[ILUG] Server Issues

[Sean O Sullivan]

Have a query, which wondering if anyone could provide any suggestions ...
I apologise for the vagueness of all this, but the simple fact is - main
problem is there is no logs of error ... anyways...

Running Linux Server [will post general spec below], and it's randomly [or
seems to be random..] halting/not responding, requiring either a reboot
locally, or to be hard-shutdown, depending on severity.

At random times, usually at night however [i.e. between 0300 - 0700,
usually between 0500/0600], server stops respoonding, by this I mean, no
SSH in, no HTTP, dead in the water, cron jobs stop running.
Log files show nothing ... I have gone through all logs in /var/log for
times around the shutdown, and the only log entries will be

Date/Time ... Normal logs....
sys restart ....

It seems random, not at begining or end of the hour [i.e. doesn't look
like a cron-job is causing it]. Happens at random intervals too -
sometimes it's grand for 1, 2 3 etc weeks, othertimes dies, and then dies
again 2-3 days later.

Bootup logs don't show anything out of the ordinary either [HD checks etc
occur since system has been hard-shutdown sometimes, but they all appear
ok].

I have a few ideas, HD not too healthy [don't wish to use smart
utils/testing, as I am unable to do any backups - yet at least], network
card is dying/fscking up randomly [easily fixed - just have to make the
trip ...], or Possibly dodgy RAM [getting new RAM in couple days, so I'll
know if this is issue or not].

Now I admit I'm pretty new to Linux Administration etc, knew fair bit
before, but this is first time setup/running/maintaining server with
multiple services [mail/apache/mysql db's/irc server/....+ more].

Planning to put script in cron.hourly to do 10-15 tests, each failure
gives score, if score>limit, reboot - or something similar, that is if
cronjobs even run when server has a spa attack.

Any suggestions on finding out what is causing this would be more than
appriciated, and again, I apologise for the sparseness of this
description.


Specs :
Dell Optiplex GX200
P3 800
2x128MB RDRAM [Upgrading to 2x256MB soon ...current usage is usually full,
with about 100-200MB Pagefile usage].
10GB Disk


Linux Red Hat 9
kernel-2.4.22-1.2194


I'm guessing you will require more information, however unsure how much
needed ... so Don't wish to go overkill either...

Regards,

Sean

-- 
Sean O Sullivan,
BitBucket, IT Carlow's Networking Society [NetSoc]
http://netsoc.itcarlow.ie