[cobalt-users] web server inaccessible through a web browser

["Dr Trevor Tsang" <tt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Everyone,

We have recently leased 2 cobalt Raq4 servers (256MB RAM, RedHat 6.0, Apache
1.3.12 - I believe) from a hosting company to host web sites.

A strange problem has occured in the past week. At random times during the
day/night on one of our servers, the admin pages (as well as all the web
sites hosted on the server) become unaccessible. You do not even get the
Default Cobalt web page appearing when typing in the IP address in a browser
window. After a period of between 5 and 10 minutes the pages are accessible.
There are no problems accessing the server using telnet or ftp.

Now, the server that is experiencing the problem is hosting a few (~10)
small web sites with little or no CGI/ASP scripting and definitely no
databases. There is also very little traffic on the web site, so it is not a
loading problem. However, I have been playing with the ChiliASP ODBC/DSN
configurations and attempting to write a couple of small cgi-script (in
perl) that do little more than call the sendmail program. It is since I have
been experiementing with the above that the problems.

The other server that I have not played with at all does not experience any
of these accessibility problems. When I type the server's IP address into a
browser window, the default page appears instantly.

My question therefore is: has my playing around with ChiliASP and/or perl
caused this problem? The technical people at the hosting site are somewhat
baffled. Does anyone know which area I should look first in attempting to
tackle this problem, e.g., apache configuration, chiliASP config, etc.

Any help would be gratefully appreciated as I have been banging my head
against a brick wall for over a week now.

Regards

Trevor Tsang