Server 'freezing'

[Ken Schweigert]

On Wed, Dec 18, 2002 at 11:56:16AM -0000, Rob Brandt wrote:
> The server was frozen again Monday morning, so the suggested fix
> of replacing the motherboard battery didn't do the job.
 
[..snip..] 

> 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

Rob,

I have a similar problem with a beige G3-233 that is running an EZMLM
listserv.  It runs great until a client sends a huge message to their
list.  I know this is what causes it because once it restarts there
are hundreds of messages trying to send.

I suspect my problem, as well as yours, is hard disk related.  I've
ran TechTools from OS9 and everything is fine except for the test it
can't run: linux drive test.  The e2fsprogs suite, which fsck is part
of, has a utility called badblocks which obviously checks your drive
for bad blocks.  I have yet to try it.  My system is a production
system so I'm a little leary about hosing the filesystem.

If you decide to run it, and it fixes things for you, please post back
to the list.

-ken

> 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.
 
You may want to consider switching to ext3 journaling filesystem.
 
 
-- 
Ken Schweigert, Network Administrator
Byte Productions, LLC
http://www.byte-productions.com