Linux problem

[Peter Korsten]

Hi Jay,

> How do you know these things?  Full details please.

I'll have a look where to find it. A kernel dump, or something like that.

> Its a bit shallow to expect a solution to this highly frustrating  
> problem without at least a few *.log files to get a better, bigger  
> picture of whats going on .. Got any weird modules loaded?  Lots of  
> linux-based ISP's load their own crap in to monitor your activities,  
> etc.  Whats the RAM like?  Whats the RAM usage like?  What sort of  
> hardware is in it?  Lots of things could be causing a kernel panic -  
> most likely its either really, a bad hardware setup, some bogus  
> module, or something not quite well-configured ..

Yeah, well, there is indeed a lot of this ISP crap installed.

It has 2 GB of RAM, a little over half of which is in use at the moment 
(22:15 on a Sunday evening). The hardware is a Socket 754 AMD Sempron at 
2 GHz. Disc is an 80 GB WD EIDE (according to dmesg), about half full.

I'm pretty sure it's a bogus library or something. The thing is, we 
can't easily take it down for a day to have a look at it. Because if 
something f***s up big time, the ISP charges an arm and a leg to 
re-install it. And we get unhappy users, even though it's all voluntary 
and based on donations.

That's why I would install Solaris: I know the system. I know very 
little about Linux, apart from the common ground it has with other 
Unices. What also doesn't help is that the owner of the system is not a 
Unix/Linux expert. He still thinks that Exim hangs the system and has 
been looking for an upgrade, even though I told him dozens of times it 
must be a library. I used some strong words today; perhaps he 
understands it now. :)

I'll send you the links to log files in a separate e-mail. They weren't 
enough for me to figure out what was going on.

As for MySQL, that's a separate issue, or perhaps it isn't, but the 
first priority for us would be to get rid of the kernel panics.

Thanks,

- Peter