Topic: Server Stops

[Tim]

Hi all,

My e-smith server/gateway is stopping all services for no apparent reason.  Just this morning the server haults completly.  It drops all network activity, the console goes black, no video signal.  I am not able to do a remote reboot.  I have to reset the server manually.  It's happened four times in the past two hours.

I have swapped out memory but that didn't seem to help.

Could it be a bad network card?

--Tim

[Dan Brown]

Sounds like possibly flaky hardware of some description.  Is there anything in the system logs which would indicate what's happening?

[Tim]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for your response!

I agree.  What is the path to get to those logs?

--Tim

[Dan Brown]

/var/log/messages is your friend.  grep and tail are even better friends.

[Tim]

Hi Dan,

Thanks again for your help. I can get to the file location.  How do I read it?  I tried the TAIL command and it only showed me the log for the most recent boot.  

My UNIX is VERY rusty.

Thanks!
--Tim

[Des Dougan]

You can pass the number of lines you want to view as a parameter of tail and pipe it through more to paginate it (e.g. tail -250 /var/log/messages | more) or, if you want to view the whole file try "more /var/log/messages".

HTH,

Des Dougan

[Tim]

Thanks Des,

I'll give it a try.

--Tim