Dns Interface Problem?

[spider]

Several months ago I received an email from someone there announcing they had notice in your log files how I had clicked the "Edit DNS Zone" link in my WHM like 30,000 times. Well, I don't remember how many you said, but apperently it was enough to warrant an email (the first of its kind for me in 12 years of networking). It was explained to me in the email that I needed to be patient, and that it only takes one click! The point is, I didn't write back then because it didn't seem worth it and sometimes I get busy. However, the problem didn't go away.

IT TAKES FOREVER!

I have about a dozen WHM/CPanel shared hosting accounts scattered around the country and I assure you it's not even a close competition - your "Edit DNS Zone" link is the absolute, hands-down, no-question-about-it slowest.

Funny thing is, the rest of the WHM responds normally, so I haven't a clue what's the deal, but I wish someone would look at it for a few minutes and figure it out. I'm scared of another "over-click" violation, but occassionally need to modify a DNS record in less time than it takes my grandma to walk to the store.

Anybody else have this problem?

[Jeff]

Several months ago I received an email from someone there announcing they had notice in your log files how I had clicked the "Edit DNS Zone" link in my WHM like 30,000 times. Well, I don't remember how many you said, but apperently it was enough to warrant an email (the first of its kind for me in 12 years of networking). It was explained to me in the email that I needed to be patient, and that it only takes one click! The point is, I didn't write back then because it didn't seem worth it and sometimes I get busy. However, the problem didn't go away.

IT TAKES FOREVER!

I have about a dozen WHM/CPanel shared hosting accounts scattered around the country and I assure you it's not even a close competition - your "Edit DNS Zone" link is the absolute, hands-down, no-question-about-it slowest.


This isn't a feature of ours. It is a feature of cPanel - http://www.cpanel.net

We have contacted them about this on a few occasions to notify them of this issue to include:

1. A bugzilla report at their bug tracking database - http://bugzilla.cpanel.net

2. An "Ultra Priority" support ticket (their term, not ours)

The ticket wasn't responded to for several months. When cPanel finally did decide to respond, the response was something to the effect of "we are looking into it" and we have heard nothing since.


Funny thing is, the rest of the WHM responds normally, so I haven't a clue what's the deal, but I wish someone would look at it for a few minutes and figure it out.


So do we. We have made every effort to contact the vendor, and on top of opening a ticket with them and logging the bug in their bugzilla database, we have also sent them output of all of the ./editdns processes that show up in the process list when this happens.

The deal here is poor quality of code on the part of cPanel for this one particular function, plain and simple.


I'm scared of another "over-click" violation, but occassionally need to modify a DNS record in less time than it takes my grandma to walk to the store.


I'm not sure why you would be scared of an "over-click" violation (not our term). There are no "penalties" or anything else that we impose if you click the link too many times, causing a resource issue on the server (unless you do it intentionally, after a few warnings). We will simply kill the processes, notify you again to please only click once, and that's that.

Anybody else have this problem?


I would also like to point out the following:

We have had an article posted about this in our Knowledge Base for quite some time now (since last year, perhaps around August or so). It may not be in our newest Knowledge Base, as a handful of articles still haven't been migrated. Below is the article that has been in our Knowledge Base for about a year now, give or take:


ARTICLE SUMMARY:
"Edit DNS Zone" is not displaying the list of zones

SYMPTOMS:
When clicking on "Edit DNS Zone" from within WHM, the list of DNS zones does not load or is slow to load.

RESOLUTION:
If when clicking "Edit DNS Zone" the list of zones does not display, simply wait longer. They will display. You may need to wait up to several minutes for the list of zones to be displayed. The cause of this is in the way cPanel has programmed that specific function, which is less than optimal and somewhat resource intensive.

Please, do not click this more than once. cPanel has been contacted regarding this issue and we are hoping to see an improvement in the code that handles this feature.


