Server hangs and reboots automatically.... Very critical

[Adithyan]

Hi,

System Information
Manufacturer: HP
Product Name: ProLiant BL20p G3
Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS release 3 (Taroon Update 4)
2.4.21-27.ELsmp

The problem is that the server hangs and reboots automatically. it has Xeon 3.6Ghz CPU and 8GB RAM. The SWAP is 12GB.
There are no vital information available in the /var/log messages.
If anyone could help me with this case....??

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

I suspect hardware, which means probably have the blade replaced.

It could be running unsupported version of Linux, a newer update would be helpful if possible.

SEP

[Matti_Kurkela]

You're not entirely up to date with patches: I believe RHEL AS 3 is currently at Update 8.

But if the server used to work fine and has now started to have problems, the lack of patches might not be the cause of the problem.

If there is nothing useful in the logs located in the /var/log directory, you must look for alternate sources of information.

Do you have the HP hardware monitoring drivers and utilities installed? Which version? (to check, run "rpm -q hpasm")

If the "hpasm" package is installed, there might be a tool named "hpimlview" available. It can be used to display the hardware-level error log. If it shows Automatic System Restarts at the times the server's been hanging, it means the ASR has rebooted the server after the OS has been unresponsive for a while (10 minutes maybe?).

To get more clues, you might want to temporarily switch the ASR off, wait for the server to hang, and then see whether the server is displaying any information after the crash.

MK

[Adithyan]

Hi MK,

[root@cmfciohprap03 /]# rpm -q hpasm
hpasm-7.1.0-145

This is the version of tools installed. Where can i find the hardware error logs for the server

This problem is not new, Its a very long pending case where vendors are blaming each others.

Pls let me know what is ASR and how it can be turned off ?

[Emir Faisal]

Hi,
This is based on my experience in Compaq box. Not sure if it's the same in HP Blade.

You can use hplog or hpimlview to see IML logs. ASR can be disabled somewhere in the BIOS at boot up.

EF

[Adithyan]

Hi,

Please let me know how to operate with the hpimlview.

[Heironimus]

There isn't much to know about hpimlview. You enable hpasm (I assume you've already configured it and have it running) and run "hpimlview" as root. It gives you a text-based way to view the hardware log, use TAB and the arrow keys to move around.

[Andrea Rossi]

which applications run on the system?

[Jess Long]

If you have Tcl/Tk and Tix installed on the system, there is a utility named cpqimlview in /usr/sbin that will display the IML log. It does require the above packages to be installed though. Or, you can run hpimlview which is the same utility but for text terminals instead of GUI.

One thing you can do to determine if it is the hpasm package causing the hangs, is to stop it, let the system run a few days without it and see if the hangs/reboots continue.

Also, the hpasm version 7.1.0 is an old version for RHEL3U4. I would suggest updating hpasm to at least version 7.7.0. You should be able to download it from:
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/download/25258.html