[cobalt-users] CPU heavily loaded, low on memory, smtp server not responding

[Cobalt List <cobalt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi All,

I woke this morning to the following scary messages from my cobalt:

#1. (at 5:07 this morning) "Over the past fifteen minutes, the CPU has been 
heavily loaded", etc..
"1 minute load average: 99.50
5 minute load average: 97.58
15 minute load average: 71.17"

#2. (at 5:08 this morning) "The SMTP (mail) server appears to be down", etc....

#3. (at 5:30 this morning) "Memory on the Cobalt server is heavily used", etc.
Total memory is: 389084 KB
Used memory is: 371784 KB
Free memory is: 17300 KB
Percent used is: 95"

The box usually runs with a 15 minute load average of less than 0.50 even 
during peak times.
So this was a major spike!

I'm not sure what was going on at that time. The only somewhat processor 
intensive thing running at that time is webalizer 2.

I checked my logcheck messages and the only thing I found strange was tons 
of "lame server" and "bad referral" messages.  I usually get a few of these 
every hour but this was hundreds of them right around the time I was 
getting memory, cpu and smtp messages.

For example:
Jan 22 05:12:04 admin named[507]: bad referral (208.209.in-addr.arpa !< 
141.208.209.in-addr.arpa) from [209.10.66.55].53
Jan 22 05:12:05 admin named[507]: Lame server on 
'137.128.89.149.209.in-addr.arpa' (in '128.89.149.209.in-addr.arpa'?): 
[63.73.84.2].53 'ns1.redmagnet.com'

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

Brian