Server 'freezing'

[Peter Bagnall]

Is the machine running off a UPS? This might be a long shot, but if you 
had a brownout or very brief power cut you might find that you get some 
memory corruption. I have no clue about how plausible this is, maybe 
someone else will know if it's likely, but if you don't have a UPS then 
maybe that's the problem.

The things that makes me think of this is you saying it seems to happen 
most early on monday. If there's a large piece of equipment that gets 
powered up monday morning then that could be what's giving you spikes 
that are doing the damage. Spikes are easily solved with a surge 
protector, but very short cuts in power, even just a few milliseconds I 
believe, can cause problems.

Of course if you're running on a UPS then this ain't it (unless it's 
broken ;-) ).

This is a bit of a dead chicken waving suggestion, but since you're out 
of options, I guess anything is worth a try.

Good luck

Pete

On Wednesday, December 18, 2002, at 11:56 AM, Rob Brandt wrote:

> The server was frozen again Monday morning, so the suggested fix
> of replacing the motherboard battery didn't do the job.
>
> I hope someone has a clue about this, or can suggest a stragegy to
> diagnose the problem.  Here's the latest information I can offer;
> don't know if it's relevent or not:
>
> Half of the time that it happens it's been on a Monday morning
> before work.  The rest of the time except once it's been on
> another day before work.  Once it was in the evening after work.
> It's never happened while I've been here.  The server doesn't get
> a lot of traffic, but when it does it's usually in bunches.  I
> suppose inactivity may be a contributing factor.  I frequently
> check my mail during the day.  But come to think of it, I have a
> utility checking a special pop account for new messages every 15
> minutes all the time.
>
> Right now I have a problem with the server that may or may not be
> related.  While sorting my mail this morning, I noticed it beig
> very slow.  Gnome was running, and I have several "load" panels
> running in the tool bar - RAM, CPU and Net.  I noticed that CPU
> was running at 100% and not varying.  I tried to start gtop to see
> what was sucking cycles, but it was unresponsive.  I had a console
> window and browser window open, and I closed those, and noticed
> that the icons on the desktop didn't redraw.  Attempting to log
> out, that was unresponsive too.  On my desktop Mac, I browsed to
> Webmin on the server and viewed the Running applications to see
> what was sucking up the cycles; it was Courier-Imap.  I killed
> that, restarted Courier-Imap, and the CPU load panel on the server
> went down to normal levels.  But Gnome itself is still
> unresponsive.  I can't start applications, log out, the icons on
> the desktop still haven't redrawn.  The toolbar is responsive and
> the load panels inside of it are active.
>
> Like I said, I don't know if this is related to the server freeze
> or not.  When the server freezes, I have no network services but I
> do now.  When the server freezes, the CRT won't wake up, but does
> now.
>
> (dramatic pause)
>
> OK, new information.  As I was trying to send the above, it was
> apparent that some of my mail services weren't working because it
> wouldn't send.  Other network services such as apache were OK.  So
> I decided to reboot the server; when it rebooted it said that the
> file systems weren't unmounted cleanly and forced a file system
> check.  There were unexpected inconsistencies, so I had to run
> fsck.  There were several inode problems, after they were fixed it
> rebooted again and started OK.  I'm back up and running.
>
> But it appears that some questions have been answered: namely that
> the "unexpected inconsistencies" were not the result of power
> off/on rebooting I had to resort to when the system freezes, since
> it happened now after I did a normal reboot.  Quite possibly the
> unexpected inconsistencies are the cause of the freezing.
>
> Any ideas on further diagnosis?
>
> Thanks
>
>
>
>> I am having a problem for the last month or so and don't know
>> what to  do about it.  It's happened 4 times in November, and
>> last night as  well.
>>
>> The server "freezes".  It is completely unresponsive to the
>> keyboard,  http, mail services, telnet, ssh, and ftp.  I can
>> successfully ping  it.
>>
>> When this has happened, I end up having to shut it down at the
>> power  button and reboot.  When rebooting it goes through the
>> filesystem  check and often encounters and Unexpected
>> Inconsistency, requiring me  to run fsck.  After going through
>> that, it fixes several things
>> (sometimes a lot, sometimes a little) and then loads properly
>> and all  is well.  For a while.  Then it does it again in 2 to
>> 14 days.  I  don't know whether the unexpected inconsistency is
>> the cause or the  result of the "freeze".
>>
>> Are there any diagnostics that I can perform to discover the
>> problem?  If there are file system errors causing this, are
>> there utilities  that can be run that will prevent it or
>> minimize the risk?
>>
>> Any advice appreciated.  Running:
>>
>> Beige G3 Tower;
>> YDL 2.2
>> 768 MB Ram
>> YDL boot disk : original 4gig IDE (hda8)
>> Data disk for /home and /var: New (2 mos) 60 gig IBM (hdb2 & 3)
>>
>> All of the above partitions have exhibited the Unexpected
>> Inconsistency.
>>
>> Rob
>> _______________________________________________
>> yellowdog-general mailing list
>> yellowdog-general@lists.terrasoftsolutions.com
>> http://lists.terrasoftsolutions.com/mailman/listinfo/yellowdog-general
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> yellowdog-general mailing list
> yellowdog-general@lists.terrasoftsolutions.com
> http://lists.terrasoftsolutions.com/mailman/listinfo/yellowdog-general
>