5.4-RELEASE crashing

[Derek Ragona]

At 08:19 AM 1/9/2008, Robert Fitzpatrick wrote:
>I upgraded memory in a 5.4-RELEASE server from 1GB (2x512MB) to 4GB
>(4x1GB). I'm wondering if that can even be causing my problem since
>nothing went wrong for an entire week. One week later, the server just
>stops responding in the middle of the night, I can see the login prompt,
>but cannot type anything, no response to keyboard at all. Since the
>initial crash one week after the memory upgrade, it continues to do this
>every couple of days.
>
>The crash has happened during the 3-4am time span every time except at
>9pm once and then this morning at 9am. So, it seems it may be related to
>something building up over time. After reset and disk cleanup, I have
>examined the logs and cannot find anything in the message log, one entry
>shows my last login activity and the next entry is the start of boot
>info from the reset. The only thing I find in the logs erroneous is an
>NFS connection not responding, then alive again, but I unmounted and
>disabled the entry in fstab before it happened this morning.
>
>I'm just trying to figure out how to approach tracking down my crashing
>issue. Whether it somehow is related to the memory upgrade. The only
>thing to note about the memory upgrade is on boot, it will say that it
>is ignoring a small amount of memory over 4GB. Can someone suggest how
>to approach my problem?
>
>--
>Robert

You should verify a few things:  Make sure the memory you installed is 
correct for the motherboard AND the motherboard will handle that quantity 
of memory.

I would run the generic kernel if you can, to see that there are no custom 
kernel issues.

Run memtest or other diagnostic utility to check the memory you installed.

If all that doesn't help, check for cron jobs causing a problem, or perhaps 
run a periodic cron job to provide a log of what is running that you can 
refer to after a crash.

         -Derek

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