system crash

[Mark Vollmers]

Over the weekend, our UNIX server crashed. Acutally, only part of it crashed (the main folder in the / directory that all of our files are in). I shut the server down and restarted it and everything seems fine. Is there a way to see what happened or why it crashed (like a error file or something)? I havn't had any problems for half a year and am curious as to what caused it so I can prevent it if possible.

[Dan Hetzel]

Hi Mark,

A good starting point should be to have a look at /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log

The file /etc/rc.log should point the problem(s), if any, during system restart.

Best regards,

Dan

[Eileen Millen]

/var/adm/shutdownlog
/var/adm/syslog/syslog.log might show the cause

[Victor BERRIDGE]

you may also have had a /var full, look for the reason if it were the case, it could be a problem with sendmail (/var/spool/mqueue), or hardware problems being logged into /var/stm,have you a file with the timestamp of your crash in /var/tombstones?

Good luck
Victor

[Stefan Farrelly]

I think you need to elaborate on what you mean by a partial crash;
"(the main folder in the / directory that all of our files are in)"

Looking in all the usual places for system crash messages (syslog, diagnostics, tombstones) only apply to full server (HP-UX or hardware) crashes, not partial crashes.

[Mark Vollmers]

for clarification, we have two folders in the / directory that we share to NT workstations through DiskAccess software (NFS sharing). The one, which holds all of our data and programs, is /home. The other, which we use for ftp tranfers, is /download. Home crashed, but download was okay and accessable, for whatever reason.