Questions[debian-etch](server)

I appoligize in advance for not being the proper admin, I'm just a programmer with a server on which I installed Debian Etch plus mysql, php, apache and ISPConfig.

So, it had an uptime of more than 900 days with not a single problem (there's no important load on it, just a couple of our services), and then it started to behave badly - suddenly it freezes (only ping is working, nothing else) and when I try to restart it via ISP's interface, it freezes completely. Then I have to request support for a manual restart. After that, it works fine for a couple of days, then the same thing happens again (it happened three times so far).

Now I performed a network boot and run fsck (found 1.1% non-contiguous) and I hope it will help

My question is did anyone had similar experience and what could be causing such a problem (when only ping works)?

Also, I looked in system log, but found nothing which could indicate a problem. Is there some other log I should look into?

thanks for a lot of answers!

Sorry, I didn't register yet, so I have no option to vote up. But thanks!

First, to clear the issue, this is a housed server, and there is network boot / reset / manual reset function at the ISP's support.

It probably is a HDD issue, since -after the fsck- everything seemed to work fine, until i looked deeper and realized that only the front page works, while others don't (pages give '403 forbidden' error or just a blank page or mysql error...).

SSH is also seems to work but it actually doesn't work: i can try to log in and it will refuse the wrong password, but when I enter the correct one - the connection just closes.

I will try to access the files once again through network boot and backup as much as possible, then will have to replace the disk...

Is it possible to clone a disk with errors on it? Is it worth trying, anyway?

UPDATE: Today (one day after I asked the question) it turned out that the HDD is definitely defective. Once again, thanks for your time and help!

One of my disks failed in my raid array:

cat /proc/mdstat:

Personalities : [raid1] 
md1 : active raid1 sda2[2](F) sdb2[1]
      488086720 blocks [2/1] [_U]

md0 : active raid1 sda1[0] sdb1[1]
      192640 blocks [2/2] [UU]

When i tried to remove then re-add the drive the following happened:

mdadm: hot removed /dev/sda2
host:# mdadm /dev/md1 --add /dev/sda2
mdadm: add new device failed for /dev/sda2 as 2: Invalid argument

fdisk -l /dev/sda returns nothing.

Can you tell me what's happening now, especially because md0 looks fine. Tried to Google it but nothing interesting come up.

Update (just for verbatim), now md0is failed too:

Personalities : [raid1]
md1 : active raid1 sdb2[1]
     488086720 blocks [2/1] [_U]

md0 : active raid1 sda1[2](F) sdb1[1]
     192640 blocks [2/1] [_U]

I have a debian server running Etch. I can no longer seem to run apt-get update properly:

root@charm osqa ] apt-get update
Ign http://ftp.uk.debian.org etch Release.gpg
Ign http://ftp.uk.debian.org etch Release
Err http://ftp.uk.debian.org etch/main Packages
  404 Not Found
Err http://ftp.uk.debian.org etch/contrib Packages
  404 Not Found
Err http://ftp.uk.debian.org etch/non-free Packages
  404 Not Found
Failed to fetch http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/dists/etch/main/binary-i386/Packages.gz  404 Not Found
Failed to fetch http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/dists/etch/contrib/binary-i386/Packages.gz  404 Not Found
Failed to fetch http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/dists/etch/non-free/binary-i386/Packages.gz  404 Not Found
Reading package lists... Done
W: Couldn't stat source package list http://ftp.uk.debian.org etch/main Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/ftp.uk.debian.org_debian_dists_etch_main_binary-i386_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: Couldn't stat source package list http://ftp.uk.debian.org etch/contrib Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/ftp.uk.debian.org_debian_dists_etch_contrib_binary-i386_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: Couldn't stat source package list http://ftp.uk.debian.org etch/non-free Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/ftp.uk.debian.org_debian_dists_etch_non-free_binary-i386_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems
E: Some index files failed to download, they have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

My sources.list file is pretty minimal, it just contains:

###### Debian Main Repos
deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ etch main contrib

Any clues? Have the repo locations changed? Thanks, Joel.

I would like to use UTC for the scheduling times in a crontab for a single user, regardless of the current time zone of the server. How do I do this on Debian Etch?

I manage a server that currently runs Debian/Etch, and Xen 3.0. Each virtual machine is also running Debian/Etch.

Lenny is the next release of Debian, and includes Xen 3.2. Unfortunately, I believe there is no automatic upgrade path (via dist-upgrade) between Xen 3.0 and Xen 3.2. (Xen 3.0 is listed as an obsolete package in the lenny release notes).

What steps should I follow to end up with the server running lenny/xen3.2 and the virtual machines running lenny?