Re: Generate NMI to crash a hung system...

In comp.os.linux.setup big_sid <lee.harris@xxxxxxx>:

Hello,

We have a numbr of Intel ProLiant servers running RedHat Enterprise
Linux 3. From time to time, and for no apparent reason these boxes just
hang. We can't SSH to them, but they still respond to a ping. We connect
to the iLO and attempt to login to the console, but after putting in the
username and password again it just hangs and won't actually give a
command prompt.

Have you installed all patches? You should see something in the
lines of:

$ uname -r
2.4.21-47.EL

$ lsb_release -d
Description: Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES release 3 (Taroon Update 8)

I am running this version on HP and other hardware on quite a few
systems and there are zero problems with stability. The only
problem is the iLO board, however there is just a new firmware
update 1.87 or so out which will hopefully solve the problems.

Did you check for temperatures and alike, have you installed
the HP psp kit? Is there anything the system management homepage
can tell you about hardware problems? Did you test working of
netdump with the crash.o module that comes with the package?

The netdump package should be able to dump in most cases, despite
what others say, it is likely they have never used RHEL and
especially the netdump package. The entire network stack can
crash and netdump will still work, it is designed to do so.

On an USB related problem some time ago it worked pretty well for
me.

Did you checked how to enable magic-sysrq remotely? It should be
possible to assign a hot key to iLO to do so, the trick is that
you can only assign those keys through the iLO web interface,
AFAIK *not* via ssh login.;(

At least you can open a ticket to RH, you get some support with
RHEL.

Good luck

--
Michael Heiming (X-PGP-Sig > GPG-Key ID: EDD27B94)
mail: echo zvpunry@xxxxxxxxxx | perl -pe 'y/a-z/n-za-m/'
#bofh excuse 156: Zombie processes haunting the computer
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