Re: Any IBM x226 Users?

[Benjamin Franz <snowhare nihongo org>]

On Thu, 16 Dec 2004, Barry L. Kline wrote:

> I got a call from a colleague who is having troubles with his IBM x226
> (8648-2BU) server and RHEL 3.  The box has one processor (with
> hyperthreading), 1.5 GB of RAM, and the IBM ServerRAID controller with 72Gb
> SCSI drives in a RAID 1 configuration.  He uses this box primarily as a Samba
> PDC, DHCP server and intranet DNS server.
>
> The problem is that the machine occasionally appears to lock up.  Not always a
> solid lockup, though.  The most recent occurance was interesting... the owner
> of said box has his XP laptop connect to four different Samba shares.  He
> noticed the problem when attempting to access one of the shares -- three were
> not connected but one was.

Sounds like a system with runaway I/O load. You didn't say what the system 
load was, so that is a stab in the dark. Try 'top' next time and see what 
is loading the system down.

The U3 kernel is apt to have kswapd go runaway. I've had to hold our 
deployed kernel version at 2.4.21-15.0.4 to keep it from tanking boxes. 
The U3 kernel really has been completely unusable for production use.

If he is running U3, have him try downgrading the kernel to 2.4.21-15.0.4 
(or alternatively installing the beta kernel from U4.

--
Benjamin Franz

"All right, where is the answer? The battle of wits has begun.
It ends when you click and we both serve pages - and find out who is right,
and who is slashdotted." - David Brandt