[Techtalk] Re: Techtalk digest - Julie's server halting

[Malke Routh]

On Wed, 2002-06-05 at 07:07, techtalk-request at linuxchix.org

> Message: 3
> Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2002 05:41:38 -0700
> From: Julie Meloni <julie at i2ii.com>
> Reply-To: Julie Meloni <julie at i2ii.com>
> Organization: i2i Interactive, Inc.
> To: techtalk at linuxchix.org
> Subject: [Techtalk] mysterious system halts - how to prevent/fix/detect?
> 
> Hi -
> 
> Any suggestions, swift kicks upside the head, etc would be greatly
> appreciated.   I have a SuSE-based web/db/mail server that has been
> alive and running brilliantly for 10 months.  In that time, I rebooted
> it once, for no reason that I recollect now.
> 
> It's a basic P-III 550mhz, 256MB ram, 30gb drive machine.  Never has
> the load average been over say .75 for more than a few minutes, unless I was
> compiling something.  As far as traffic, it handles only 3 virtual web
> servers, and only about 87000 hits per day.  There are about 25 normal
> volume mail accounts in use.  In other words, this is not an
> incredibly busy machine, relatively.
> 
> However, in the last 3 days, it has halted itself for no particular
> reason:
> 
> * Sunday night at 8, I rebooted at 4 the next morning .
> * Then Monday night at 7, I rebooted at 4 the next morning.
> * Yesterday it halted at 4 in the afternoon, I rebooted it at 8pm.
> * Just five hours later it halted, I rebooted it, and it's currently
> still running.
> 
> This is the current output of free:
>              total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
> Mem:        261732     258348       3384          0      91568     132760
> -/+ buffers/cache:      34020     227712
> Swap:       238936          0     238936
> 
> While I don't watch it every minute (but I plan to now...), that's the
> status quo for memory usage.
> 
> For my Apache config, this is what I use re: processes and children(and I use this same set-up
> on another machine, which has been fine):
> 
> KeepAlive On
> MaxKeepAliveRequests 100
> KeepAliveTimeout 15
> MinSpareServers 5
> MaxSpareServers 10
> StartServers 10 
> MaxClients 150
> MaxRequestsPerChild  400
> 
> This machine has been, like all of our machines have, withstanding
> your run of the mill portscans, synflooding attempts and other script kiddie
> whatnots.  Never any issues.
> 
> When fsck runs at startup, it find 6.5% non-contiguous blocks, but no
> errors to go fix.
> 
> I see nothing in any of my logs that say "I'm tired, going to halt
> now" -- but I could be looking in all the wrong places.
> 
> So, the million dollar question (hope this all wasn't too much info
> and thanks for reading this far) is....
> 
> What does this sound like?  the drive? memory exhaustion?  something
> else?
> 
> Ideas, things to read, fixes to try, all greatly appreciated.
> 
> Thanks,
> Julie

Julie, in this case I'd look to the hardware.  I'd open the case and run
it while watching to see if any of the fans are failing.  What about the
one on the processor?  Any weird noises?  It may be the power supply is
getting old.  Where you live, is it getting hot?  It's going up to 104 F
here today, and if I had the boxen in a small, closed room and the power
supplies/fans weren't the best, the heat might affect them.  You could
do a RAM check, but I'd look first to heat-related issues.

Cheers,

Malke
-- 
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"