[BlueOnyx:00460] Re: Support - Post Brian Smith?

[Chris Gebhardt - VIRTBIZ Internet]

Hi there, Shane,
Please see below:

lists at odea.net wrote:
> I'm wondering if anyone could offer support for a Linux novice using Blue
> Quartz (and working towards Blue Onyx).  I expect to pay for assistance, and
> I'm very happy to do so.
> 
> In the past, I have found Brian Smith to be excellent, but he is no longer
> an option.  Michael from Solarspeed is always helpful, and provides detailed
> advice.  However, he is clearly very busy.  It can take days or weeks to get
> a response to email which is often okay; but at other times the issue is
> more urgent.

My first suggestion would be your hosting company.  At VIRTBIZ, we have 
customers that are experts and could probably tell you more about the 
inner workings of BQ/BX than any 3 of us combined and we have customers 
that literally could not tell you the difference between Linux and the 
Firefox browser.  Aren't they both some sort of free thing that only 
geeks use?

My point is that we are able to provide service and support to both 
types of users and everybody in between, which means we had better be 
able to be helpful when called upon.


> I have a server at the moment that is freezing once or twice in each 24 hour
> period, and I don't know where to go. It is on 8 month old hardware.  The
> issue started after a dirty shutdown (at about 3:00 am, 5 days ago, when the
> log files were updating, etc.) following a UPS failure during an unplanned
> power outage.  (We've had serious heat and fire issues in AU over the past 3
> weeks; hundreds of people have died; and the power has been unreliable.)

Ouch, indeed.  My prayers to you, your family and your neighbors.  I 
hope you are able to stay safe.  Servers can always be replaced.

Generally speaking the system should be able to recover itself without a 
terrible amount of drama if it's just an unclean shutdown.  Freezing 
once or twice a day would seem another issue altogether.  What happens 
when you reboot?  Is it having to recover any part of the filesystem? 
Are there any indications in /var/log/messages?

If there has been an issue with commercial power that was cut for 
unforseen reasons, there is certainly the possibility that the system 
could have sustained physical damage from a surge or operation in a 
low-voltage situation.  We've seen equipment damaged in such situations. 
  In fact, power supplies can cause problems you would not even believe.

If you're wanting to explore the issue and resolve it yourself with some 
help from the lists, you'll find better luck with the more information / 
details you can provide.  Tell us the exact symptom, what happens on the 
screen when it freezes, is there any tell-tale log output, what other 
indicators, etc.   Also tell us what you've tried to date.

Although we typically reserve our support staff for our colocation and 
dedicated server customers, if you are caught stuck and need somebody to 
try and diagnose the system remote for you, send me a private email and 
I'm sure we can arrange some terms.

HTH,

-- 
Chris Gebhardt
VIRTBIZ Internet Services
Access, Web Hosting, Colocation, Dedicated
www.virtbiz.com | toll-free (866) 4 VIRTBIZ