News Group Posts

rebooting unix boxes

From: bv@wjv.com (Bill Vermillion)
Subject: Re: SCO Login Problems
References: <NEBBLMPLNKHMEHJGNPIHEEAHFNAA.bill@mwdental.com>
<3f833b43.5890940@nntp> 
Date: Wed, 08 Oct 2003 02:55:02 GMT

In article <3f833b43.5890940@nntp>, Peter McGill <pamcgill@rogers.com> wrote:
>On Tue, 7 Oct 2003 20:07:43 GMT, Bill Andersen <bill@mwdental.com>
>wrote:
>
>>Peter wrote:
>>> Do you need 100% up time?
>>> Are you running a web server or something else?

>>> I am running a box which just requires login during office
>>> hours. What I do is schedule it to reboot every night.

>>Peter,

>>Not that this may not work as a temporary solution, but if it
>>were me, I'd rather figure out WHY the login gets slow and fix
>>THAT problem. I don't have an answer for "bernie" other than to
>>keep looking for the problem. This "fix" will work in the short
>>run, but even if you don't need 100% uptime, something isn't
>>right on your box or the login wouldn't continue to get slower.
>>And what other problems will get fixed when you figure out the
>>cause of this one? Some you may not even know about...

>>Peter, you haven't rubbed up against a Windows box lately have
>>you? Wanting to reboot every night looks like a symptom of the
>>Windows Viri <grin>

>
>True Fixing the cause of the problem is best.

>My system doesn't have a specific problem that requires it to
>reboot.

>It's just been my experience, that every computer and every
>operating system, wether unix, windows, or whatever needs to be
>rebooted every once in a while. Even unix gets dead processes
>stuck in memory that there is no other way to get rid of.
>Programs have memory leaks, etc... If you don't have a regular
>reboot schedule then eventually the problems stack up and cause
>noticable side effects, even bringing down the whole server.
>True unix is better at managing these problems than other
>operating systems, but it is not immune.

I've never noticed that on the servers I run - they just keep
running and running.

I do make it a point to do a complete OS upgrade every two years
however and that requires a reboot. Around the first of the year I
rebuilt the entire OS on the webserver and it's been up for 245
days now - while before I restarted it [actually moved to a new
machine that was indentical except for a much larger hard drive]
it was at about 780 days.   It just never falters, hicups or slows
down.  It peaks in the spring running about 80-90K hits/day.
Comes up on the top of the Google sites because of a stong domain name,
so that helps the traffic.

The mail machine has shown a bit of slowness in bursts lately but
that because of the huge amount of spam coming in - and during
those peaks it's getting about 10/second - and rejecting about 75%
of them :-)

A machine I remotely maintain in D.C. just was rebooted two week
ago after running for 750+days.  They lost power during the big
storm and it is not in a colo.

I've stopped having clients reboot their SCO systems since the
lbolt problem was fixed.  I did notice a flaw in the time on an
OSR 5.0.5 - in that about after 14 months the uptime in w/who went
away.  Totally blank.

In the past 5+ years the OSes have become very stable from my POV.
Maybe you have hardware problems.

I've never had one of these machine just stop working.  Fairly
plain machines - the servers are running iNTEL mobos with some
Tyans - the OSR5 are most often ASUS.

>Since our severs don't need to be up all day, I just get ahead
>of the problem and reboot frequently. Simple but effective.

Well mine need to be up all the time but never need to be rebooted.
The one exception was a dedicated server that unexplicably lost
one of the NIC ports on the mobo.  So that one required a hands
on visit and a reboot.

Bill

-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com

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