# Pritunl crashing/becoming unresponsive **URL:** \ **Category:** Pritunl VPN\ **Created:** [February 27, 2025, 12:25am UTC](https://forum.pritunl.com/t/pritunl-crashing-becoming-unresponsive/3077 "2025-02-27T00:25:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Liam](https://forum.pritunl.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Liam](https://forum.pritunl.com/u/Liam)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2025, 12:25am UTC](https://forum.pritunl.com/t/pritunl-crashing-becoming-unresponsive/3077/1 "2025-02-27T00:25:56Z")
We’re encountering some stability issues with our Pritunl instance. At random intervals, the server goes unresponsive, disconnecting all users and then goes offline. This happens even when there’s no significant load or activity. **Unresponsiveness & Disconnects:** The instance becomes unreachable, disconnecting all active VPN sessions and rendering it unusable for anywhere between 1-5 minutes. **Load Conditions:** The issue occurs sporadically, even during periods of low user activity. We’re not pushing high throughput or running heavy tasks when it happens. **CPU usage:** Also sporadic, sometimes low usage, then at times it skyrockets when no actions have seemingly taken place. **Network activity:** Doesn’t seem to show any strange or overloading activity as of yet. **Memory usage:** Stable with no signs of any spikes or that it’s running out that we’ve seen. Any help on where to focus our troubleshooting or known issues that align with these symptoms? Due to limitations on screenshot uploads, I’ve uploaded and shared the screenshots through our WorkDrive. ---
**Author:** ![zach](https://forum.pritunl.com/user_avatar/forum.pritunl.com/zach/32/1105_2.png) [@zach](https://forum.pritunl.com/u/zach)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2025, 7:26pm UTC](https://forum.pritunl.com/t/pritunl-crashing-becoming-unresponsive/3077/2 "2025-02-27T19:26:02Z")
Check the logs in the top right of the web console and `/var/log/pritunl.log` if there’s an issue with the database it will only be logged to file. Check `sudo journalctl -u mongodb -n 500` for errors. ---
**Author:** ![Liam](https://forum.pritunl.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Liam](https://forum.pritunl.com/u/Liam)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2025, 1:26am UTC](https://forum.pritunl.com/t/pritunl-crashing-becoming-unresponsive/3077/3 "2025-02-28T01:26:26Z")
Thank you so much for your reply Zach, I’ll take a look at this and reply back when I’ve seen the logs. ---
**Author:** ![Liam](https://forum.pritunl.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Liam](https://forum.pritunl.com/u/Liam)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 3:43am UTC](https://forum.pritunl.com/t/pritunl-crashing-becoming-unresponsive/3077/4 "2025-03-05T03:43:45Z")
Hi @zach , I’ve finally got some logs. ![image_2025-03-05_144252134](https://forum-static.pritunl.com/original/2X/4/4e2a9094f642ad5ede4bd3bcb7d351fa9c503b33.png) A couple of errors I noticed; **Error in management socket thread** **Connection refused** Any ideas on what these could point to? Thanks for your help. ---
**Author:** ![zach](https://forum.pritunl.com/user_avatar/forum.pritunl.com/zach/32/1105_2.png) [@zach](https://forum.pritunl.com/u/zach)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 6:14am UTC](https://forum.pritunl.com/t/pritunl-crashing-becoming-unresponsive/3077/5 "2025-03-05T06:14:25Z")
Check the server output in the servers tab for errors. ---
**Author:** ![peter\_forrest](https://forum.pritunl.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/7cd45c/32.png) [@peter\_forrest](https://forum.pritunl.com/u/peter_forrest)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 11:26pm UTC](https://forum.pritunl.com/t/pritunl-crashing-becoming-unresponsive/3077/6 "2025-03-06T23:26:53Z")
Hey Zach, thanks for your prompt reply. The two issues that we see in the logs that come up repetitively are: 1. There is a discrepancy between the link-mtu - the server is using 1558 and the client is using 1560. Which should be used for best reliability? How do I change this on both the server and the client? 2. There is a discrepancy between the server using comp-lzo compression and the client using no compression - how do I disable the server from attempting to use comp-lzo? We have 62 servers and about 100 users so I am guessing that these little inconsistencies are creating a large amount of load with that many servers and users, would you agree? The VPNs are only used in routers so that we can remotely access the router of our clients, so there’s rarely much traffic, except for 1 client where we are trying to set up a VPN connection via Pritunl between an Azure virtual machine and their local office so that they can run an RSYNC backup so that they have a local backup of their Azure VM. When we start the RSYNC it crashes the server, although we have also had this crashing of the server previously (prior to this RSYNC setup) and we were never able to figure out the cause of it - we thought it was that the Pritunl VM was underpowered and using a shared CPU, but we since increased the compute and RAM and made it a dedicated CPU which helped but now it’s happening again. ps - Liam and I both work at the same company. ---
**Author:** ![peter\_forrest](https://forum.pritunl.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/7cd45c/32.png) [@peter\_forrest](https://forum.pritunl.com/u/peter_forrest)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 11:56pm UTC](https://forum.pritunl.com/t/pritunl-crashing-becoming-unresponsive/3077/7 "2025-03-06T23:56:33Z")
This first screenshot is what it looks like most of the time - this is from the cloud VM host: ![Screenshot 2025-03-07 at 10.42.30 AM](https://forum-static.pritunl.com/original/2X/c/ce7d714e2e94ff965c5f172f5c00d65aa74ddea2.png) This second screenshot is from when it crashes. You can see a few spikes, but it’s not pinned at 100%. This graph is from Pritunl (not the cloud VM host): ![XuCC1iJTTU](https://forum-static.pritunl.com/original/2X/1/1fc827314748f3b1d05f6ea4e21259b1b8db89ed.png) ---
**Author:** ![zach](https://forum.pritunl.com/user_avatar/forum.pritunl.com/zach/32/1105_2.png) [@zach](https://forum.pritunl.com/u/zach)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2025, 12:31am UTC](https://forum.pritunl.com/t/pritunl-crashing-becoming-unresponsive/3077/8 "2025-03-07T00:31:02Z")
The MTU or comp-lzo warnings won’t cause the server to crash or increase load on the server. If there’s nothing in the output indicating what caused the process to exit run `sudo dmesg -THk` and look for out of memory errors or other errors. Also run `sudo journalctl --lines=5000` and check for errors. ---
**Author:** ![peter\_forrest](https://forum.pritunl.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/7cd45c/32.png) [@peter\_forrest](https://forum.pritunl.com/u/peter_forrest)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2025, 1:54am UTC](https://forum.pritunl.com/t/pritunl-crashing-becoming-unresponsive/3077/9 "2025-03-07T01:54:01Z")
> [@zach](#): > > `sudo journalctl -u mongodb -n ` when I do `sudo journalctl -u mongodb -n` (on each of the 3 servers), I get nothing. See attached screenshots. ![Screenshot 2025-03-07 at 12.50.41 PM](https://forum-static.pritunl.com/original/2X/4/46b36abc87c631134b69c1ea28724e311a36a715.png) ![Screenshot 2025-03-07 at 12.47.46 PM](https://forum-static.pritunl.com/original/2X/c/c3d9ac8436cf89d4cd3a475e948ee145b7689b25.png) ![Screenshot 2025-03-07 at 12.48.53 PM](https://forum-static.pritunl.com/original/2X/4/47215aa45977ab57d5b38db2dc7db8ea49f549a1.png)