Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!geac!aimed!nick
From: nick@aimed.UUCP (Nick Pemberton)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix.sco
Subject: xenix 386 (2.3.2) crashing... help please
Message-ID: <8793@aimed.UUCP>
Date: 15 Feb 91 22:35:17 GMT
Organization: AIM, Inc, Toronto, Ontario
Lines: 38

Greetings.

I have some trouble brewing. This machine, a 386 running SCO
Xenix 2.3.2, has recently run into a deeply wierd problem. The system has
been up and running flawlessly for about 2.5 years now, with the occasional
rebuild of the filesytems to avoid fragmentation. The machine is only used
as our news machine (since nobody likes being on a machine grinding away 
on rnews...). No new hardware or software changes have taken place (except
adding a few more uucp connections)

The problem: The system just stops. The Disc light comes on, but there is 
no movement on the disk drive. One can hit the ALT-Fn, to switch between
virtual screens, one can type and see the typing echoed, but as soon as
it tries to execute anything (even a login), the process hangs. 

This is merely annoying right now, since I have to reboot at the office,
and it typically goes down at about 3:00 am (actually there is no pattern
to when it goes down - I find nothing in crontabs, nothing in the 
uucp .Logs, nothing regularly occuring at crash time). Today it hung with
no activity other then two rn sessions (ie no rnews, uucico, etc - so the
process table couldn't have been full)

I'd really like to solve this soon, before anything major happens. I'm
sure my downstream sites are getting a little annoyed at the problem. 

I've run a full non-destructive verify of the disk, and fsck more times
then I can remember, plus several cpios to tape just in case. 

Any ideas, hints, etc?

Thanks,

Nick

-- 
Nick Pemberton  		 uucp: !{lsuc, uunet!mnetor}!aimed!nick
AIM, Inc			  bus: (416) 429-1085
Toronto, Ontario, Canada         Home: (416) 690-0647