[Techtalk] mysterious system halts - how to prevent/fix/detect?

[Carla Schroder]

On Wednesday 05 June 2002 08:10 am, Malcolm-Rannirl wrote:
> On Wednesday 05 June 2002 10:29 am, Mandi wrote:
> > You may also want to poke around looking for a cracker, nmap scan the
> > box, see if anything weird is open and listening.
>
> I was about to suggest that. We had a cracker get one of the servers I
> worked on (learned a lot about security from that incident), and installed
> a kernel module as part of the rootkit. Having someone deliberately crash
> the machine to force a reboot (and thus a kernel reload) seems plausible.
>
> It does sound more like the power supply problem that someone else
> suggested. (I've had a few PSs die on me with similar results).
 
I third the power supply notion, got a spare to swap in?

TuffTest Pro is a very nice hardware tester, and cheap, get the 29.95 
version. http://www.tufftest.com/ It tests the hardware directly, best thing 
is to set up a test suite and let it run overnight. I've used it for years, 
it's saved me many hours and headaches.

Carla