[Novalug] need help: server freezing / locking up

[Richard Ertel]

update on my troubleshooting. the last time i tried building the MD
RAID-1 array on the two 1.0 TB drives, it got about 50% complete and
froze. so i took those 2 drives out and started testing them on a
windows box with WD's diagnostic tools. tested one of them, reported
some bad blocks, and repaired them. i have just started testing the
2nd.

i went ahead and tried the 1.5 TB drives in place of the 1.0 TB
drives, making an MD RAID-1 array. took about 5 hours, but it
successfully built, on the same SATA channel and same cables.

so... i'm hoping that the issue is just some bad blocks and that when
i try building the array with the 1.0 TB drives again tomorrow, that
it will work, and i'll be back in business.

note: i really don't like how ubuntu freezes the whole machine when it
(apparently) encounters bad blocks or something when building a raid
array on non-system drives. surely this is the kind of thing that
would ideally be avoided?

On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 17:52, Ed James <edward.james at gmail.com> wrote:
> Would it help to run "top" until it locks and see if anything odd jumps off
> the screen?   I'm thinking perhaps something grabbing 100% CPU, "too
> much" memory, fantastic IO count...
>
> I'm not sure what "locking up" means here.  I've seen non-responsive
> systems due to thrashing, unreal numbers of child processes spun
> off, etc, which meant the system wasn't really locked, but just
> responding in geological time.
>
> Ed James
>
> On 10/22/09, Richard Ertel <richard.ertel at gmail.com> wrote:
>> *sigh*
>>
>> ok, so my fileserver is locking up. seems to always happen, anywhere
>> from 1 minute to 4 hours after booting.  if i disconnect all four SATA
>> hard drives (all for storage) and just have the boot drive (PATA)
>> connected, it seems to stay up indefinitely.
>>
>> i've ran the SATA drives that i thought were problematic through
>> Seagate's SeaTools, and they passed all tests.
>>
>> i've looked through /var/log/messages for entries when the lockup
>> occurred, but nothing looks odd (to me, what do i know?)
>>
>> can anyone tell me where to start troubleshooting to get to the bottom of
>> this?
>>
>> Ubuntu Server 8.04.3, all updates as of this morning.
>>
>> thanks!
>> _______________________________________________
>> Novalug mailing list
>> Novalug at calypso.tux.org
>> http://calypso.tux.org/mailman/listinfo/novalug
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Novalug mailing list
> Novalug at calypso.tux.org
> http://calypso.tux.org/mailman/listinfo/novalug
>