[WBEL-users] monitoring strange behavior help

[Benjamin Smith]

On Friday 04 March 2005 05:48, Erick Perez wrote:
> searching the logs reveal nothing strange (at least for me, but im no 
genious)

Sounds like a hardware issue - stuff like this is almost *NEVER* software. 

As a first step: Check to make sure all your fans (esp. CPU) are good and spin 
at full speed when powered up, then unplug and reconnect all cables and 
chips.  (CPU, RAM, etc) Often it can be a flaky cable or socket... Also, plug 
the server into a UPS to eliminate flaky power, see if that improves things. 
A cheapie 45-minute, $75 one is worlds better than none at all. 

> Do you know of some script or program that can alert me when unusual
> conditions begin to happen in the server? like cpu increase? ram
> increase? swap?
> some process eating up resources?

The grand-daddy of them all? Big Brother. It's one of my best friends! It 
polls all my servers every 5 minutes and sends alerts to my cell phone when 
anything goes wrong... even when a needed process dies! http://www.bb4.org

IMHO, You aren't serious about your stuff unless you are using a tool like 
this! Serious peace of mind, and customers love it when you catch something 
and call before they even notice it's not working... 

> most importat is any way to set up some system wide "nice" level so
> the apps do not eat up the CPU/RAM, so when the condition happens
> again, I will at least have the chance to get in and take a look?

See above re: hardware. If you think it'd help, I'd suggest writing a quick 
script to write the output of top repeatedly to a file. EG: 

#! /bin/sh 
while [ true ] ; do
 top -n1 > /path/to/log/file.txt 
 sleep 5; # minimize performance beatings
  # set to whatever you like in seconds. 
 done; 

> Many thanks in advance
> -- 
> 
> -------------------------------------------
> Erick Perez
> Linux User 376588
> http://counter.li.org/  (Get counted!!!)
> Panama, Republic of Panama
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> 

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