Request: support reads their email

D

dan

Verified User
Joined
Jan 2, 2007
Messages
99
Location
North Wales, UK
Hi,
About a week, maybe 2 ago, I sent support an email which went ignored. I sent another email a handful of days later asking if they were going to answer me, which also went ignored. So I was wondering, if no one's reading the [email protected] email anymore, how does one go about obtaining support? I've always had a decent response from emails to support I've sent previously, but now I'm being ignored, and is making me think twice about using this product ongoing, as I'm currently not able to get any support, even though I'm paying for the license, and presumably the support contract that comes with it?
Advice (or any kind of response for that matter) appreciated.
 
Over the past few (years?) quite a few people seem to be randomly not getting answers. Those people are then recommended to use the safesubmit or gmail.

Also it has been suggested DA support should use an online ticket system, I still think thats the best idea. Mails apparently get lost too easy, a problem you wouldn't have with tickets.
 
Arieh said:
Also it has been suggested DA support should use an online ticket system, I still think thats the best idea.
Click to expand...
I agree with this...... Also, a ticket system is safer IMOH, anyone could use the safe submit form - who's to say no-one would request a license IP change (ok, they'd need the client and license numbers so a slim chance), there's no actual secrity prevention on the form
 
Hello,

To confirm, we do reply to everything we get.. 24 hour rule still applies.
Please resend if you don't get a response!

We also don't regularly patrol the forum.
If you have a thread you'd like us to see, you'd have to email it to us.

However, I do agree, that an online ticket system is going to make things more transparent, to avoid any potential email issues.

I was actually starting to look for some ticket system options today.
Suggestions on which ticket systems would be welcome (eg: Kayako, osTicket, etc.. , pros & cons)
Ability to customize things would be nice, as I'd like to integrate it into the /clients system, if possible.
Also being able to submit root passwords security would be important.. likely auto-delete after ticket it closed.

John
 
Hello John,

Great to see that you take feedback serious and act on it. Says a lot about the DirectAdmin crew :)

I think most of us will recommend Kayako Fusion. It's a solid solution that's been developed for years, very powerfull, stable and it's also eye-pleasing. I could go on and rant about how tight the software is, but I?m sure most people in this forum (Hosting company owners) are currently using it, or have used it in the past. You pay once for the license, and later a very inexpensive maintenance anual fee. They have a mobile version which is really well developed and makes responding to tickets, chats etc a breeze. My 2 cents.
 
I'd like to add a requirement. It's very important that it be possible to disable automatic email of content of tickets, only sending email to let either party know a reply is available. Otherwise it's impossible to protect against sending passwords in clear.

Does Kayako Fusion offer this?

Jeff
 
@Arieh: I'm wondering:
Mails apparently get lost too easy, a problem you wouldn't have with tickets.
Click to expand...
Why not? Because it also seems to be happening with the safesubmit form which is also present on the DA server as a ticket system would be, what would be the difference? I don't quite understand that.

However, I agree with you all that a ticket system would be better, already alone for the fact that the user would get a confirmation of his mail.
I myself never had problems contacting support.
 
Why can't you be more clever than just requesting a root password (albeit the most simple way of achieving privileged access)? Most people won't want to give you their root password, so will probably change it to allow you access, but also most systems now won't let you change a password back to what it was previously, which is annoying, but secure.

Is there nothing you can build into DA itself, for an administrator to "allow support access to my server", which gives support some way of being able to gain access to the machine via a mechanism DA provides (be-it inserting an SSH key of a support staff member into root's authorized_keys), and access is revoked when the DA administrator disables this feature. You could make it annoying too so it can't get left on. Put some kind of banner at the top of an admin login session "SUPPORT ACCESS ENABLED", emails every so often, etc etc, so that the administrator can't forget about it, and thus leave it open for abuse.

For instance, my new server doesn't have a root password. All privileged access is by SSH key only, so any mechanism of transporting a root SSH password to support, for me at least, is moot, as there isn't one.
 
Richard G said:
@Arieh: I'm wondering:

Why not? Because it also seems to be happening with the safesubmit form which is also present on the DA server as a ticket system would be, what would be the difference? I don't quite understand that.

