Not sure what it's called in AIX/IBM speak but if it was a Solaris machine I'd be finding the system console and looking at that to see if anything interesting is showing. At least then you have a direct serial connection (and/or K/B + monitor) facility to get directly to the host without relying on telnet or any other communications daemon to be running.
Are you sure it's completely dead? What do you do to get back up and running again? Does it come alive again suddenly? The aix server we have here sometimes slows down so much during the nightly backup that it seems completely dead. Apparently this is/was the disks being thrashed during the save and nothing else gets a look in for ages. As others have said - writing a sript to dump out current list of running processes is a good idea. You might want to also include some other stuff like the load averages and io activities on the system at the same time. See the uptime, iostat, and vmstat commands. ThIssuing a sngle iostat or vmstat may not always yield accurate results - my experience on Solaris is the first line of output is trash and you need the next few lines to get a clearer picture. So an 'iostat 1 5' might get you a better idea as to where a potential bottleneck might be. I'd also be running a similar script during the day or at least a few times during. This will give you a 'normal' point of reference to compare to the overnight happenings. Cheers Peter -----Original Message----- From: u2-users-boun...@listserver.u2ug.org [mailto:u2-users-boun...@listserver.u2ug.org] On Behalf Of Kevin King Sent: Thursday, 17 January 2013 4:40 To: U2 Users List Subject: [U2] Unidata 6.1.13/AIX 5.3 Stops Unexpectedly We have a customer with a box as described in the subject that has recently been experiencing something odd. Overnight, the system will just lock up and stop responding. Normally there isn't anyone doing anything at night; the backup runs, that sort of thing, but then some days when they come in early in the morning the entire machine is unresponsive. Connecting with telnet there is no login prompt, just a blank screen. It happened last night and I've confirmed from the logs that the backup (which is using a split mirror backup strategy) ran successfully and finished at 2:02am. Sometime between then and 4am, when there really should not have been anything going on, it just locked up. Are there any logs that can be enabled on AIX to record some evidence for these kinds of failures so we can figure out what's going on with this machine? -K _______________________________________________ U2-Users mailing list U2-Users@listserver.u2ug.org http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note: This email (inc all attachments) is for the use of the intended recipient(s) only. Privileged or confidential information may be contained in this communication. If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender immediately and then delete all copies of this message from your computer network. If you are not the intended recipient, you must not keep, use, disclose, copy or distribute this email without the author's prior permission. If you are the intended recipient and you do not wish to receive similar electronic messages from us in future, then please respond to the sender to this effect. We have taken precautions to minimise the risk of transmitting software viruses, but advise you to carry out your own virus checks on this email and its attachments. We do not accept liability for any loss or damage caused by software viruses and do not represent that this transmission is free from viruses or other defects. Firstmac Limited (ABN 59 094 145 963) (AFSL 290600) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ U2-Users mailing list U2-Users@listserver.u2ug.org http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users