Unable to start new processes

[Karl Larsen]

On 08/23/2010 09:31 PM, Chris MacDonald wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> You'll have to bear with me here; these are remote machines I don't
> have physical access to, but a co-worker does so I'll be relaying most
> requests for info or commands to be run through him when I can't
> access them remotely.
>
> I have fully-updated 10.04 installed on 12 different machines, all
> Intel D945GCLF2's with 1GB of RAM and Micron eUSB 4GB flash drives
> formatted ext3. After installing I would periodically run in to
> problems where the devices would stop allowing me to SSH in.
>
>  From my machine the problem manifests itself as an inability to
> request much in the way of data from the remote machine, for instance,
> when I SSH in (ssh -v) it opens a connection, attempts to negotiate a
> session (I get a response from the remote machine), but then promptly
> closes the connection remotely before I get prompted for a password.
> Likewise for the running instance of Tomcat, I'll connect to the http
> port, it will accept my connection, but before I get anything back it
> closes the connection on me. I can ping the remote machine, it shows
> ports as open, I just can't seem to get any data.
>
>  From what I understand on the remote side of things, you can no longer
> get any useful information from the machine. Every command the user
> types in returns immediately to a new bash prompt and as a result,
> issuing the 'reboot' command does nothing, as if it can no longer
> start any new processes. This is making troubleshooting *extremely*
> difficult as I can't figure out a way to get anything from the machine
> while it's on. From what I can tell though, processes that are already
> running remain running, for instance if I get someone to power-cycle
> the machine, I can log in and initiate a VPN connection back to my
> local machine, this remains active even if I can no longer SSH in to
> the remote machine. Another example, snmp traps continue to be sent
> periodically from the remote machine to my desktop (contain the system
> uptime and sensor data from a serial-connected device).
>
> The problem manifests itself periodically, I can't seem to establish a
> pattern to it, but it happens to all of them eventually. If I don't
> get someone to power-cycle the downed units, inside of two or three
> days the majority (if not all) are unresponsive. I really have no idea
> what the problem is here, nor how I might go about troubleshooting it
> so I'm open to suggestions as to how to proceed.
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Chris
>
>    
         It appears you have a problem with ssh. Please give details on 
how you have set up ssh. You should have zero problems using Tomcat on 
the remote machine.

73 Karl


-- 

	Karl F. Larsen, AKA K5DI
	Linux User
	#450462   http://counter.li.org.
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