Server mysteriously locking up

[Lowell Gilbert]

"Chris" <bsdnewbie at coolarrow.com> writes:

> Yesterday and today (within minutes after midnight) my 5.2.1 server locked up... meaning that I cannot SSH into it, or ping it, etc, but it is still running. This has never happened before in the past 1.5 years, and I cannot think of any changes made (other than web page edits) that have taken place in the past few days. The only other exception might have been a 1 or 2 portupgrades, but I don't think there were any that day. Further, there is very little in the logs that seems to help me in any way.
> 
> For yesterday's lockup, /var/log/messages had these few entries right about the time it happened:
> 
> Jul 19 00:01:17 server handle_workitem_freeblocks: block count
> Jul 19 00:01:24 server handle_workitem_freeblocks: block count
> Jul 19 00:07:38 server handle_workitem_freeblocks: block count
> 
> 
> Jul 19 21:45:31 (syslog entry) is the last entry before this last lockup
> 
> I did, however, get a cron job email at midnight:
> 
> Jul 20 00:00:01 - 	newsyslog: can't notify daemon, pid 666: No such process
> 				newsyslog: log /var/log/maillog.0 not compressed because daemon(s) not notified
> 
> 
> I did find a ruby18.core file in my root directory, and now notice that things like portupgrade, portsdb, and pkg_version spew a bunch of errors (they depend on ruby?) So I visit /usr/ports/lang/ruby18 to re-install the port, and I get:
> 
> server# make
> "/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk", line 1: Malformed conditional (${_TMLINKS:M/usr/local*}x != x)
> "/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk", line 4: Malformed conditional (${_TMLINKS:N/usr/local*}x != x)
> "/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk", line 5: warning: duplicate script for target ".if" ignored
> "/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk", line 5: warning: duplicate script for target "x" ignored
> "/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk", line 6: warning: duplicate script for target ".if" ignored
> "/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk", line 6: warning: duplicate script for target "x" ignored
> "/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk", line 7: warning: duplicate script for target ".if" ignored
> "/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk", line 7: warning: duplicate script for target "x" ignored
> "/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk", line 9: warning: duplicate script for target ".if" ignored
> "/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk", line 9: warning: duplicate script for target "x" ignored
> "/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk", line 4860: warning: duplicate script for target ".if" ignored
> "/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk", line 4860: warning: duplicate script for target "x" ignored
> "/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk", line 4865: warning: duplicate script for target ".if" ignored
> "/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk", line 4865: warning: duplicate script for target "x" ignored
> "/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk", line 4866: warning: duplicate script for target ".if" ignored
> "/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk", line 4866: warning: duplicate script for target "x" ignored
> "/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk", line 4875: warning: duplicate script for target ".if" ignored
> "/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk", line 4875: warning: duplicate script for target "x" ignored
> "/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk", line 4877: warning: duplicate script for target ".if" ignored
> "/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk", line 4877: warning: duplicate script for target "x" ignored
> "/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk", line 4879: if-less endif
> "/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk", line 4879: Need an operator
> "/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk", line 5234: if-less endif
> "/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk", line 5234: Need an operator
> make: fatal errors encountered -- cannot continue
> 
> Well, I'm stuck ...

Unfortunately, I would guess that you have suffered some disk
corruption.  Would it be possible for you to just update the system?
After all, 5.2.1 wasn't suggested for production use anyway...