Named is causing my server to Kernel panic?

Christoph Weber-Fahr cwf-ml at arcor.de
Fri Aug 28 03:23:42 UTC 2009


Hello,

Scott Baker wrote:
> I have two DNS servers, and my slave server has been crashing repeatedly 
> about once a week. It's crashing hard and bringing down the *whole* box. 
[...]
> http://www.perturb.org/tmp/named-crash.jpg
> 
> My first thought is that it was bad hardware, so we swapped the HDs out 
> to another server. *Everything* was new except the HDs and the crashes 
> still occurred. I'm not sure what my next step is, but having it 
> continue to crash is no good! The box is up to date on all software and 
> kernel patches. It runs fine while it's up, it just randomly crashes.

Somebody else noted already that named can not be the culprit.
Applications can not, by definition, crash a kernel.

First, get rid of that server.  If it crashes randomly it has a problem.

If two crash, two have a problem. Think about using another type
of hardware, maybe another vendor.

Then, another thing to look at is environment. Power quality, heat,
dust load, vibrations, maybe even sound. There is a reason that
Sun and some other vendors produce special hardware for us telco
types - we tend to play fast and loose with the environment we
put our stuff into, especially in terms of heat and dust loads.

Some hardware just isn't up to the task.

Then. maybe you want to exchange Fedora with Red Hat's paid and
supported offering (RHEL ?). If that Server is mission critical
for you, the few bucks of yearly support contract shouldn't be
that much of a problem.

Regards, and good luck,


Christoph Weber-Fahr











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