[Techtalk] Diagnosing server problems

[Katherine Spice]

Hi Rachel,

> Surely there are other possibilities as well.  Any thoughts of any kind 
> are appreciated!

Two suggestions -

1. check that no other machine on the network has the same IP address as
your server - this can cause all kinds of odd behaviour!
2. check the process limit set for the machine. In the 2.2 kernel the
default for this was set to 512 process total (256 per user) - which
isn't loads on a busy server and if the process table fills up, no new
processes can spawn.

Do you have console access? If so, are you seeing any messages to it
during the times when the problem occurs?

I hope this helps (even if just to narrow down the possibilities :-)

Katherine