7.3. General Problems

To begin troubleshooting general problems, examine the log file or files related to the component exhibiting failures. A useful exercise is to issue the tail -f command for all log files and then run yum list on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (or up2date --list on earlier Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions). You should then examine all new log entries for potential clues.

A common issue is full disk space. An almost sure sign of this is the appearance of halted writing in the log files. If logging stopped during a write, such as mid-word, you likely have filled disks. To confirm this, run this command and check the percentages in the Use% column:

df -h

In addition to log files, you can obtain valuable information by retrieving the status of your RHN Satellite and its various components. This can be done with the command:

/usr/sbin/rhn-satellite status

In addition, you can obtain the status of components such as the Apache Web server and the RHN Task Engine individually. For instance, to view the status of the Apache Web server, run the command:

service httpd status

If the Apache Web server isn't running, entries in your /etc/hosts file may be incorrect. Refer to Section 7.4, “Host Not Found/Could Not Determine FQDN” for a description of this problem and possible solutions.

To obtain the status of the RHN Task Engine, run the command:

service taskomatic status

For more information, see Section 8.7.1.1, “Maintaining the RHN Task Engine”.

To obtain the status of the Satellite's Embedded Database, if it exists, run the command:

service rhn-database status

To determine the version of your database schema, run the command:

rhn-schema-version

To derive the character set types of your Satellite's database, run the command:

rhn-charsets

If the administrator is not getting email from the RHN Satellite, confirm the correct email addresses have been set for traceback_mail in /etc/rhn/rhn.conf.

If the traceback mail is marked from dev-null@rhn.redhat.com and you would like the address to be valid for your organization, include the web.default_mail_from option and appropriate value in /etc/rhn/rhn.conf.

If importing/synchronizing a channel fails and you can't recover it in any other way, run this command to delete the cache:

rm -rf temporary-directory

Note that Section 6.2.2.1, “Preparing Channel Content ISOs” suggested that this temporary directory be /var/rhn-sat-import/.

Next, restart the importation or synchronization.

If yum (or up2date) or the push capability of the RHN Satellite ceases to function, it is possible that old log files may be at fault. Stop the jabberd daemon before removing these files. To do so, issue the following commands as root:

service jabberd stop
cd /var/lib/jabberd
rm -f _db*
service jabberd start