Services failing?

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Services failing?

I've got a Lion server that has been seamless for year. Suddenly three services fail and cause all kinds of issues and I can't figure out why. The NAT service, DHCP, and DNS all fail at the same time and won't restart. I have to reboot the server 5 or 6 times to get them to start and stay started. Then the server runs for 4 or 5 days with no issues and then it happens again. I've tried rolling back some files from Time Machine to no effect. The logs don't tell me why it's happening. Has anyone else experienced this? What's really weird is with DNS failed, I would have thought it would also take out the Mail service but that one continues to work just fine. No one can access files and printers with the DNS service down so the mail is pretty much irrelevant at that point. I'll take any advice I can get at this point. Thanks.

Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Mar 5, 2014 5:59 AM

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Answer 1

Mar 5, 2014 2:09 PM in response to GreatGeek

Have you eliminated any potential drive/directory issues yet? Reboot the server and access single user command line mode by depressing the command and 'S' keys at the same time. At the prompt key in:

fsck -fy

If it finds a problem run the command again. Run it three times if necessary but if after the third time it still finds problems (invalid sibling links, malformed leaf nodes etc) or if can't repair any problems it finds then try something 'stronger' such as disk warrior. If that can't repair anything all you've really got left is backup, replace the drive and start again.

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Answer 2

GreatGeek Author

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Mar 5, 2014 2:25 PM in response to Antonio Rocco

I'm not sure that applies since it does come up and work for about a week. It just suddenly stops working after awhile. Then I have to reboot the server several times to get the services to start and stay running. I could see if the DHCP service stopped because it detected another DHCP service on the network (maybe a device lost a setting and started handing out IPs) but not the NAT and DNS services.

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Answer 3

Mar 6, 2014 4:26 AM in response to GreatGeek

You originally said: "I'll take any advice at this point" so I've offered basic troubleshooting advice which is always a good place to start when there's nothing obvious to look at. Besides no-one else is offering anything yet are they? In my experience what you're describing turned out to a hard drive/directory issue in some cases. The point is you won't really know until you rule it out. Seeing as you're not sure anyway what harm would it do? It takes 15-20 minutes of your time and if you couple it with a permissions repair it might actually 'fix' the problem? You've nothing to lose and potentially lots to gain. You won't be any worse off than what you are now will you?

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Answer 4

GreatGeek Author

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Mar 6, 2014 9:30 AM in response to Antonio Rocco

I'm willing to give it a try. I just wanted to point out that it IS working at times. I have to drive 30 mins to make an attempt at any repair so I need to be as thorough as possible for when I get there. I'll try it later today when I go by to also look at a printer issue. I appreciate the help.

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Answer 5

GreatGeek Author

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Mar 10, 2014 8:34 AM in response to GreatGeek

I can't get the thing into single user mode. It uses the wireless keyboard and I keep holding down the command+s key but it apparently doesn't read the key press and boots up normally. Of course that command won't run in normal mode because the drive is mounted. I'll have to try something else.

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