Hi

i have a problem with my server. Sometimes it's just goes down. It seems it completely powers off. It doesn't shut down like it should. In the message log the messages suddenly stop and start with the boot messages. No shutdown messages appear.

After a reboot my apache log shows this
[Thu Dec 13 20:54:58 2001] [warn] pid file /usr/local/psa/apache/logs/httpd.pid overwritten -- Unclean shutdown of previous Apache run?

So it's not shut down properly. It almost seems someone is pulling the plug at random times. But i presume they don't do this. At the time of the crash/start of down time the serverload was low. The 15 min average was about 0.10.

Any suggestions what may cause this or were to look for a error or something. It's a brand new server. Ran fine for 2 weeks, and now two days in a row this happens. Someone at the colocenter has to reboot them. Yesterday that took 2 hours, today 5, absolutely unacceptable off course for my clients.

Thanks for any input.

It sounds like a possible hardware problem.

Obviously it's impossible to diagnose without knowing all the details... but I'd have whoever colos your server take a look at it.

That's what i thought too, but after a reboot all works fine again. And the serverload wasn't high(was running top at the moment), only at 0.10 or so. So i't probably not a overheating problem of the CPU.

It's an AMD 1.4 Ghz thunderbird processor, but with that load it should work fine. I'm gone replace the memory asap to make sure that's not the problem though.

What also came to mind is that the space above my server was still empty when i place the server. Maybe they did something with my powercable, so it's not plugged in enough now.
Well, i think i have to go and take a look tomorrow.

Bad power supplies aren't that common, but it's a possible cause of the server shutting down randomly as well...

Install some fan / temp monitoring software. This could help you identify if it is a heat problem.

Besides the hardware problem , could there be any program on your server that could cause the server to crash.
Have a great day :)

regards
amar

It's a standard redhat 7.2 with plesk install. All patches are applied. And i installed mod_gzip and python. It started after installing these two. And since apache also began having a lot of segmentation faults i have disabled mod_gzip for now.
Would it be possible th
at the server crashed because of python. i'm not really familiar with it, only a few customers requested it.

Python is generally very cool.
I like it quite a lot. I also like Zope. It is really cool.
I guess there could have been a compatibility problem with the installation or the installed dependencies for python.
Maybe you should reinstall python and see.

Have a great day :)

regards
amar