Hi folks,

I've got a RedHat server that's frozen (as in no httpd, no ipop3d, no sshd) 5 times in the last 3 days. I cannot find anything in /var/log/messages or /var/log/secure apart from the gaps between the last successful connection and the command to reboot.

I did notice there are a lot of quota errors cropping up in /var/log/messages, but those have been there for quite a while.

The last thing to be done to the server was the open-ssl packages were updated about a week before it started freezing, but the server has been rebooted since then with no ill effect.

Has anyone got any idea of what could be going on?

Thanks!

Nicola

Do you have good RAM? Memtest86 - A Stand-alone Memory Diagnostic

What's that?

What OS? What version? All errata applied? What kind of "hang" is it? Hard panic? When you boot it into console mode, do you get a kernel panic dump? Do kernel System Request keys still work? Have you enabled them?

Sorry,
It's been a bit of a hectic couple of days!

Right,

Cat /etc/issue gives:

Red Hat Linux release 7.3 (Valhalla)
Kernel \r on an \m

The type of 'hang' is the weirdest.

When it happens, there is no httpd, no ipop3d, no sshd.
I cannot find anything in /var/log/messages or /var/log/secure apart from the gaps between the last successful connection and the command
to reboot.

I can log in via SSH fine.
If I go and plug a monitor and keyboard into the server and log in via console, there's no kernel panic but the messages on the screen are:

VFS: find_free_dqentry (): Data block full but it shouldn't.
VFS: Error -5 occured while creating quota.

There have been quota errors for a while though.

I don't know if that could cause it to hang though...

As for system request keys, I'm not entirely sure what they are...
I've come from using SuSe a little bit, and being Sys Admin on Windows 2000 and 2003, I'm trying to learn Linux as much as I can, in as short a time possible!


Nicola

So, this is Red Hat Linux release 7.3, which has reached end-of-life long ago and is unsupported by Red Hat. Only the Fedora Legacy project still offers free additional security fixes for it.

You didn't answer whether you have installed all available errata packges, in particular the kernel updates. The original kernel that comes with Red Hat Linux 7.3 is known to cause ext2 file system corruption on SMP systems.
That bug was fixed shortly after release with a kernel erratum.

Else, Red Hat Linux 7.3 has been well-known for its stability. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 was based in parts on Red Hat Linux 7.2 and 7.3.

And I agree with fancypiper, give your RAM chips a check with the memtest86 utility.