Every day or two, my server crashes. The WebGUI won't load. SSH and directly connecting to the server give the login prompt, but timeout after 60 seconds. The server still responds to ping, but all containers/vm are inaccessible.

Based on advice found in some other threads, I have replaced my flash drive and changed docker from macvlan to ipvlan. I also updated to the latest version of Unraid. None of these changes seem to have had any affect on the issue.

I have set up the syslog server and installed the netdata container to hopefully help figure out the root cause.

Notes from crashes in the past week:

5/21 03:12

• CPU not at 100%, but incredibly spiky

5/22 11:02

• CPU 100% (60% system, 35% iowait)

• similar spike 10 mins before, lasted ~2 mins

5/24 17:40

• CPU 100% (60% system 35% iowait)

• similar spike 50 mins before, lasted ~3 mins

5/26 23:41

• CPU 100% (60% system, 25% iowait)

• This one seemed to be triggered by a few torrents being added to qbittorrent

Most of the time I don't notice the crash when it happens, so it doesn't seem to always be caused by me directly interacting with a container or vm.

The only reproducible trigger I have found is by watching something on jellyfin that requires transcoding.

Syslog and diagnostics are attached. I can share info from netdata, but I'm new to it and don't always know what I'm looking for.

syslog-192.168.1.58.log nasa-diagnostics-20260527-1551.zip

May 22 15:38:26 NASA php-fpm[6475]: [WARNING] [pool www] child 1479914 exited on signal 9 (SIGKILL) after 24.830572 seconds from start

May 22 15:38:52 NASA php-fpm[6475]: [WARNING] [pool www] child 1479943 exited on signal 9 (SIGKILL) after 19.976203 seconds from start

May 22 15:39:20 NASA php-fpm[6475]: [WARNING] [pool www] child 1479957 exited on signal 9 (SIGKILL) after 23.828378 seconds from start

May 22 15:39:43 NASA php-fpm[6475]: [WARNING] [pool www] child 1479983 exited on signal 9 (SIGKILL) after 19.020641 seconds from start

In my experience, these errors can be the result of the server being close to exhausting the memory, GUI can become extremely slow, like 1 minute to open the dashboard, try limiting the memory for VMs/docker services, or adding a little more RAM.

It could also be one or more containers hogging the CPU, try pinning only some cores to them, and leave cores 0/1 available for Unraid.

Also, recommend trying a couple of other things, go to Settings - Global share settings and set the Number of fuse File Descriptors to the max, and enable this:

https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/release-notes/7.0.0/#excessive-flash-drive-activity-slows-the-system-down

On 5/28/2026 at 2:48 AM, JorgeB said:

Also, recommend trying a couple of other things, go to Settings - Global share settings and set the Number of fuse File Descriptors to the max, and enable this:

https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/release-notes/7.0.0/#excessive-flash-drive-activity-slows-the-system-down

Making the change in those release notes seems to have done the trick. I did some jellyfin transcoding to stress test before and after the change. Before, I saw it reading several MB/s on the flash drive, and it eventually crashed. After the change, there were no reads on the flash drive and no crash!

I will give it some time now and see if it crashes at all in the next few days.

So if I'm understanding correctly, it would seem lack of RAM is the issue. Is it okay to keep running this way or is it more of a temporary workaround? I'll probably just wait until RAM prices are more reasonable.

For limiting memory on docker containers, is that done on a per-container basis, or is there an easy way to limit docker as a whole?

11 hours ago, Wookiee of the Year said:

Is it okay to keep running this way or is it more of a temporary workaround?

It's fine to leave it always on