On Friday 01 October 2004 06:38 pm, Kris Kennaway wrote: > On Thu, Sep 30, 2004 at 10:03:00AM -0400, Jim Durham wrote: > > I have had this problem now with at least 3 FreeBSD servers over a period > > of about 2 years. I had put it down to some hardware problem but it seems > > to be too much of a coincidence with 3 different machines doing the same > > thing. > > > > The first time was when I put 4.5-RELEASE on a brand new Dell Poweredge > > 2650. I ran it on the bench for a week or so, then decided all was well > > and put it in the server rack and started doing the company's email > > service on it. After a few weeks, it suddenly would 'reboot' for no > > apparent reason. No log entries, nothing at all except the usual stuff in > > /var/log/messages about '/ was not unmounted correctly', etc. Just like > > you had pulled the power plug. > > > > The 2nd instance was a server that I maintain for an ISP that was a > > mirror image of their primary server, a 'hot spare' so to speak. The > > primary, running the same software was solid, but the backup would reboot > > at about 5:20 every morning with the same syndrome..no log entries of any > > sort and just the usual entries in /var/log messages saying the the / > > partition was not unmounted properly. The odd thing was that it was > > happening at virtually the same time every morning. > > > > I upgraded both systems to the latest -RELEASE and it made no > > difference. Then, they both just *stopped doing it by themselves* with no > > apparent correlation to anything installed software-wise. Neither server > > has had any problem for over a year now. > > > > The 3rd instance is happening now. Another server I maintain for my > > 'night job' is doing the same thing for a customer. It just 'stops' like > > you pulled the power plug. However, this time I thought to check using > > 'last' and found that I had accidentally left an ssh session open and > > that entry said 'crash'. There are no other log entries I can find > > related to the 'reboot'. > > Do you have ddb enabled? If not, the machine may be panicking and > rebooting automatically.
No. Not on any of the 3 boxes. Like I said, the problem has gone away and not returned on the Dell and the ISP's box and the loads on those boxes are always increasing and they've been fine for over a year now. It was just when this same thing started with a customer's server box that I started to wonder if it was some very intermittent problem in the kernel. > Actual "spontaneous reboots" are very rare These are very rare.... except they seem to happen about once a day for a while and then stop... very strange.. > and usually caused by hardware problems (e.g. faulty power supply, > overheating CPU, bad RAM). Possible, but if so, the hardware fixed itself on the first two boxes I mentioned. > Enable DDB, and see what happens the next > time it crashes. I'll try that on the one that's doing it now. Any suggestions as to how to log this to get the moset info ? I've not played with ddb, but I'll read the docs and get it going. Thanks much to all who responded! > > Kris -- -Jim _______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
