Server becomes unresponsive every month, how to track down the problem

[GoWilkes]

Almost like clockwork, my server becomes unresponsive NEAR the first of each month. This has been happening since August; I wake up to see that the server is down, and the only way I can get it back up is to hard boot and let it do a scan for about 2 hours :-/

Today it went down at around 9:53am EST (based on the time of my last email).

Since it's happening at about the same time, I suspect a software update somewhere that's getting hung up.

Any suggestions on tracking down the exact source of the problem?

 

[cPRex]

Hey hey! How about this guy?

https://support.cpanel.net/hc/en-us/articles/360053501593-How-to-install-start-and-stop-the-sys-snap-script

It would need to be running before/during the time the issue happens, but it could help get you more details on the problem.

 

[GoWilkes]

Luckily I have it installed, but it wasn't running. I have it running now.

My server provider said:

You have a iptables rule that prevents it from restarting. We don't know which one but unless we flush them it doesn't come back.

I asked for clarification, but so far haven't had a reply. That "unless" confused me; did they mean that "unless we flush them it will come back"? Or, "if we don't flush them then it won't come back"?

I used iptables -S to list all of the rules, and there are only about 20 of them with the first one dated yesterday. If they expire after a day or two then that wouldn't explain why this is happening every 4 weeks! Unless the sysadmin flushed them and didn't tell me?