Server broken while using Zimbra server

[rafael.ramirez]

I have a very important problem, my Zimbra server is on production (working about 800 accounts) and crashes up constantly. My log file have not any line indicating corruptions.

Suddenly my server blocks up and nothing more it can do, keyboard is dead, only mouse can moves (if I'm in X graphic mode, but any menu can not open).

My technical data are:
OS: Debian 4.0 r5 32 bits edition
ZE: 5.0.20_GA_3127.DEBIAN4.0 FOSS Edition
RAM: 4GB
HD: +-500GB Raid 5
HW: HP Proliant (I don't remember model)
Pr: Intel Zeon (duo kernel)

Installation used was default, without changes, only port web server 82 instead of 80.

Give me orientation or a guide where I can find some solution, I don't have any idea what can it be (or maybe some java paremeters in web servers, I don't know [I'm not expert]).

I believed my server (hardware) was wrong, I make an identical installation in another server (same fisical features) and a backup-restore following steps in the wiki from this site, but the problem continues still.

Before, when not many users were connected server was so fast and so stable. Problem begins one month ago. Help me please. Users complain every(all) days, and only solution found at date is reboot the machine.

Thanks and regards.

[uxbod]

Welcome to the forums

Please check all logs including /var/log/messages. Also, please post some systems stats eg. top, free, vmstat as it could be your system is/has run out of memory.

[Centro]

i think there is a ram error in the log! please have a look at /var/log/messages

Greetz Centro

[raj]

Originally Posted by rafael.ramirez

Suddenly my server blocks up and nothing more it can do, keyboard is dead, only mouse can moves (if I'm in X graphic mode, but any menu can not open)

one of the thing eating your resources is you have installed GUI mode of linux which is not required on zimbra server..
plain simple BASE console install will do the job and will cause you less problems

Raj

[rafael.ramirez]

Hi raj, graphic mode was already installed in this server when I'm installing Zimbra, but you are allright, as soon as possible I'm going to uninstall gdm, this package probably eats much resources.

Thank you.

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by rafael.ramirez

graphic mode was already installed in this server when I'm installing Zimbra, but you are allright, as soon as possible I'm going to uninstall gdm, this package probably eats much resources.

That's not likely to be causing the problem particularly if you boot the server to runlevel 3.

It's also not recommended to run RAID5 on your Zimbra server with that number of users. Read the Performance article in detail before you start making changes to your Zimbra configuration.

[veronica]

Found something interesting :-

Talk:Performance Tuning Guidelines for Large Deployments - Zimbra :: Wiki

[rafael.ramirez]

Originally Posted by uxbod

Welcome to the forums

Please check all logs including /var/log/messages. Also, please post some systems stats eg. top, free, vmstat as it could be your system is/has run out of memory.

Hi uxbod, Thankyou for the welcome. Here there are some screenshots of my server stats.






In /var/log/messages there was only one line, indicating system reboot, no more.

In original server (machine) before migrating had 4GB RAM, this new one has 1GB, but problems are identical.

Thanks.

[rafael.ramirez]

Originally Posted by phoenix

That's not likely to be causing the problem particularly if you boot the server to runlevel 3.

Yeah, server actually boots on runlevel 5, so I mentioned uninstall gdm, I'm not propietary of the server, but have to make it some changes (I'm Recommended but no Administrator).

Originally Posted by phoenix

It's also not recommended to run RAID5 on your Zimbra server with that number of users. Read the Performance article in detail before you start making changes to your Zimbra configuration.

I don't understand so fine that article, what's the problem: ext3 or RAID5 or two both, because I have RAID5 by hardware and ext3 as filesystem. May you give more detail information? (remember I'm not expert)

Thank you.

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by rafael.ramirez

I don't understand so fine that article, what's the problem: ext3 or RAID5 or two both, because I have RAID5 by hardware and ext3 as filesystem. May you give more detail information? (remember I'm not expert)

RAID5 is a poor choice because, quite simply, the write performance is very poor by comparison to other RAID levels - you will find better performance using RAID10. The ext3 filesystem is also not the best performing one around and I prefer xfs for all my filesystems but that is a matter of personal choice. You should do some benchmarks on the various filesystem and apply some tuning parameters (search the web for details) to them and see which one suits your requirements.