[TriLUG] help understanding /var/log/messages

[Jeremy P]

On Wed, 16 Jan 2002, Geoff Purdy wrote:

> I've got a Dell PowerEdge 2450 server running RHL7.1 which has suddenly (as
> of today) started locking up.  The server will be running normally, then
> without warning ssh connections to it will freeze and as does X display on
> the box itself.  Strangely, it will respond to pings, but not HTTP requests,
> ssh, ftp, nfs, or any other service I have running.

I've heard that locked/hung box will sometimes respond to ping but nothing
else because some Ethernet cards implment the ICMP Echo Request (ping) on
the card itself.  I think this depends on the card and driver; sometimes
ping is handled by the Linux kernel.
 
> The box will restart if power-cycled (yuck) but subsequently locks up again.
> I suspect it may be related to the mouse driver / KVM switch as this has
> caused annoyances (but not crashes) in the past.  My temporary fix has been
> to set the server to boot into runlevel 3 (w/ networking but w/o X) and it's
> running OK now.

I don't know what's causing your crashes, but it's generally considered a
BAD IDEA (tm) to run X on the console of a network server.  If you want to
use X applications (such as Red Hat configuration tools, etc), you should
ssh into the box from somewhere else.  As long as you have X forwarding
enabled in ssh, and you use "su" to switch to root (not "su -") you
shouldn't have any trouble getting X apps to automatically display on your
workstation.

Regards,
Jeremy