Told my server is out of memory by the Datacenter techs?

[coreyman]

So I've never had this happen before. A DC tech opened a ticket with me and told me that 'Your machine 1638CC-XEON is beeping due to it being out of memory. Please check into this issue and advise.'
 
So I checked logs and all I could see is where some containers are running out of memory and openvz is killing some processes in their container like it should. I checked the disks and temp sensors in the server to make sure it wasn't 'beeping' for some other reason. Check out the ticket correspondence.
 
 
 
Them: Sierra, Your machine 1638CC-XEON is beeping due to it being out of memory. Please check into this issue and advise. Thanks,
 
Me: I've never heard of an out of memory beep. Naturally linux uses a lot of the RAM for disk cache but will free that up at anytime. (about 12GB used for cache). free -m total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 32014 31718 295 0 920 11857 -/+ buffers/cache: 18940 13073 Swap: 34815 3701 31114 So then I checked the disks with smartctl and they all appear to be good. Then I checked the temp sensors and they all seem good. (all under 31C) Can you confirm the 'out of memory beep' with a manual link or something?
 
Them: Sierra, Log into IPMI and you will see the Out of memory messages posted. Thanks,
 
Me: I am currently unable to login to IPMI on this machine but I did check dmesg and it looks like the last time there was an OOM from openvz was about 12 days ago. Is the machine beeping when there is DMESG errors being printed to console?
 
Them: Sierra, I have attached an image of the error message the device is throwing. Also are you using the public IPMI address as we are able to log into IPMI.
 
Me: Yes, it's just that I'm on linux right now. I'm also not seeing any 'attachments'.
 
Them: Sierra, Attachment are at the top of the ticket.
 
Me: Ok I read that, and it appears some containers on the node are running out of memory.... and OpenVZ is doing its job and killing processes in that container. Nothing to worry about. Can you please confirm that my server is beeping due to these dmesg logs being printed to the console?

Them: Sierra, Our on-site tech confirmed the beeping is due to the device running out of memory, how would you like us to proceed?
 
Me: I don't understand. The server is not out of memory.

 

[shovenose]

that seems really bizarre. Why would RAM usage cause it to beep?

 

[D. Strout]

What DC is this? Also, how much memory does the server have?

 

[MartinD]

Tell them you don't want them to proceed with anything and to leave it alone.

 

[happel]

What a nice feature, my computer only beeps when it has no memory .

 

[JDiggity]

What a nice feature, my computer only beeps when it has no memory .

In any of the slots!

Disable beeps in the bios?

 

[coreyman]

What DC is this? Also, how much memory does the server have?

Not naming any names because I don't want to bring shame to anyone at this time. The server has 32GB of RAM.

that seems really bizarre. Why would RAM usage cause it to beep?

I thought so too.

What a nice feature, my computer only beeps when it has no memory .

Yea I've never had one beep when it was out of RAM.

Tell them you don't want them to proceed with anything and to leave it alone.

What are they trying to do here? I'm really confused as to why they opened the ticket with me in the first place.

 

[JDiggity]

What are they trying to do here? I'm really confused as to why they opened the ticket with me in the first place.

Maybe the beeping annoyed the tech?  Can't you turn off certain alarms in the Bios?

 

[wdq]

Maybe the beeping annoyed the tech?  Can't you turn off certain alarms in the Bios?

I'm sure they could just open up the server and unplug the cable that connects the beeper to the motherboard. Wouldn't even require a reboot.

 

[coreyman]

Maybe the beeping annoyed the tech?  Can't you turn off certain alarms in the Bios?

I'm sure you can but going into BIOS would require a ton of customers being down for whatever period of time it takes to find this beep setting. I'm just renting this server, they could have turned off the beeping before they sold it to me.

 

[coreyman]

I'm sure they could just open up the server and unplug the cable that connects the beeper to the motherboard. 

Some mobos have the beeper soldered on to it.

 

[JDiggity]

Some mobos have the beeper soldered on to it.

Most newer ones.

 

[D. Strout]

Beeper soldered on to the motherboard or not, I've never heard of any computer beeping because it's out of memory. Usually it just silently starts swapping. I'm as confused as @coreyman as to why the DC techs would say this is an out of memory problem.

 

[MartinD]

It wont be that, it'll be because output is being piped to the console and that causes the beeps.

 

[coreyman]

It wont be that, it'll be because output is being piped to the console and that causes the beeps.

That's what I asked them and they still want to say 'its because its out of memory'.......

 

[Aldryic C'boas]

setterm -blength 0

Disabled audible bells (more specifically, sets any audible alert to a 0 length).  You would have to routinely watch your heat after running this, however.

 

[Maximum_VPS]

Never heard of a motherboard beeping because of no memory. And i see some have mentioned that its beeping due to console output, but i would wonder about cpu overheating?

 

[MartinD]

setterm -blength 0

Disabled audible bells (more specifically, sets any audible alert to a 0 length).  You would have to routinely watch your heat after running this, however.

^ This.

 

[acd]

should that be



setterm -blength 0 > /dev/console
or does -blength affect all terminals? I thought setterm was local session only.

 

[mikho]

Yeah, my guess the beeps are because the message is posted on the terminal. Not the out of memory thing itself. It could have been any message at all.