tom11011

Member
Apr 19, 2009
21
0
51
Like clockwork, about every 2 or 3 days now my cpanel server keeps freezing up. The symptoms are always the same.

When the server freezes, you can ping it. But, you cannot get a local console screen or a ssh console. The server does not serve up any webpages. The last thing to be recorded on the console is swap space is filled up 100%. Also, remote tools indicate cpu is 100% during the freeze up.

Can anyone assist me in troubleshooting this?
 

tom11011

Member
Apr 19, 2009
21
0
51
Hi, it is the latest cPanel 11.24.4-S36281 - WHM 11.24.2 - X 3.9

running on centos 5.3 inside of an esx server. The other virtual machines are unaffected.

Memory is 2gigs dedicated and cpu is a single quad core intel 2.0 ghz cpu.

esx server is configured with 6-144 gig drives in a raid 5. 10k rpm.
 

cPanelDavidG

Technical Product Specialist
Nov 29, 2006
11,212
13
313
Houston, TX
cPanel Access Level
Root Administrator
It may be useful to monitor what processes are running on the server so you can determine what is causing the server to use 100% of available CPU and thus hang.
 

eth00

Well-Known Member
PartnerNOC
Mar 30, 2003
721
1
168
NC
cPanel Access Level
Root Administrator
I would leave a top opened up sorted by M (memory) and see where all the swap is. Yes if you fill up all of the swap it is very easy to kill a machine.

To fix it, aside from fixing the software problem, you could assign more RAM, or make the swap larger by adding another partition OR mounting a loop file as swap.
 

PlatinumServerM

Well-Known Member
PartnerNOC
Jul 10, 2005
400
3
168
New Jersey, USA
cPanel Access Level
Root Administrator
Try setting up a snapshot log to capture the load/swap/memory/processes every minute and then you can check it after the reboot to see what was going on immediately before the reboot.
 

nicks

Registered
Jun 18, 2009
1
0
51
Same problem

FreeBSD 7.1 on ESX 3.5

10ghz and 4 gigs of ram for this freebsd.

What I notice is that the server is bassicly frozen. even the clock freezes so when it unfreezes the time is wrong.

I have a top open when it happens and it doesnt update until it unfreezes and nothing shows out of the normal other than people trying to download their emails.

I dont know if the other poster has to reboot but I do not. it lasts for about 5 mins.