Author Topic: Zentyal rebooting when dhcpd starting up. How do I fix this?  (Read 1888 times)

LEGOManiac

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Zentyal rebooting when dhcpd starting up. How do I fix this?
« on: September 05, 2012, 03:22:19 am »
Sorry to be so brief, but I only get about 1 - 2 minutes of internet access before the firewall reboots.

Last dmesg line:
[  238.817545] type=1505 audit(1346805961.688:24):  operation="profile_replace" pid=4116 name="/usr/sbin/dhcpd3"

The server had been running for almost 2 years (not continuously) and had been updated maybe 1 week ago.

Today, it was reported to me that we had lost internet access. It turns out the firewall had crashed and was hanging on reboot.

Suspecting hardware (a FitPC2i - ATOM based), I moved the hard disk to a workstation (Core i5 based) and booted it there. It reported errors in the file system and I had them corrected.

On the workstation, the system booted to the desktop.

Back on the FitPC2i hardware, it's rebooting either just after starting the firewall module, or just as it starts dhcpd.

Unfortunately, the web interface on this thing as always been ridiculously slow and it won't be up long enough for me to use it (it's a headless system) but since I can SSH into it, briefly, I should be able to cut/paste commands to it quickly to get something done. I just don't know what to do, exactly.


christian

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Re: Zentyal rebooting when dhcpd starting up. How do I fix this?
« Reply #1 on: September 05, 2012, 07:06:45 am »
I can't help on the root cause (i.e. reboot) but would advise to remove lxdm on your server.
I was running "internet gateway" on FitPC too long time ago (with the first FitPC) and this was fine with home made design.
When I tried eBox, it became slow and hardly usable because eBox was not designed for such small hardware (e.g. use of quite heavy Apache instead of lighter HTTP server for remote GUI admin).

I'm currently testing 3.0RC1 on small Via C7 and here again, it is quite slow. I made some progress removing lxdm...

Regarding your problem, unless your 100% sure that fix did fix everything, I would suggest to backup your config and reinstall on disk you format again.
For debuging purpose, did you try to deactivate DHCP service?

LEGOManiac

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Re: Zentyal rebooting when dhcpd starting up. How do I fix this?
« Reply #2 on: September 10, 2012, 02:36:57 am »
OK. So dhcpd turned out to be a red herring.

In desparation, I tried switching to ClearOS and it had the same problem, though not with dhcpd.

I suddenly remembered back in my electronics days, that many embedded systems use a watchdog timer to automatically reboot a locked-up micro-controller. The scheme is to load some value into the watchdog timer, which then starts to count down to zero. The timer is controlled by the processor's timing circuitry, and runs independently from whatever the processor is (or isn't) doing.

The idea is that the programmer would include, within one of the programs subroutines, the code to reset the timer back to the initial number, before it reaches zero. If the subroutine doesn't run, the timer runs out and forces a re-boot.

It turns out the Fit-PC2i that I was running this on is designed to be an embedded system and includes the watchdog timer. Earlier versions of linux had been including the reset routines, so I never noticed it, but it would appear that a recent linux update (I don't know to what component) either broke the timer reset routine or changed (ie. delayed) the point at which it gets run, allowing the timer to run out, forcing a reset.

People with regular PCs would never notice it.

christian

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Re: Zentyal rebooting when dhcpd starting up. How do I fix this?
« Reply #3 on: September 10, 2012, 06:45:04 am »
So, does it mean your problem is fixed  ???
If yes, may I ask you to update your first post and stamp it as [SOLVED]  8)

Escorpiom

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Re: Zentyal rebooting when dhcpd starting up. How do I fix this?
« Reply #4 on: September 10, 2012, 07:22:51 am »
Perhaps it helps, last week there was a kernel update. I did apply it but have not rebooted the server yet.
Anyway I don't expect any problems though.

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