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The
Virtual Server administrator is called upon to troubleshoot
errors and problems that will come up from time to time.
Although many of the troubleshooting steps have already
been mentioned in this chapter, we will highlight them
again.
Checking the Quota Remember, when the quota
hard limit is met, nothing can write to the disk. E-mail
is not accepted, logs are not written, installs do not
complete, and guestbooks and forms do not save to file.
The quota has a soft limit (which you may temporarily
exceed) and a hard limit (which you may never exceed),
so you have time to fix the problem. If you go over
quota you can use the vnukelog and vdiskuse
commands (both of which are mentioned earlier in this
chapter) to fix the problem.
Note: If you edit
files while you are over quota, you run the risk of
deleting your passwd file.
Checking the Log Files
Errors and system messages
are logged in the Virtual Server's log files. If you
are having problems with e-mail or FTP, check the ~/usr/log/messages
file. When users report problems with e-mail or FTP,
first check the quota, and then check the messages file.
Many times the error the end user is reporting is an
obscure client error. Checking the ~/usr/log/messages
file will give more details on the error. It is extremely
helpful to use the tail command to watch the
messages as they are being added to the log. This way
you can see what is being added to the log as the user
duplicates the error. To do this, do the following:
- Telnet to your Virtual Server
- At a command prompt
type:
% tail -f ~/usr/log/messages
- Have the user duplicate
the error while you are running the tail command.
The errors users get
while browsing your web site are recorded in the ~/www/logs/error_log
file. Once again, the error on the browser may not
have a lot of useful information, but the error log
has specific messages. You can use the above tail
command to watch the log while you duplicate the error.
Checking the Processes
If you are getting errors,
check the current processes running. Use the top
and ps commands to check the processes currently
running. It is not uncommon to have a CGI not closing
properly, thereby using all of the Virtual Server's
capacity. Occasionally the popper (mail) process may
hang when a user's connection is terminated improperly.
When checking top look at the time a process
has been running. If it is idle and has been running
for a long time, it may be hung and causing you some
problems. For example, FTP process can hang if the connection
to your server disconnects improperly.
Contact support if all
of the above fails. Technical Support can give the details
of what was done to solve the problem, and you can keep
that information for future use. Also check Enetrics Communications's
web site. The web site features a rich support library
with hundreds of pages devoted to supporting the Virtual Server.
For More Information
For additional information
about the topics discussed in this chapter, see the
following pages on the Enetrics Communications web site.Visit our Support Pages for More Details on Log Analysis
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