I recently bought completely new hardware and built a server running Ubuntu Server 11.10 x64. Most things are working good, except for one rather large issue that I'm experiencing; the system keeps randomly freezing.

The freeze could occur at any time, thought it seems they occur when the server is idle, and not doing anything in particular. I've tried to modify the grub config (I have ran sudo grub-update) and I've also updated my EFI version amongst other things.

My system is running off a 64GB Crucial M4 SSD and I have three 2TB drives hooked up into a RAID5 array.

Once the server freezes, there's no contacting it. The keyboard connected does not respond to any keypress and the server closes any connection, be it SSH, VPN or even network interfaces. I'm not an Ubuntu master, but I do want to learn more about the system and get my server working, but the constant freezes are a huge problem. Also, when it freezes and I look at the monitor, the last thing that was being displayed when it froze is still there, and the LCD I have mounted to the front of my chassi is also frozen. It's just like everything is coming to a halt.

I've posted my dmesg.log file here, though I haven't been able to find anything particular myself. But this might just be because I do not know exactly what to look for. http://paste.ubuntu.com/835541/

Though, these lines in particular might mean something:

[   29.193372] init: ssh main process (1012) terminated with status 255
[   29.217099] init: failsafe main process (991) killed by TERM signal

To me it looks like SSH is being shut down and some kind of failsafe process is also being killed, allowing this freeze to occur. But that might just sound crazy to whoever is experiencing enough to tell.

These are my server specifications if that might help solve the issue:

  • CPU: Intel Core i3 2120 3,3Ghz

  • GPU: Asus GeForce ENGT520

  • Motherboard: Asus P8H67-M B3

  • Memory: Corsair XMS3 DDR3 PC10666/1333MHz

  • HDD:s 3x Seagate Barracuda Green ST2000DL003 2TB Drives

  • SSD: 64GB Crucial M4

I've been trying hard to solve this issue for weeks without any bit off success, any advices are welcome!

Thanks in advance // Jonathan

EDIT: I started a tail on my syslog yesterday with the following command:

"sudo tail -f /var/log"

And now that I got home the server had frozen again, but the last entries were hours before the freezing occured, I know that because my VPN connection disconnected about 3.30PM when I was at work. Are there any other files I could tail in hopes of finding something?

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What window-manager do you use? Does the problem also occur if you operate only in TTY mode? – Nunoxic Feb 9 at 19:00
@Nunoxic I do not use a window manager, my server is running in pure TTY mode :) – Jonathan Feb 10 at 17:27
I think you need to isolate this to being an Ubuntu issue first. Since it's brand new hardware (that is no guarantee it works) I'd run memtest86+ on it for a good few hours. Then perhaps try a LiveCD, perhaps a couple of different versions, and see if they surive for 24 hours each. – Caesium Feb 22 at 16:23
This question should instead be filed as a bug report, thanks! Instructions here. – Jorge Castro Apr 26 at 2:38
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closed as off topic by fossfreedom May 15 at 8:28

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1 Answer

Startup ssh with debug option. Change /etc/ssh/sshd_config and set LogLevel to DEBUG, DEBUG2, or DEBUG3. Check logs...

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