were crossed, and all I's dotted to make ensure SAFE_MODE was fully operational across all servers and not just your Apache pool...[nbsp][nbsp]If there was a problem with SAFE_MODE on any servers, there would have been far many more reports of broken include() as this is pretty much a staple function of most PHP code...[nbsp][nbsp]As a matter of policy, I do not make changes to one Apache daemon, without updating the others and keep all configurations synchronized to ensure that if something does break - it can quickly be isolated and fixed...

My final conclusion is that the entire PHP SAFE_MODE sub-system was fully intact and operating normally...[nbsp][nbsp]No changes were made to the server, before or after the move, as there was absolutely no reason to do so...

Hopefully this will fully explain the situation, and the length of time necessary to arrive at the end result by investigating the incident you created...

--
Terra
--Full Disclosure in the public eye--
FutureQuest, Inc.

<EDIT: minor grammer: of --> by>
[This message has been edited by ccTech (edited 09-06-00@11:40 pm)]

[jimbo]

Give a hoot, don't pollute.
Catchy :)

-jim