MailScanner lock up Problem

[Paul Kelly :: Blacknight Solutions]

Glenn Steen wrote:
> On 07/09/2007, Paul Kelly :: Blacknight Solutions <paul at blacknight.ie> wrote:
>> Steve Freegard wrote:
>>
>>> By the looks of the strace - my gut tells me that the problem is related
>>> to syslog.  Hopefully that might point you in the right direction.
>>>
>>> Also - make sure that 'nscd' isn't running as that's caused me no end of
>>> trouble in the past with similar symptoms.
>> Syslog you say. Hmmmm. No joy on that front. Also don't have nscd enabled.
>>
>> Paul
> 
> The obvious questions are: What did you change, prior to the problems
> starting? Do you monitor your HW with something like SMART
> capabilities etc? Anything like that indicating a failing drive? How a
> bout controller/RAM/etc etc?
> 
> Unfortunately, SW have to run on HW... and HW can fail in the most ...
> interesting... ways:-)
> 

Turns out it was a rather interesting file system issue. I had to visit
the machine in the data centre in the wee hours of Saturday morning
(damn I hate being on-call) and perform open heart surgery on the file
systems.

We're doing a mix of Raid 1 + LVM on top of it and a power cycle of the
machine during the previous few days caused some oddness with /var. This
I believe was causing MS to die silently.

It's been "ok" since. /me touches wood

-- 
Paul Kelly
Technical Director
Blacknight Internet Solutions ltd
Hosting, Colocation, Dedicated servers
IP Transit Services
Lo-call: 1850 929 929
DDI: 059 9183091

e-mail: paul at blacknight.ie
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Blacknight Internet Solutions Ltd,
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Graiguecullen,
Carlow,
Ireland

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