We have made every effort to address this issue with cPanel. I'm sorry you are experiencing these issues, but I ask that you direct your frustrations at the only party who is capable of fixing this issue, which is cPanel. We have done this numerous times already with no success. You have the following resources available to you:

cPanel forums
http://forums.cpanel.net
Note that the cPanel forums are not an official means of support

cPanel bugzilla
http://bugzilla.cpanel.net


If you post a thread or a bugzilla report, please feel free to let us know and we will add any additional information possible to either/both in support of this issue. If you have any suggestions for anything else we could possibly do that we have not already done, please do feel free to let us know. Thank you.

[Jeff]

And here's the proof of the ticket we had open with cPanel.

Ticket ID 132969

Ticket Title: Edit DNS Zone Local DoS (WHM account access required)

http://enterprise.myriadnetwork.com/~myriad/editdns.png

Things to note from the ticket:

1. It was open for over 5 months
2. Nickn's average response time was 1099 hours
3. The issue has still not been addressed by cPanel

This is on top of the fact that we had already contacted them via email several times before we opened the ticket (to their security@cpanel.net email address since this really is a local DoS (Denial of Service) issue, and opened a bugzilla report.

I will say that cPanel is generally very responsive to our support requests, and sometimes bug reports. We have submitted a few bug reports that have been addressed within very reasonable amounts of time, including one nasty security related bug that was fixed within hours of it being reported as nickn rewrote a portion of code on a plane and simultaneously directed his team back at cPanel HQ in Houston on the release of an update. We always do everything within our power to make sure everything within our control runs as smooth as possible, and I think our uptimes, fast network, generally fast (and always knowledgeable) support, server stability, reasonable price, and so on all speaks for itself. I assure you no one here on our end dropped the ball on this issue at any time. In fact, I distinctly remember emailing cPanel about it the same day we saw it for the very first time.

Again, if you have any suggestions for actions that we have not already taken on this issue, please do feel free to let us know.

[Jeff]

I am opening a new ticket with cPanel about this now. I know this is an issue, and I know it is annoying. cPanel has addressed issues with poor code performance in the past with other routines, and I don't get why they can't just fix this one as well..

Also, I would like to clarify something you said:


Several months ago I received an email from someone there announcing they had notice in your log files how I had clicked the "Edit DNS Zone" link in my WHM like 30,000 times. Well, I don't remember how many you said

Below is exactly what was said in ticket #8456, opened on Sun, 21 May 2006 13:48:18 -0400:



Hi,

A few minutes ago I noticed the server you're hosted on using a higher amount of resources than usual. I believe the issue was possibly while you were logged into WHM and attempting to make a DNS change.

If you click on the DNS link and wait for the list of zones to be edited to display, and they do not show up right away, please give it some time instead of repeatedly clicking the link.

More information on this issue can be found by searching our Knowledge Base ( http://my.myriadnetwork.com ) for the term: dns

This will bring up an article titled:
"Edit DNS Zone" is not displaying the list of zones


If this was not you, then please disregard this message. If you have any questions, please let me know, thanks.

The first email I sent via the ticket bounced, so I sent it again. The only other thing said in the ticket was this, on Mon, 22 May 2006 14:38:28 -0400:


Hi,

Please confirm receipt of this email, thanks.



That is the dialogue of the ticket in its entirety. Thanks.


edit: for the techies who understand ps aux output on *nix boxes, this was the issue (note the CPU usage of each process):


USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
root 7761 27.1 0.2 19316 17992 ? R 13:31 1:26 /usr/local/cpanel/whostmgr/bin/whostmgr ./editdnslist
root 7780 28.4 0.2 19316 17996 ? R 13:31 1:30 /usr/local/cpanel/whostmgr/bin/whostmgr ./editdnslist
root 7791 27.7 0.2 19316 17996 ? R 13:31 1:27 /usr/local/cpanel/whostmgr/bin/whostmgr ./editdnslist
root 7800 27.7 0.2 19316 17992 ? R 13:31 1:27 /usr/local/cpanel/whostmgr/bin/whostmgr ./editdnslist
root 7808 26.2 0.2 19316 17992 ? R 13:31 1:23 /usr/local/cpanel/whostmgr/bin/whostmgr ./editdnslist
root 7817 26.5 0.2 19316 17992 ? R 13:31 1:23 /usr/local/cpanel/whostmgr/bin/whostmgr ./editdnslist
root 7826 28.3 0.2 19316 17996 ? R 13:31 1:29 /usr/local/cpanel/whostmgr/bin/whostmgr ./editdnslist
root 7834 26.5 0.2 19316 17992 ? R 13:31 1:23 /usr/local/cpanel/whostmgr/bin/whostmgr ./editdnslist
root 7973 25.8 0.2 19316 17992 ? R 13:31 1:15 /usr/local/cpanel/whostmgr/bin/whostmgr ./editdnslist
root 8122 25.7 0.2 19316 17988 ? R 13:32 1:00 /usr/local/cpanel/whostmgr/bin/whostmgr ./editdnslist
root 8268 25.6 0.2 19316 17976 ? R 13:33 0:47 /usr/local/cpanel/whostmgr/bin/whostmgr ./editdnslist
root 8511 23.9 0.2 19316 17960 ? R 13:34 0:24 /usr/local/cpanel/whostmgr/bin/whostmgr ./editdnslist



My latest test shows it takes about 1 minute and 30 seconds for the screen to load when clicking the Edit a DNS Zone link on the server this customer is on. I just want to clarify that it's not some extreme amount of time or that the feature is severely crippled, because it's not. It works perfectly fine, and if you only click once and can wait for about 90 seconds the screen will load as expected. That's what this entire issue is about.

[Jeff]

and here's what we have from cPanel in the latest ticket I just opened about this issue again:


Hello,

I am escalating this to a Level 2 technician for review.

Thank you.
--
Kyle Pinkley
Technical Support
cPanel



I will update this thread as necessary.

[Jeff]

From cPanel:


We apologize for the long wait.

I have updated the Bug report and will bring this to the attention of our Developers and QA team for immediate review.

[spider]

Yeah, it was just like you said.

Guess the ole technical forum isn't the best place to be exaggerating :|

I also see your work in tracking this thing, but again, I have a bunch of these CPanels and in all cases but Myriad's the "Edit DNS Zone" work normally (which may explain the lack of interest by the CPanel folks).

And besides, it was back in May, so I figured I must have been the only one or it would have been fixed by now -- obviously not the case.

So... for the record:

(1) I don't know how many times I clicked the link that day in May, and;

(2) I never received an "over-click" warning.

[Jeff]

Often times when customers have multiple webhosts and only experience an issue with just one particular host, they believe that host is the one at fault. In some cases this may apply, and in some cases it may not apply.

Below are 2 threads I found regarding this exact issue that have been posted on the cPanel forums:

04-07-2005
Edit DNS is to slow (http://forums.cpanel.net/showthread.php?t=37757)

02-24-2006
Edit DNS Zones is too slow (http://forums.cpanel.net/showthread.php?t=50246)

I think one of the main reasons that some issues with cPanel don't get fixed, or are delayed in getting fixed, is that sometimes folks don't use the appropriate channels for reporting such issues, such as cPanel's bugtracker at http://bugzilla.cpanel.net

Not everyone knows about it, and not everyone who does know about it is aware of the RSS feed for the site, which could help others test issues and add their feedback to the bugzilla reports the same day they are submitted.

I can't say that if I used 12 hosts and only experienced a certain issue with 1 that I wouldn't be quick to blame the host myself. However, I can assure anyone that we are not alone in experiencing the slowness that comes with waiting for the DNS zones to load.

Not 1 person has replied to the bugzilla report I submitted to cPanel's database 4 months ago, and no one at cPanel has even acknowledged the bug. It is still marked as "NEW".

There are no updates from cPanel at this time, although part of their reply from last night (not mentioned above) was telling me to keep an eye on the bugzilla report, as that is where the updates will take place. When the bug report is updated, this thread will be updated.