server down, returns ping, no other services

[silverspecv]

I'm not even sure how to search for this anomaly. This has happened to me a few times over the last year:

The live w2k web server will go down, but is in another city, so I can't use the console. So I ping it, trace route, etc, get nothing. So we have it plugged into a power outlet that I can log into over the internet and control each power outlet, so log in to that and cycle power to the outlet. Wait a minute, and my pings start returning. But for probably another 30 minutes or so, no other services work. Then finally everything comes back up all at once. I figure the computer has got to be doing something for 30 minutes, but what would it be doing that starts up AFTER ping but before anything else? There is a big gap in the event logs. It seems like if it were some kind of scandisk (the only thing I can think of that would take that long), it would not ping yet. Any ideas what I should check?

 

[TravisM]

30 minutes seems excessive. I've seen servers hang for quite a while on the "Preparing Network Connections" when we had some odd onboard network related hardware.

Does it hang like this every time you restart it, or only after you get a service failure and have to sever the power? I'm not clear on that.

 

[silverspecv]

Nope, I've restarted it a million times, and it has taken they long on only a few occassions. I can usually reboot via software, but this time it just died, and I had to go straight to the power. I have a feeling that whatever crashed it like that has something to do with why it took so long to come back up.

 

[SmittyNMCI]

My guess is that when you cycled power, the server had to go through the chkdsk step prior to restarting. Pings answer as soon as enough of the OS is loaded to provide power and support to the NICs but I believe that chkdsk is performed after this stage. Restarting the server normally via software would not cause chkdsk to kick start so would be faster on bootup.

Jeffery Smith (Smitty)
PEC Solutions Inc.
BS - Computer Application & Networking
A+ Network+ MCSA MCSE

 

[silverspecv]

Do you guys have any idea which log files might tell me exactly what happened?

 

[silverspecv]

Also, if you are right and it is running checkdsk on boot up, why would it start that now? I have probably cycled power to it over 100 times over the last 3 years without this result.