Hi

I have an old system (120mHz with 128MB RAM on an old AMD processor - erm?) that I setup with Rh9 on the 2.4.8 something kernel about a year ago. It has been fine the past year, but since yesterday I have been unable to connect to MySQL on the server. Neither can I telnet in - but I can ping it. Very strange - if I physically go to the keyboard of the machine I can log in - its using very little RAM (about 96 of the available 128), no swap, and does not appear loaded at all - the load avg is 1 abouts.

However, the last month we have been using it much more intensively than in the past - it serves about 20MB a day with Apache / PHP / MySQL on our intranet (which is not much, but this is an OLD machine). Before it started this behaviour of refusing access to MySQL, Apache stopped serving requests a few times with an error that "too many files are open" - a reboot would fix that most times. However, this new refusal to allow telnetting or having access to MySQL is only fixed by a physical power-off, then a startup... but now Apache keeps working...!

It first smelled like software (that's why I posted it in here) but the fact that a switchoff is know the only way to fix not being able to connect to MySQL or telnet in (strangely Apache is working, which uses PHP on the machine to access the MySQL database?!). By "not being able to access MySQL" I mean that the Linux MySQLCC on my FC3 machine can't get access to MySQL to the old Rh9 machine, neither can a MySQLCC running on XP on yet another machine... but the Rh9 machine can serve pages requiring MySQL and PHP to be working. I have checked when it is doing this refsusal to allow MySQLCC to connect thing and MySQL IS running on the machine (i. e. a ps -A -f | grep mysql DOES list all the normal processes running) and Apache is working.

Where can I start looking? Can this be hardware? The fact that the old machine can be pinged, allows HTTP access and serves pages on port 80, but "sometimes" ignores port 3306 for MySQL and the telnet port at the same time tells me its software - if it was hardware -nothing- would work, right? But why would it work for a year perfectly, then start doing this erratic stuff? Surely that must be hardware - there have been no new software installed since the setup a year ago.

So, how can I fix it? Can I try putting FC3 on the old machine? Or would that just make my problems worse? Obviously, this will mean the old machine will run on a 2.6 kernel, instead of the Rh9 2.4 kernel it is on now... might this help or do I probably have a hardware problem (it IS old hardware!) Would a 2.6 series kernel help at all?

ANY help appreciated!

Thanks,