I have a virtual machine hosted on VMWare server 1.0, it is a file server (running FC7 and Samba). Logins are via NIS and authenticate with the VM hosts (also FC7).

When I start the virtual machine, I am able to login and access it both from the console and via SSH with no problems and access Samba. After being up for approximately 3 /4 days Samba can no longer be accessed and SSH will time out.

When attempting to investigate further at the console, after entering the user name and pressing enter, it freezes, there is no prompt for a password. At this point I have to do a hard power off. Ctrl-Alt-Delete does not work, nor does Ctrl-C or Ctrl-\. Further more and rather frustratingly, there are no errors in the syslog and no errors associated with YPBind or Samba. This makes the problem rather difficult to investigate.

The machine worked fine up until about a month ago. Now, this happens every 2/3 days. Anyone have any thoughts or suggestions?

Hi, welcome to LQ forums.

What freezes, virtual machine or the host it self?

If host freezes, have you cleaned of the dust from coolers inside the PC, and have you checked if some of the coolers died out?

Also, have you done any modifications/updates just before problem started?

Fedora 7 is VERY OLD, and I doubt someone will be able to help you without suggesting to reinstall with CentOS 5.5 or Fedora 12.

Thanks for the reply and apologies forthe late response; been on holiday.

The problem is with the VM. For the time being I have moved the Samba service to the host. I will upgrade to VMWare server 2 and rebuild the VM with the latest version of Samba.

A couple of months ago the motherboard in the host died. I replaced it with a new one (the old was Intel, the new AMD). I had to rebuild the Kernel on the host machine after which it was fine; or so I thought. It turns out the host is only seeing 3GB of the 4GB memory (3GB being what I had in the previous m/b). I suspect that these may be related.

if you are doing all that on the old and dead fedora 7 .Then i can see why you are having a problem

there has been NO kernel updates since it hit End Of Life 2+ years ago
and tiring to build and install a new kernel without rebuilding the rest of the os . " fun"

install the current CentOS 5.5 or the non free RHEL 5.5
and your problems should go away