Most services are failing repeatedly (notably chkservd)

[UmbraHosting]

Hey everyone!

I have been looking through the log files most of the day today and I can't find anything that would cause this. I recently acquired a VPS so that I can test out RoR hosting. The VPS has CentOS and cPanel/WHM is installed:

WHM 11.15.0 cPanel 11.18.3-R21703
CENTOS Enterprise 4.6 i686 on virtuozzo - WHM X v3.1.0

I have ~40 *very* low traffic domains hosted on the server and none are currently running RoR. I have logged in numerous times today and found this:

root@jenkins [~]# ps aux |grep exim
root 19950 0.0 0.0 1664 476 pts/0 S+ 16:48 0:00 grep exim
root@jenkins [~]# ps aux |grep cppop
root 20053 0.0 0.0 1668 480 pts/0 S+ 16:48 0:00 grep cppop
root@jenkins [~]# w
16:48:29 up 10 days, 17:44, 1 user, load average: 0.06, 0.02, 0.00
USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT
root pts/0 c-98-223-89-85.h 16:47 0.00s 0.06s 0.00s w
root@jenkins [~]# /etc/init.d/chkservd restart
Stopping chkservd: [FAILED]
Starting chkservd: [ OK ]

The services that are repeatedly failing are:

named
imap
ftpd
eximstats
exim
cpsrvd
antirelayd
chkservd

Apache has been online for 4 days however and the server as been online 10 days. I searched through the forums but didn't see anything that would lead me down the right path, does anyone know where I should start?

Thanks!
Tom

[nyjimbo]

First thing I would check is how much actual ram you have, also what does "top" show, how much swapping/paging going on. Dont assume you have enough ram, make sure you can see how much is free and if anything in the logs mention memory issues.

Might also check to see if you are running out of space on any drives, we had a drive run out of space on one partition and different tasks would die.

[UmbraHosting]

First, thank you for taking the time to reply!

Second, I asked my host if they recommend adding more RAM to the VPS, but they did not really answer the question. Here's what top and my disk space look like:

root@jenkins [~]# top
top - 21:34:30 up 10 days, 22:30, 2 users, load average: 0.38, 0.54, 0.31
Tasks: 56 total, 1 running, 55 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.4% us, 0.3% sy, 0.0% ni, 99.3% id, 0.0% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.0% si
Mem: 1048576k total, 161936k used, 886640k free, 0k buffers
Swap: 0k total, 0k used, 0k free, 0k cached

root@jenkins [~]# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/vzfs 20G 7.3G 13G 37% /
simfs 20G 7.3G 13G 37% /tmp
simfs 20G 7.3G 13G 37% /var/tmp

It doesn't seem to be using too much memory and disk space is not an issue. I thought it might have been CSF+LFD but I disabled them yesterday and it is still happening (

[nyjimbo]

Ok, is that the top with everything running and working ok or with things dead?.

I ask because it shows "Tasks: 56 total" which is very little, compared to what a normal *nix would have when you consider all the normal system tasks, plus all the python, courier, apache, stunnel, etc. I just have this feeling that you see alot of free ram because nothing is running. Can you do a "ps ax" and see if you have normal jobs like apache, courier, etc actually up?

[UmbraHosting]

Surprisingly, the top is with all of the services up and running. I was sure CSF+LFD were disabled but LFD was still running on the server. I stopped it right after your post last night and I haven't experienced any further issues, so I think LFD was killing off the processes. Here is the list that it wasn't supposed to kill:

exe:/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/bin/english/webalizer
exe:/usr/lib/courier-imap/bin/pop3d
exe:/usr/lib/courier-imap/bin/imapd
exe:/usr/sbin/pure-ftpd
exe:/usr/local/cpanel/cpsrvd
exe:/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/bin/imapd
exe:/usr/local/apache/bin/httpd
exe:/usr/local/cpanel/bin/cppop
exe:/usr/sbin/sshd
exe:/usr/sbin/proftpd
exe:/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/bin/php
exe:/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/bin/analog
exe:/usr/local/urchin/bin/urchinwebd
exe:/usr/local/cpanel/cpsrvd-ssl
exe:/usr/bin/spamc
exe:/usr/local/cpanel/bin/cppop-ssl
exe:/usr/local/apache1/bin/httpd
exe:/usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd
exe:/usr/local/cpanel/bin/logrunner
exe:/usr/local/cpanel/cpdavd
exe:/usr/local/cpanel/bin/cpwrap
user:umbra
exe:/usr/libexec/gam_server

Named, chkservd, antirelayd, eximstats, exim, etc. are not in that list I did a locate on those functions on the server but do not know what to include in the lfd list so that it doesn't kill the *good* processes.

[seby]

Thanks for sharing. I have also same issue and solved by restarted lfd and Cpanel upgarde.