[mythtv-users] Backend machine seems to crash every few days

[Damian Surr]

On 08/10/2016 11:07, Damian wrote:
> On 03/10/2016 14:36, Damian wrote:
>> On 03/10/2016 14:34, Hika van den Hoven wrote:
>>> Hoi Damian,
>>>
>>> Monday, October 3, 2016, 12:31:55 PM, you wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 30/09/2016 16:24, Keith Pyle wrote:
>>>>> On 09/30/16 07:00, Damian wrote:
>>>>>> And if I need to go to the logs, how the hell do you guys get useful
>>>>>> information out of them? I may as well be looking at the code 
>>>>>> from the
>>>>>> Matrix for all of the sense they make to me!
>>>>> I'll grant that reading some of the log files can be challenging. 
>>>>> Even
>>>>> if you're not too familiar with them, a pattern recognition approach
>>>>> can be useful.
>>>>>
>>>>>  1. Look at a section of the logs covering a few hours when the 
>>>>> system
>>>>>     is behaving normally.  This will give you an idea of messages 
>>>>> that
>>>>>     your system routinely logs and that (probably) don't relate to 
>>>>> the
>>>>>     problem.
>>>>>  2. Look at the log messages made at the time of the problem and 
>>>>> for a
>>>>>     few minutes previously.  Disregard messages that you saw
>>>>>     frequently in step 1.  The remainder *may* be interesting and
>>>>>     related to the problem.
>>>>>  3. If you have multiple failures logged, see if the same messages
>>>>>     appear at the time of each failure.
>>>>>  4. Pay particular attention if you see messages at any time that use
>>>>>     "fail", "not responding", "error", "fault", "out of memory",
>>>>>     "oops", "panic", or similar worrisome phrases.
>>>>>
>>>>> Once you have some suspect messages, Google for hints on their 
>>>>> meaning
>>>>> and/or ask.
>>>>>
>>>>> Keith
>>>>>
>>>
>>>> Thanks everyone,
>>>
>>>> I have:
>>>
>>>> - Plugged in a monitor, keyboard and mouse
>>>> - Run memtest+ for about 6 hours
>>>> - Removed and replaced the 3 hard drives and checked connections
>>>> - Hoovered up the small amount of dust that was inside.
>>> One remark for next time. Never use a vacuum to clean a computer as it
>>> will create static electricity which can cause damage!
>>> Anyway succes!
>>
>> D'oh! I Didn't know that. Thanks Hika
> Quick update on this.
>
> Since I re-seated HD's and gave everything inside a squeeze in place 
> and a hoover, the system hasn't hung or lost LAN connection once.
>
> All seems good now.
>
> Thanks for the help,
> Damian

I spoke too soon! :-)

After days of working fine, it went down tonight while I was out. I got 
'the call', "The TV just keeps asking me what language ..."

Just got back, but it's 2am so I'm not about to start digging logs out. 
The keyboard, mouse and screen meant that I could shutdown properly 
rather than just holding the power button for 10 seconds.

Everything seemed responsive apart from the network connection being 
down. My VPN was disconnected, so was Dropbox and SpiderOak. And the 
shared network drives on the server were not accessible from my Windows 
machine.

Is there a way of getting to the bottom of this now that I've rebooted, 
or do I need to wait until it happens again?

I had already closed htop and iotop (if they are the right names .. it's 
late!), so don't know if they would have been useful.

Any tips?

Cheers,
Damian