Server load climbs and crashes eventually every few hours
I just moved a site over to a new dedicated server last week (Fedora Core 2, single P4 3.0, 1 gig RAM), and once traffic began flowing, it would crash every few hours. Only symptom I noticed is that load would gradually climb, as do connections, until eventually it freezes the server after an hour or so. Rebooting the server fixes the problem immediately, though it lasts for only a few hours before the same thing happens again. Nothing unusual in bandwidth usage throughout. The exact same site has been running on an old RedHat 7.3 server for 2 years straight without problems.
Even while our web host was setting up the new server, it crashed a few times. Firstly, they attributed it to the file /etc/exim.conf missing, and rebuilt it. Then server crashed again, and they said it was due to the kernel being a multi-processor kernel, and changed it to single processor. Present kernel is 2.6.10-1.9_FC2
I know this isn't a lot to go by, but anyone have some suggestions as to where to look or what the problem could be? Not a admin guru, so I'd be passing ideas to our web host. Or if you have recommendations as far as an experienced admin in tracking down these sorts of problems, please PM me with that info as well.
Thanks,
George
