up vote 3 down vote favorite

Machines are just hanging. I can't reboot with sudo reboot, because it gives me bus error.

I see the message about read only file system and this kind of messages in dmesg

enter image description here

I can guess that the problem is disk related, but as I see there have been bugreports in ubuntu with this kind of problems, so maybe it's not the hardware?

I can't reboot machine manually, because it is in remote location.

So maybe someone can tell what should I do to know for shure if that's a hardware problem or software problem and is there something I can do about it.

share|improve this question

migrated from serverfault.com Jun 15 '15 at 8:54

This question came from our site for system and network administrators.
    
If you can get to a root shell, then this command will for sure reboot it echo b >/proc/sysrq-trigger. But be warned it does not do a clean shutdown, it is about as abrupt as pushing the reset button on the machine. If the machine can find the disk after being rebooted, it will probably come up again after a file system check. – kasperd Jun 11 '15 at 15:50
    
@kasperd I know a administrator password. How to get to a root shell? – user1685095 Jun 11 '15 at 15:55
    
@kasperd sudo -s gives me bus error also after I'm entering correct password – user1685095 Jun 11 '15 at 15:56
    
If this happened simultaneously on 9 machines, then there has got to be some external circumstance responsible for it. Candidates I can imagine would be either a power surge, something shaking the entire rack, extreme temperatures, or humidity. – kasperd Jun 11 '15 at 15:57
    
I'm not sure, but it probably wasn't simultaneous. It happens periodically on 9 machines I think. – user1685095 Jun 11 '15 at 15:58
up vote 0 down vote

It is nearly surely a problem on your hard disk. You have a bad block.

In such cases, hard disks are simply thrown out in most professional environment, although you can fix it with an e2fsck -l <file with the list of the bad blocks>.

In case of a such nearly system freeze situation with a remote server, you can use sysrqd to emulate alt/printscreen/ shortcuts from network.

share|improve this answer

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.