tool to determine server stability issues

[Zbigniew Szalbot]

Hi there,

> I am not sure if it was upgrade to perl 5.8.9 which started my
> problem, but anyway I am spotting a strange server behaviour. It will

I am continuing my searches for the problem and just have been able to
find out this:
USER       PID %CPU %MEM   VSZ   RSS  TT  STAT STARTED      TIME COMMAND
www      44888 100.0  0.2  5976  3644  ??  R    11:46AM   2:35.18
/usr/sbin/httpd (perl5.8.9)
root        14 96.3  0.0     0     8  ??  RL   Fri08AM 7161:12.89 [idle: cpu0]
www      44887 96.3  0.2  5976  3644  ??  R    11:46AM   2:34.58
/usr/sbin/httpd (perl5.8.9)

The process dies as soon as it ends. But this is strange:

$ l /usr/sbin/httpd
ls: /usr/sbin/httpd: No such file or directory

So it looks like these two processes made the machine unresponsive and
generated a lot of outgoing traffic. However, the file does not exist.
Any hint as to how to debug it further? I am determined to find the
culprit.

Thanks!

-- 
Zbigniew Szalbot
www.slowo.pl
www.fairtrade.net.pl