Re: [cobalt-users] RaQ3 Crashes

[elmer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

On Mon, 12 Mar 2001, Mike Fritsch wrote:

} One of our RaQ3s crashes at least once a week and requires a hard reboot.
} We have had cobalt look over the server and they say it is fine. Just
} recently we got an email from the server saying the web server was not
} responding, we logged in and tried to start httpd but got a segmentation
} fault . We then rebooted it and it was fine. We were wondering if any one
} has had the same experiences or may be able to shed some light on our
} problem.

Hi Mike,

	More often than not, when I run into something like this, it
turns out to be someone doing something they shouldn't be doing. I'd
recomend checking the error and log files for HTTPD and mail
closely. Watching top helps - look for user scripts that max the
system out. I also usually install a traffic monitor (iptraf works
well) and watch it for a bit.

	I wouldn't want anyone to think something else could not be
the cause, but about 99% of the time I end up finding a user script
of some sort that's either doing things it shouldn't be or just so
poorly written that it bogs the system down.

	Out of the last two servers I jumped into with similar
problems we found a spammer script running as shoppingcart.cgi on
one, and on the other we found a survey script that spawned about a
bizzillion processes and literally gobbled up system resources had
been installed on a user account.

	With that said, you might just install bgcheck
(freshmeat.net). Doing so should pretty well handle these kind of
problems.