Gateway stops responding

Arny · n00b Joined: 13 Oct 2004 Posts: 57

I run a Gentoo gateway system that firewalls and serves my internal network, and over the last few days it has started to suddenly stop responding completely. I can't access it via ssh (my usual method) and there is no response when I hook up a monitor and keyboard the only solution thus far is a hard reboot, and then it just seems to be a matter of time before it stops responding again.

I've had a bit of a look through the logs but I can't find anything that jumps out at me as being a problem, however I'm certainly no expert on this stuff. Can anybody give me some suggestions on what I can try looking at to find the source of the problem?

skunk · Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2005 2:00 am Post subject:

just leave the monitor attached and wait until it hangs again so you can see if the kernel panics and any critical error that doesn't make into the syslog

Arny · n00b Joined: 13 Oct 2004 Posts: 57

Thanks, I'll give that a go when I have a chance, but are there any other suggestions in the meantime? Any specific logs I could check through quickly or anything like that? Thanks guys.

Arny · n00b Joined: 13 Oct 2004 Posts: 57

In an effort to get more information on my problem I've merged syslog-ng, replacing metalog which didn't seem to be recording everything. However, when I try and start it, I get this:

skunk · Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2005 4:23 pm Post subject:

try starting syslog-ng directly (not from the init script) to get an idea on what's wrong
else, from the syslog-ng man page:

chips2k · n00b Joined: 20 Oct 2004 Posts: 17

Hi Arny,

I'm having kind of the same problem.

Like you I have a comp setup as a firewall and some other bits that serve my internal network. However, normally if I hook up a monitor and keyboard and can see the login prompt but I am unable to type anything. But today I am able to type in my username but when I press enter, it just sits there. Interestingly, I am able to still access the Internet from my other computers with no problems.

chips2k

Arny · n00b Joined: 13 Oct 2004 Posts: 57

Ok I got syslog-ng going but I'm none the wiser despite more comprehensive logs. I also managed to hook up a monitor and see what happened; when the system stopped responding, the monitor stopped receiving a signal. There were no messages about kernel panics or anything like that. I'm totally lost, any other ideas?

skunk · Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 9:36 am Post subject:

i think you are experiencing hardware problems (overheating?)
you can try to boot the ultimate boot cd and execute some cpu intensive tests/benchmarks just to be sure that the problem is hardware related

Arny · n00b Joined: 13 Oct 2004 Posts: 57

Yeah, I was afraid of that I doubt it's overheating because it's pretty old hardware, and before this started happening it would be on 24/7 for months on end. Plus it's winter here

Still, I guess it gives me a decent excuse to put together a new server and make use of that old Athlon XP 1800+ that's sitting out in the garage

Thanks for your help, I guess it was just this system's time, hehe