Server goes in standby mode?

jimtsop

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Joined
Sep 19, 2008
Messages
21
We have a strange problem. One of our servers after midnight when there’s no traffic at all, it stops responding (we receive related hyperspin messages) until someone visits the web site!!! As soon as we get to the web site or try to login using ssh everything is up & running…!!!

It seems like the server goes in standby mode but I don’t have any clue and I don’t know what causes the problem.

Our system use the following: Debian 5.1, DirectAdmin 1.35.1, Apache 2.2.15, Exim 4.69, MySQL 5.0.88, Named 9.5.1, ProFTPd 1.3.3, dovecot 1.2.11, Php 5.2.13

Could you please help with that, as it’s really annoying?
 
mmh sorry but i didnt understand well, you say that server stop responding untill someone visit some domain on the server... and he respond immediatly?
 
Yes... that's right. Probably slower than normal, after a second or so... but it responds and works perfectly again.

Another thing is that the server if you use top says that it's up & running for days. It doesn't really stops. It's really strange I don't know what to do... No errors, nothing...
 
Imagine that if i run a command like top using an ssh client and keep the ssh client all night open on my pc, then the server doesn't stop...!!:confused:
 
but that have no sense, if u check a website and reply the server is reachable, how u cant see if is online when no ppl on? have u checked firewall?
 
I know... it's like the network card goes in stand by... and then after a visit comes up... I really don't know.

The fact is that the server doesn't respond to the hyperspin test.

The firewall has nothing to do with that. We have 16 servers with almost the same settings... under the same firewall. It could be a debian package that makes the difference but i don't know where to look for...
 
Hyperspin is a simple website monitor. It probably has a short time-out limit so it fails.

First make sure your server doesn't have any sleep or standby settings. Servers should never have them.

Jeff
 
For the last few days I did a test and when I have htop running using an ssh client the server is doing fine. As soon as I stop that, the problem comes back as always.

As we manage the server remotely and it's not possible to check bios settings, do you know how we could make sure that sleep or standby settings are ok at least from the linux part?

Our kernel version is 2.6.18-6-686-bigmem and I've found the following services running: /usr/sbin/acpid

# cat /proc/acpi/info
version: 20060707

The above command doesn't return any states info.

From what I know users of 2.6 kernel are advised to use the new file in sysfs: /sys/power/state and not the old one /proc/acpi/sleep

#cat sleep
cat: sleep: No such file or directory

# cat state
standby mem (Maybe it’s this one????)

Do I have to just delete the contents of the /sys/power/state file or is there a specific command to remove that entry?
 
Last edited:
I believe (note, I'm not sure and I don't stand by this, but only open it for discussion) that you should never run acpi on a server.

Jeff
 
im usign debian and i never installed acpi and everything is working fine so you shouldn't have any problem by removing that package
 
I removed acpi and related things but nothing seems to be changing as the problem persists. Do you have any ideas???

By the way I had acpi running on other servers without causing any problems, and now from what I see it has nothing to do with my problem.

The server at night still is not responding until someone visits the web page!!!
 
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