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Dedicated server crashes every 24 hours; Linux amateur cannot diagnose
Hello, my name is David, I am a writer and part time freelance web developer with only the most minor understanding of servers and how they work. I recently started renting from 1and1 a dedicated server but for a while now have been having trouble with server crashes, about once every 24 hours, which require me to go into the control panel and reboot.
I have added code to my .htaccess, started using a script from zbblock
to intercept bots from China, added some IP ranges to my blacklist to prevent access to my server, etc. but am still having trouble. I'm using a Drupal 7 script to run perhaps 7 sites, and in a separate directory, a Drupal 6 script to run 2 sites.
I have read a lot of material on the forums but do not feel competent to try to diagnose what is going on.
If anyone is able to help me out, please tell me what information you need. I have images of all processes, and can provide screen shots of the SSH screen. Also have all specs.
Showing top output won't much help, because memory usage keep changing every moment.
Do you have system's sar reports or did you notice anything special in dmesg and server logs (/var/log/...)?
Also what does server crash mean, does http process get killed unexpectedly?
Hello, thanks for your reply. I've installed Sysstat. Is there a way to collect all reports at once? I can copy and paste the results individually. Here is the output from pidstat (below). Please tell me what else I can provide. PS: Yes, the server stops unexpectedly, as does the http process. Nothing is reported in the logs about the crash, and yes, it requires a reboot from the 1&1 control panel. It happens fairly regularly. I can do screenshots of what appears on the Plesk panel as well.
Please use [code][code] around commands and screenshots that you're sharing. This option is available in menu when you Reply to Thread.
Since both physical as well as swap is enough to run https process successfully (as you can see most of your cpu is idle and https process is taking only few hundreds mb of memory). However to me, it sounds some pb with BIOS or might be some H/W failt.
If you noticed in above output of dmesg:-
Code:
~# dmesg | less
.......
.......
SMBIOS version 2.5 @ 0xF7530
DMI: FUJITSU SIEMENS D2721-H1 /D2721-H1, BIOS 6.00 R1.05.2721.H1 06/26/2008
Phoenix BIOS detected: BIOS may corrupt low RAM, working around it.
....
.......
And one more thing to check, that's /var/log/httpd. What does it say?
Thank you very much for your help, greatly appreciated. Here are some excerpts from the error log in var/log/httpd; are there other logs from which you'd like me to post excerpts?
A sampling from the January 13 error log:
Code:
PHP Warning: Directive 'safe_mode' is deprecated in PHP 5.3 and greater in Unknown on line 0
[Sun Jan 13 03:20:04 2013] [error] python_init: Python version mismatch, expected '2.6.5', found '2.6.6'.
[Sun Jan 13 03:20:04 2013] [error] python_init: Python executable found '/usr/bin/python'.
[Sun Jan 13 03:20:04 2013] [error] python_init: Python path being used '/usr/lib64/python26.zip:/usr/lib64/python2.6/:/usr/lib64/python2.6/plat-linux2:/usr/lib64/python2.6/lib-tk:/usr/lib64/python2.6/lib-old:/usr/lib64/python2.6/lib-dynload'.
[Sun Jan 13 03:20:04 2013] [notice] mod_python: Creating 4 session mutexes based on 256 max processes and 0 max threads.
[Sun Jan 13 03:20:04 2013] [notice] mod_python: using mutex_directory /tmp
[Sun Jan 13 03:20:04 2013] [warn] RSA server certificate CommonName (CN) `Parallels Panel' does NOT match server name!?
[Sun Jan 13 03:20:04 2013] [warn] RSA server certificate CommonName (CN) `Parallels Panel' does NOT match server name!?
[Sun Jan 13 03:20:04 2013] [warn] Init: Name-based SSL virtual hosts only work for clients with TLS server name indication support (RFC 4366)
A sampling from the January 19 error log (thousands of these sorts of messages):
Code:
[Sat Jan 19 11:10:40 2013] [error] [client 220.181.89.128] File does not exist: /var/www/vhosts/default/htdocs/robots.txt
[Sat Jan 19 11:13:01 2013] [error] [client 66.249.73.55] File does not exist: /var/www/vhosts/default/htdocs/artist
[Sat Jan 19 11:13:20 2013] [error] [client 66.249.73.17] File does not exist: /var/www/vhosts/default/htdocs/romantic
[Sat Jan 19 11:13:20 2013] [error] [client 66.249.73.134] File does not exist: /var/www/vhosts/default/htdocs/files
[Sat Jan 19 11:13:42 2013] [error] [client 66.249.73.215] File does not exist: /var/www/vhosts/default/htdocs/robots.txt
[Sat Jan 19 11:13:42 2013] [error] [client 66.249.73.200] File does not exist: /var/www/vhosts/default/htdocs/tags
Another sampling from the January 19 error log (thousands of these sorts of messages):
Code:
PHP Warning: Directive 'safe_mode' is deprecated in PHP 5.3 and greater in Unknown on line 0
[Sat Jan 19 01:17:54 2013] [error] python_init: Python version mismatch, expected '2.6.5', found '2.6.6'.
