Urgent Problem

L

lawlawl

Verified User
Joined
Nov 19, 2007
Messages
13
hey

I have a really urgent problem in need of attention as we speak.

There is a bad grep command taking up all of the CPU on my server (it's trying to grep an ungreppable command).

It's so bad, I can't get in SSH (it times out).
All apache is slow, also mysql is slow.

Now I think to myself, "oh lets reboot via DA".
But no, DA won't accept my root password (which IS correct, 100% sure).

The reason for this I think is the fact that it contains a "$" and/or a "%". It is being url-encoded when sent to DA via the reboot form so I assume DA is reading the encoded one and not the decoded one (for some odd reason).

Someone please tell me how can resolve this problem asap.
The process won't kill its self so Da needs to let me reboot or execute a command.
 
HTTP POST messages, like those sent by DA forms, aren't encoded. You shouldn't have any problems with special characters in password, unless DA developers have made an error somewhere.

There is still a chance by the way: your server housing owner may give you the possibility to reach the physical keyboard port via a KVM, ask them.
They definitely must be able to switch-reboot (may damage the server's filesystems) your server if really needed.
 
If the process in question has been ran by a non-root user you might be able to kill it from a cron running on that UID via DA? Here's a command i have used to kill all processes running by a particular user [USER]

Code: 
ps aux | grep USER | awk '{ print $2 }' | xargs kill -9
 
yeah they're rebooting it now
but the fact that DA won't accept the root password is really, really bad.
no idea why/how that could happen.

I myself am a programmer and post data is usually decoded automatically so I don't see how it could misinterpret it.
 
lawlawl said:
There is a bad grep command taking up all of the CPU on my server (it's trying to grep an ungreppable command).

It's so bad, I can't get in SSH (it times out).
Click to expand...

If you could not ssh in how do you know what command was taking up all the cpu?
 
Hello,

DirectAdmin never allows root login. It only allows "admin" login.

root access can only ever be done using ssh.

If you are having "admin" login issues with DA, and you think it may be password related, you can get DA to dump all http requests to the screen by running DA in debug mode.
Code: 
cd /usr/local/directadmin
killall -9 directadmin
./directadmin b2000
ctrl-c when you want to stop the debug daemon. Use "./directadmin d" to start it up normally again.

John
 
I think that he was talking about the "reboot" option of DA, which requires the root password.
 
I have got caught out several times with this before; the reboot option in DirectAdmin that I have installed on my boxes uses my Admin password, not my Root password.
 
lawlawl has not commented anymore so I guess he doesn't care about the answer anymore.
 
I can see how asking for the root password makes more sense. Obviously you know the admin password or else you would not have gotten this far. Giving it again is redundant. But I also think that if the root password is actually asked for it should done under https so that it is encrypted.
 
I thought that it was just my DA reboot request password that asked for the ROOT password but actually expected the ADMIN password. It's certainly caught me out several times but by the sounds of it other people have hit the same issue.

Perhaps the next DA update could correct or make clearer which password is required?
 
floyd said:
I can see how asking for the root password makes more sense. Obviously you know the admin password or else you would not have gotten this far. Giving it again is redundant. But I also think that if the root password is actually asked for it should done under https so that it is encrypted.
Click to expand...

You, too, seem to have become confused. DA does actually ask for the admin password again to reboot the system thus making the operation 'redundant'.
 
Lest we get confused about what is or isn't redundant (and I don't care if I'm asked again for a password or not before a reboot) what I was drawing attention to is that the web interface says:

Reboot Root password:

But in fact, on my systems anyway, actually expects the admin password.

My suggestion was that at the next direct admin update, that:

Reboot Admin password: replace the existing message, assuming that the default direct admin install does expect the admin password at that point.

I'm not bothered whether or not I should be asked for a password, just that IF I am asked for a password, that I'm at least asks for the right password!
 
Hello,

Thanks for pointing this out. I'm amazed it hasn't been reported sooner... the feature was released on November 9, 2003 ;) Took almost 6 years for someone to notice.

I'll change the wording for the next release.

John
 
I always felt like if I could get to DA to run the reboot command then it did not need to be rebooted.
 
Floyd,

You're probably right. But people like you you and I and Martynas (and others) know how to surgically fix a specific problem. Many people don't, and for many of them the best way to get their server back up to speed again is probably to to reboot it.

Why, you (and others) may ask, can DirectAdmin reboot a server when apache itself is bogged down?

DirectAdmin is a lightweight C++ program and we're often able to use it when the rest of the server is bogged down.

Jeff
 
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