Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Hosting Security and Technology : Server Keeps Dying

[EzCool]

The server is a duron 1 ghz running redhat 7.3, and is dying in the middle of a gzip -d function to unzip a 2 GB backup. This is the top output:

1:11pm up 8:18, 2 users, load average: 3.81, 1.77, 0.68
36 processes: 33 sleeping, 3 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: 17.8% user, 33.8% system, 0.0% nice, 48.4% idle
Mem: 247492K av, 244228K used, 3264K free, 0K shrd, 51088K buff
Swap: 2096472K av, 0K used, 2096472K free 172300K cached

PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM TIME COMMAND
1790 root 20 0 556 556 392 R 49.5 0.2 1:03 gzip
12 root 15 0 0 0 0 DW 0.5 0.0 0:00 kjournald
5 root 15 0 0 0 0 SW 0.3 0.0 0:01 kswapd
6 root 15 0 0 0 0 DW 0.3 0.0 0:00 bdflush
1698 root 15 0 1896 1896 1604 R 0.1 0.7 0:00 sshd
1 root 15 0 476 476 420 S 0.0 0.1 0:05 init
2 root 15 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 keventd
3 root 15 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 kapmd
4 root 34 19 0 0 0 SWN 0.0 0.0 0:00 ksoftirqd_CPU0
7 root 15 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 kupdated
8 root 25 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 mdrecoveryd
133 root 15 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 kjournald
469 root 15 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 eth0
568 root 15 0 540 540 452 S 0.0 0.2 0:00 syslogd
573 root 15 0 440 440 380 S 0.0 0.1 0:00 klogd
593 rpc 16 0 536 536 456 S 0.0 0.2 0:00 portmap
621 rpcuser 18 0 704 704 608 S 0.0 0.2 0:00 rpc.statd


Does anyone know what it could be?

[EzCool]

Perhaps a staggered unzipping process would help? It is only 2 gigabytes though, and every other server I've worked with has been fine.

Is this a problem with the default kernal maybe? It's just a thought, and I think I'd better ask before I try recompiling kernals.

[insiderhosting]

EzCool,
Instead of viewing top check your error_logs ans see what they say.

-Steven

[EzCool]

Nothing strange in the logs.

The server will be sitting there doing nothing, and load will just climb, without any cpu or RAM usage.

Could this be a faulty hard drive? My host told me only software would do this, but I'm unsure.

[bitel.biz]

What kernel are you runing? Kernel 2.2 has maximum file size limit of 2 GB. Kernel 2.4 has limit of 4 TB. If you are runing on 2.2 then yes, you should recompile new 2.4 kernel.

If you have 2.4, is the file just a .gz or .tar.gz (.tgz) file? Do you have enough space on the partition you are trying to decompress? Quotas enabled?

You can test the file and see if you get any error messages. Maybe the file is corrupted. Use gzip -t file.gz
You can try the --force option, gzip -df file.gz
You can also try gunzip file.gz I'm not sure if that differ from gzip -d but give it a try.