Hi all,
I think I have found out the cause of the anamoly
which we have been facing since yesterday. Elvin
and myself are only partially correct individually,
but when we combine the 2 pictures, we have the
complete and total picture.
It is true that the load is high is because of the
unkillable ftp processes, but the unkillable ftp processes
are due to the fact that any "ls" command inside
a ftp client halts the whole damn thing, because it keeps
searching for the mounted nfs drive, which incidentally
is removed.
This whole damn stuff causes a whole load of other problems,
sendmail not being able to receive mails because it is
being configured not to receive mails when load rises above
15.
The viable solutions are to
1) Someone does a console reboot. This is to make sure that
any fsck checks which may be performed does not halt the whole
server.
2) Someone finds a way to umount the mounted nfs drives from
remote, which does not seem to be able to be umounted.
I must apologize to Jackie and Poh for not giving very precise
instructions of rearranging the server. But let us take this as a
lesson learnt and not repeat the mistake again. Sorry.
