Server 'freezing' - update - Resolved?
Rob Brandt
yellowdog-general@lists.terrasoftsolutions.com
Mon Jan 20 11:30:04 2003
Some of you asked to keep informed on this issue. I believe that I have
resolved the issue: Bad RAM.
I upgraded memory on this machine several months ago. It did not start crashing
until about 2 months after, but as I was shutting down and rebooting fairly
frequently during that period since I was still building the server out. Maybe
that prevented the crashes(?).
I any case, after someone here suggested it might be a RAM problem, I tried to
go into OS9 to see if there were any RAM testing utilities there; I immediately
started getting bus errors and hard crashes. Apparently OS9 is much more
sensitive to RAM issues than YDL. So operating on the theory that RAM really
was the issue, I starting swapping sticks of various sizes in the system to see
which ones OS9 would like. I found 3 that worked pretty consistently, put them
in together, and booted back into YDL. That was 4 weeks ago as of this
afternoon. It's had not even a hiccup since then, whereas previously it was
crashing every few days, and hadn't made it longer then 2 weeks.
So. Now I need new RAM. The 'good' sticks I'm running now are only about
384mb, and I want it maxed out to 768. Anyone have any good suggestions of
where I can get a good price on quality RAM?. This is for a biege G3 tower.
Rob
Quoting Rob Brandt <bronto@csd-bes.net>:
> 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
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>
>
>
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