Topic: Redhat locked up

[hans]

Had to run to the data center today to reboot a server. I was expecting the thing to be dead but when I arrived everything looked good. Tried accessing the console and nothing. No obvious issues or warning lights on the server but it was non-responsive. Tried network access and the box just wasn't responding.
I'm now trying to figure out what happened but I don't know what to look for. From the cron logs I can see the last hour it was OK but I have no idea what might have knocked it out. The whole box has redundant just about everything so I'm worried maybe it's a bad RAM chip or motherboard issue that could resurface.

Anyone every troubleshoot a locked up Linux before? Most of the software on the box is pretty well established but we are running some "new" software from a vendor that the box is being used by for demos (not all that frequently though).

[Steve]

Unless one of those new demos was in use at the time of the crash, i would think it locked due to a hardware access issue.

[hans]

Never figured it out. We cross checked the time of the lock up with activity and couldn't find anything. For now the box seems to be fine, I'm looking into how to add some hardware monitoring tools to see if I can catch something if it ever happens again, but it'll be run forever now.