On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 12:17 PM, <bill...@lavabit.com> wrote: > Got a bit of an oddity with OpenBSD 4.5 - it's not quite a crash, but > close. It has happened 3 times now, usually after running flawlessly for > 2-3 weeks. > > Fully up to date with 4.5-stable, running GENERIC.MP on a Dell poweredge > R300 quad-core server with 4 gig ram (dmesg below). It's used as a > firewall/NAT/vpn gateway, and as an email server. > > When the problem occurs, all services on the server stop responding > (pop,imap,smtp, etc). > > The odd thing is that it does respond to ping, and the server still routes > traffic correctly, and the vpn is up. > > The server console shows nothing out of the ordinary (white on black text > login prompt, no X11), but the console is frozen - doesn't respond to > keyboard. > > Since it doesn't actually panic, I can't run the usual debug tools.
I've definitely had this happen to me but never had conclusive proof of the cause (because as you say, all you can do is reboot). I have more information from a DD-WRT install in fact: the web UI would stop responding and traffic would slow to a crawl but not stop; we were 90% sure the problem was memory pressure. When you get it back up try logging vmstat(8) every few minutes? -Nick