However, I agree with you all that a ticket system would be better, already alone for the fact that the user would get a confirmation of his mail.
I myself never had problems contacting support.
Click to expand...

I haven't had any problems either. Not sure what safesubmit exactly is, but maybe in that case the customer doesn't receive the mails from DA. Maybe sometimes DA doesn't receive them or maybe sometimes the customer doesn't get the reply.

With tickets it is all in one system and there are no spamfilters on 2 (or even more) sides who may stop it.

dan said:
Why can't you be more clever than just requesting a root password (albeit the most simple way of achieving privileged access)? Most people won't want to give you their root password, so will probably change it to allow you access, but also most systems now won't let you change a password back to what it was previously, which is annoying, but secure.

Is there nothing you can build into DA itself, for an administrator to "allow support access to my server", which gives support some way of being able to gain access to the machine via a mechanism DA provides (be-it inserting an SSH key of a support staff member into root's authorized_keys), and access is revoked when the DA administrator disables this feature. You could make it annoying too so it can't get left on. Put some kind of banner at the top of an admin login session "SUPPORT ACCESS ENABLED", emails every so often, etc etc, so that the administrator can't forget about it, and thus leave it open for abuse.

For instance, my new server doesn't have a root password. All privileged access is by SSH key only, so any mechanism of transporting a root SSH password to support, for me at least, is moot, as there isn't one.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure if I would be in favor of adding a root accessing feature. There is no restriction on changing root passwords on the distro's I've used, Debian/CentOS/CL.

I don't know if they're not already using a SSH key if a customer requests it? Imo it's the same as asking for a password, but instead DA could send the key.
 
Richard G said:
Why not? Because it also seems to be happening with the safesubmit form which is also present on the DA server as a ticket system would be, what would be the difference? I don't quite understand that.
Click to expand...
So you mean tickets will be the same as email? The notifications will be emailed, sure, but I'm hoping the DA staff will be logging into the system regularly, so they'll see the list of opened tickets waiting for a reply.
 
With tickets it is all in one system and there are no spamfilters on 2 (or even more) sides who may stop it.
Click to expand...
Yes, correct, I only thought on the local delivery of the mail with the safesubmit form.

With a ticket system the customer always has a chance checking the ticket system without having gotten a notification, for whatever reason.
In that case however you need a ticket system which can be accessed by the customers.

Peter Laws said:
So you mean tickets will be the same as email?
Click to expand...
No not quite. But if a user sends a problem via the safesubmit form, you have the same chances of loosing it as a ticket. Locally I mean.
However, Arieh is correct that a reply could be lost.
Also you can't use an email only ticket system, because then you could have the same problem.
So a ticket system is needed which reacts on emails but is also directly accessible by users, via a webinterface f.e. in case something goes wrong with emails, either incoming or outgoing.
 
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Just some comments... we've decided to use a ticket system for NoBaloney Internet Services. After much searching we decided to go with the one built into WHMCS since we've settled on that for our billing system. It doesn't appear to be able to mask passwords in emails it sends on every ticket, but we're asking people to not send them in emails or tickets.

And here's an easy way to give DirectAdmin (or me, or one of the others on these forums who needs your root password to work on your server):

Create a new user, with it's own password, but with both UID and GID of 0, just for the use of the guest root user. The lopgins will be as root, because they're based on UID and GID, but the password will be specific to the username. Then when the person is finished working on your server, simply remove the user, or inactivate it by adding "!" in front of the password in the /etc/shadow file.

Jeff
 
nobaloney said:
Create a new user, with it's own password, but with both UID and GID of 0, just for the use of the guest root user. The lopgins will be as root, because they're based on UID and GID, but the password will be specific to the username. Then when the person is finished working on your server, simply remove the user, or inactivate it by adding "!" in front of the password in the /etc/shadow file.
Click to expand...

I think it would be much easier and safer for DA support to use SSH keys.
 
I've always asked for passwords because I've presumed (incorrectly?) that most users have no idea how to enable and disable keys.

Jeff
 
They would just need to add 1 line to a file to enable access for DA staff. That could be done without a file editor too (using "echo 'key-line-goes-here' >> /root/.ssh/authorized_keys").
 
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