CentOS – Why Did Production Server Reboot?

centoslogging

I have a CentOS 5.2 box running my production web server (Apache 2 + Mongrel_cluster) for a Ruby on Rails project. The machine is hosted by GoDaddy.com and is a "virtual private server". The system periodically reboots on its own (maybe once every 6 months). I have two questions:

How can I determine why my machine rebooted?
Is there a good way to automagically notify me (i.e. via e-mail) when the system reboots?

Best Answer

Check /var/log/messages for the suspected time it rebooted
Put a one-liner in /etc/rc.local like:

/bin/date +%F_%T | /bin/mail -s "myhost was rebooted" me@example.com

Cheers

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Linux – CentOS Server won’t reboot when issuing reboot command

You should perform a ps aux to see if any of the shutdown scripts are hung waiting for a process to finish. It should look something like this:

/etc/rc6.d/K##procname

You can try manually issuing a kill command for that hung script. Strange though, since there's a timeout set on the scripts where it will force a -KILL signal to any leftover process.

Also, what's the uptime of the server/box? I've experienced an issue in the past where a box that has an uptime of over a year refuses to shut down. In that case, I've killed each process manually, run sync several times to flush all data to disk and forced a reboot (power cycle).

Centos – Migrating production CentOS server to a VirtualBox VM

You can convert your physical machine to virtual using VMware converter. The resulting vmdk file can then be used directly by VirtualBox.

In VirtualBox during the Create New Virtual Machine process, when you get to the Virtual Hard Disk dialogue select Use existing hard disk and then browse to the location of your vmdk file.

Best Answer

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Centos – Migrating production CentOS server to a VirtualBox VM

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