Re: Linux can't stay up for more than an hour?

Ben 'The Con Man' Kahn (xkahn@cybersites.com)
Thu, 6 May 1999 10:08:36 -0400 (EDT)


On Thu, 6 May 1999, Pavel Machek wrote:

> > I'm hammering a Linux machine by placing a high volume
> > (1,000,000 hits/day, 500,000 CGI hits/day) web site on it. The box can
> > certainly handle the traffic -- it's a dual Pentium II-400 machine running
> > on a network with plenty of bandwidth. Yet it dies constantly. I'll
> > provide as much information as I can in case someone can help point me in
> > the right direction.
> >
> > Kernel: 2.2.6 with SMP
> > Memory: 128MB
> > Disks: 9Gig local, 12Gig remote NFS from Irix 6.5.2 and locking on.
> > knfsd: 981204-1
> >
> > The machine dies so hard that the screen goes black and does
> > NOTHING. Nothing on the screen, no keyboard input is accepted, no network
> > access is accepted. When we recycle the machine, it usually won't restart
> > because of file corruption and we need to get someone to the box and run
> > fsck on it.
>
> Please try dual Pentium II-400 in _UP_ mode. Problem could go away and
> machine should be able to sustain that rate. If this does not help, go
> for 2.0.X UP temporarily.
>
> Pavel
> PS: If you are not able to sustain rate on UP, I do not think SMP will
> help.

We have single processor machines we tried moving the site onto.
These machines couldn't handle the load. We watched as the load climbed
to 80... 90... And then I was distracted for a few minutes and someone
told me the machine had crashed. I wasn't surprised -- it couldn't handle
it.

As for 2.0.x... We make heavy use of NFS. We need file locking
to work. So we can't use it.

Thanks for the advice though...

-Ben

------------------------------------ |\ _,,,--,,_ ,) ----------
Benjamin Kahn /,`.-'`' -, ;-;;'
(212) 924 - 2220 |,4- ) )-,_ ) /\
ben@cybersites.com --------------- '---''(_/--' (_/-' ---------------
Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.

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