Re: cron job?

[JF Martinez <jfm2@club-internet.fr>]

> 
> > 
> > On Sat, 27 Nov 1999, Stefan wrote:
> > First I would like to welcome you to the Independence Project. Your
> > input is welcome and valued.
> > > 
> > > I had a problem alike once; it was a "find" job, ran by updatedb, by
> > > cron by anacron etc. This was a little noisy, slowing down the system
> > > etc., but it was harmless. What you say sounds harmful.
> > >
> > Part Two: After I managed to post to this list it started again and
> > this time I could not manage to do much of anything. So got some much
> > needed sleep and checked on it when I awoke. I awoke to find the system
> > froze. Responding to no keyboard or mouse input. I had no choice but to
> > power off the system and reboot. It recovered Okay and seems fine
> > now. (sigh)
> > > 
> > > I dunno what you've got, but this is what I did to solve my "mysterious
> > > process": I had a non-X command line interface open under the "root"
> > > login. Every time the mysterious process started, I switched back to
> > > this CLI immediately and typed in "ps ax >ps1.txt". This dumps the
> > > process list to the textfile ps1.txt
> > >
> > I'll try to keep the 2nd session open to dump the file if needed, but
> > the problem may be getting to it. Any commands are very slow to
> > respond. Even switching to another virtual terminal is hard. I may keep
> > the command typed in at the prompt so I will only need to switch to the
> > 2nd session and hit [enter]. 
> > > 
> > > After having collected some textfiles, I compared them. There was one
> > > "find" process that kept coming back. I knew "find" can be responsible
> > > for such noise, so I guessed this was the process I was looking for.
> > > With that info, some newsgroup people could help me on.
> > >
> > Thanks for the suggestion Stefan. I hope I get to use it next time!
> > > 
> 
> Indy has an asynchronous cron ie one who does not need to keep the box
> powered up 24 hours a day.  However updatedb by itself cannot produce
> thse effects: it will slow your box due to the IO taking effect but
> not in such proportions and it will not crash the box.
> 
> I would tend to think in netscape.  I have heard of such behaviour
> with the version shipped in Indy 6.0 (who was the newets and greatest
> at this time but netscape has been going from bad to worse).  I
> presently use netscape 4.7
> 
> > > So please do this check first. Maybe you'll find that your computer is
> > > defragmentating or whatever... First find the process, then we'll think
> > > about where it came from.
> > >
> > Jean, dose Indy 0.8 have the ext2 defragmenter installed?
> > >
> 

There is a solution: run this

#!/bin/sh

while true
do
sleep 300
ps axv
done >mylogfile



When Linux freezes you wait a few minutes, reboot and look at what was
running.

Of course if you start this automatically at boot time you have to
take care about saving the logfile of the previous (ie crashed
session)

-- 
			Jean Francois Martinez

Project Independence: Linux for the Masses
http://www.independence.seul.org