Mandrake 8.2 Keeps crashing!

[Kai4Linux]

After about two weeks of uptime, my server just.. dies! I check in my /var/log/syslog, all i get is my cron job which runs every 5 minutes, then bam until i hit the power button. When i tried to plug in the moniter, all i saw was a black screen even AFTER i push a ton of buttons to wake it up.

Any ideas? It runs BIND, and Apache 1.3 with PHP and qmail. It is a 450 w/ 98 megs of ram. Thanks

 

[Nothinman]

Best way to see if the kernel is crashing if you have no monitor or do have X running is with a serial cable. Put a console on the serial port and it'll put anything there it would normally put on the console, including oops output.

 

[Kai4Linux]

ehhh? What do you mean? I have a moniter but not for my server, but i just unhook my moniter from my desktop into the server. I do have SSH tho. That didn't work either.

 

[Nothinman]

If the console blanks you might not see whatever message is there, that won't happen over a serial connection. Just put a serial cable (null modem) between the two commports and add the kernel parameter 'console=ttyS0 console=tty0' so you get console output on both, then run a terminal emulation program on the non-crashing side (minicom is good in Linux, PowerTerm is good in Windows, can't remember the name of the program that ships with Windows) and you'll get all the kernel console messages.

Kernel developers use it to be able to copy error messages from the console.

 

[Kai4Linux]

Doh any other way? I havent used the seral connector in like 5 years so i dont have any of those cables..

 

[Nothinman]

Try setting the console not to blank, sorry I don't remember the command off hand.

 

[awal]

Is the server in an area that might be hot? I have a system running Redhat 7.2 that does BIND/APACHE/SENDMAIL. When ever the room gets hot i get an occasionaly lock up. It might be software related but check temp first, especially since you say it has been running for weeks.

Also check to see if there have been any patches released, the earlier 2.4 kernels had a nasty bug that would cause the IDE controller to lock up under heavy use.

 

[Kai4Linux]

The room is hot, but it runs open case.. and according to teh syslog, the last thign happened at ~7:45 AM, which is actually pretty cool. Plus the server is never at heavy load as barely anyoen comes to teh sites or does anything..