[Sat Jan 19 01:17:54 2013] [error] python_init: Python executable found '/usr/bin/python'.
[Sat Jan 19 01:17:54 2013] [error] python_init: Python path being used '/usr/lib64/python26.zip:/usr/lib64/python2.6/:/usr/lib64/python2.6/plat-linux2:/usr/lib64/python2.6/lib-tk:/usr/lib64/python2.6/lib-old:/usr/lib64/python2.6/lib-dynload'.
[Sat Jan 19 01:17:54 2013] [notice] mod_python: Creating 4 session mutexes based on 256 max processes and 0 max threads.
[Sat Jan 19 01:17:54 2013] [notice] mod_python: using mutex_directory /tmp
[Sat Jan 19 01:17:54 2013] [warn] RSA server certificate CommonName (CN) `Parallels Panel' does NOT match server name!?
[Sat Jan 19 01:17:54 2013] [warn] RSA server certificate CommonName (CN) `Parallels Panel' does NOT match server name!?
[Sat Jan 19 01:17:54 2013] [warn] Init: Name-based SSL virtual hosts only work for clients with TLS server name indication support (RFC 4366)
[Sat Jan 19 01:17:54 2013] [notice] Apache/2.2.15 (Unix) DAV/2 mod_fcgid/2.3.6 mod_python/3.3.1 Python/2.6.6 mod_ssl/2.2.15 OpenSSL/1.0.0-fips mod_perl/2.0.4 Perl/v5.10.1 configured -- resuming normal operations
[Sat Jan 19 01:17:55 2013] [notice] caught SIGTERM, shutting down
[Sat Jan 19 01:17:56 2013] [notice] suEXEC mechanism enabled (wrapper: /usr/sbin/suexec)
[Sat Jan 19 01:17:56 2013] [warn] RSA server certificate CommonName (CN) `Parallels Panel' does NOT match server name!?
[Sat Jan 19 01:17:56 2013] [warn] RSA server certificate CommonName (CN) `Parallels Panel' does NOT match server name!?
[Sat Jan 19 01:17:56 2013] [warn] Init: Name-based SSL virtual hosts only work for clients with TLS server name indication support (RFC 4366)
NOTE: the SIGTERM issue was addressed in this thread:
A sampling from the January 20 error log (thousands of these sorts of messages):
Code:
[Sun Jan 20 03:48:54 2013] [error] [client 208.115.111.73] File does not exist: /var/www/vhosts/default/htdocs/robots.txt
[Sun Jan 20 03:49:06 2013] [error] [client 66.249.73.37] File does not exist: /var/www/vhosts/default/htdocs/artist
[Sun Jan 20 03:49:06 2013] [error] [client 66.249.73.56] File does not exist: /var/www/vhosts/default/htdocs/artist
[Sun Jan 20 03:49:10 2013] [error] [client 66.249.73.53] File does not exist: /var/www/vhosts/default/htdocs/artist
[Sun Jan 20 03:49:18 2013] [error] [client 66.249.73.47] File does not exist: /var/www/vhosts/default/htdocs/artist
Not sure if this will help, but I took this screenshot this morning (attached). The empty spaces are the duration of the crash. If you look carefully you will notice a drop from a high of 2.4g to 2.2g.
Yesterday, I disabled in my Plesk control panel several domain forwards that I had set up (i.e., forward traffic from domain1.com to domain2.com).
That made an immediate impact on memory usage, but during the course of the day that use climbed again.
I also reduced in my.conf the number of max visitors from 500 down to 200.
If the BIOS has an issue, could this represent the fact that I have more or less permanently lost 1 gig or so of memory?
Also, the server has not crashed as of this morning since I made the changes above.
Thanks again for any help / insights you can provide.
As per logs and all above stuff, I can conclude it's possibly a problem with BIOS chip, not just physically, but with it's configuration/setup. I have googled the error also and almost every discussion points to problem with BIOS. But I am not sure, to be honest, where exactly the problem is and how to solve it. However further searching and will get back if found something helpful.
As per logs and all above stuff, I can conclude it's possibly a problem with BIOS chip, not just physically, but with it's configuration/setup. I have googled the error also and almost every discussion points to problem with BIOS. But I am not sure, to be honest, where exactly the problem is and how to solve it. However further searching and will get back if found something helpful.
Thank you very much for your help. I have emailed tech support with the BIOs issue and will let you know what I hear back.
"This message indicates that the BIOS uses a range of memory addresses that is generally used by the Linux kernel, and that the kernel recognizes this and will not attempt to use that memory range. This will not cause any errors in the operation or your server."
1. what was the last thing you changed before the crashes started
2. can you show your httpd.conf and the .htaccess files (contents)
NB: best practice is to not use .htaccess files, but put the directives inside the relevant httpd.conf Dir section.
Better performance (httpd.conf is cached by Apache, .htaccess isn't). Also security; htaccess is in Document root; possibly hackable.
3. show OS type
Code:
cat /etc/*release*
uname -a
4. re crashes; have you looked at /var/log/messages ?
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