RE: Server Freezing Solid
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Chris Maness Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2008 6:43 AM To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Server Freezing Solid I am having a new problem. I have been running FreeBSD for years with no crashing. All of a sudden my server starts crashing with no panic messages. I am suspecting hardware because there are no messages, but the CPU temp is fine. Take the machine down, take it outside, take the cover off. Liberally blow all dust out with canned air. Unseat and reseat ALL connectors, including power, including CPU out of it's socket, including ram. Turn it back on and make sure the power supply fan is operating at full speed. Ted ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Server Freezing Solid
On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 6:06 AM, Steve Bertrand [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: I atually bought a small portable compressor (designed for running a nailgun, basically) for this purpose. $80 at Harbor Freight for a new one, you can get them cheaper used. The canned air is really expensive, you end up using a half a can on a PC. If you do the compressor, make sure you put a regulator on your blow gun: 80-120 psi of air coming out of a blowgun is capabable of blowing components off the circuit boards along with the dust. The compressor is also very useful for blowing out the air conditioner coils every year, as well as the refrigerator coils on the refrigerator. Doing just this will pay for the compressor in a few years in energy savings. The compressor suggestion is a great idea Ted. I would like to point out that there is usually a considerable amount of moisture that condenses as the air is being compressed into the tank. For this reason, I'd advise that either you leave the PC unplugged for 10 minutes or so after you've cleaned it to let any residual moisture dry, or purchase an inline water filter. The compressor also makes it quite a bit more convenient for topping up your vehicles tire air pressure (you know you don't do this regularly enough ;) Steve It was just cleaned a couple of months ago, and I think I will evoke the old proverb do me wrong once shame on you -- do me wrong twice shame on me. When I put the server on a couple of months ago, I ran into a couple of post stating that the Abit VP6 had issues with components that fail. This seems to have happened. The old 1U box I switched the hardrive to yesterday is working flawlessly. However, this machine is a little on the underpowered side. Chris Maness ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Server Freezing Solid
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Jeremy Chadwick Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2008 2:07 AM To: Ted Mittelstaedt Cc: Chris Maness; freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Server Freezing Solid On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 02:06:12AM -0800, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Chris Maness Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2008 6:43 AM To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Server Freezing Solid I am having a new problem. I have been running FreeBSD for years with no crashing. All of a sudden my server starts crashing with no panic messages. I am suspecting hardware because there are no messages, but the CPU temp is fine. Take the machine down, take it outside, take the cover off. Liberally blow all dust out with canned air. Unseat and reseat ALL connectors, including power, including CPU out of it's socket, including ram. Turn it back on and make sure the power supply fan is operating at full speed. This is excellent advice. I do this exact procedure once a year, usually before summer, to all desktop systems I have. I atually bought a small portable compressor (designed for running a nailgun, basically) for this purpose. $80 at Harbor Freight for a new one, you can get them cheaper used. The canned air is really expensive, you end up using a half a can on a PC. If you do the compressor, make sure you put a regulator on your blow gun: 80-120 psi of air coming out of a blowgun is capabable of blowing components off the circuit boards along with the dust. The compressor is also very useful for blowing out the air conditioner coils every year, as well as the refrigerator coils on the refrigerator. Doing just this will pay for the compressor in a few years in energy savings. Ted ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Server Freezing Solid
Chris Maness wrote: [snip] For this reason, I'd advise that either you leave the PC unplugged for 10 minutes or so after you've cleaned it to let any residual moisture dry, or purchase an inline water filter. Should always put a drier on a compressor. You'll learn the hard way if you invest in pneumatic tools; you will kill them if you don't. [snip] I ran into a couple of post stating that the Abit VP6 had issues with components that fail. This seems to have happened. The old 1U box I switched the hardrive to yesterday is working flawlessly. However, this machine is a little on the underpowered side. Without actually checking, if memory serves there were a number of products from that time frame that used inferior electrolytic filter caps. You can easily spot these by examining the top where there is metal showing through in the center surrounded by the plastic wrapper. In the caps that fail the plastic wrapper part will be swelled up and puffy looking, possibly even so far as to have cracks with goo oozing out of them. I have an Abit KD7A powering a small home development server that I've been really lucky with, it just sits there and keeps on doing it's thing. But I have a feeling you may have hit the bad cap problem with the VP6. -Mike ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Server Freezing Solid
On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 02:06:12AM -0800, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Chris Maness Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2008 6:43 AM To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Server Freezing Solid I am having a new problem. I have been running FreeBSD for years with no crashing. All of a sudden my server starts crashing with no panic messages. I am suspecting hardware because there are no messages, but the CPU temp is fine. Take the machine down, take it outside, take the cover off. Liberally blow all dust out with canned air. Unseat and reseat ALL connectors, including power, including CPU out of it's socket, including ram. Turn it back on and make sure the power supply fan is operating at full speed. This is excellent advice. I do this exact procedure once a year, usually before summer, to all desktop systems I have. -- | Jeremy Chadwickjdc at parodius.com | | Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB | ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Server Freezing Solid
Michael Powell wrote: Chris Maness wrote: [snip] For this reason, I'd advise that either you leave the PC unplugged for 10 minutes or so after you've cleaned it to let any residual moisture dry, or purchase an inline water filter. Should always put a drier on a compressor. You'll learn the hard way if you invest in pneumatic tools; you will kill them if you don't. ...but...how can I convince my wife that I need new tools when my existing ones last forever? Steve (just joking of course) ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Server Freezing Solid
On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 11:26:15AM -0500, Michael Powell wrote: Chris Maness wrote: [snip] For this reason, I'd advise that either you leave the PC unplugged for 10 minutes or so after you've cleaned it to let any residual moisture dry, or purchase an inline water filter. Should always put a drier on a compressor. You'll learn the hard way if you invest in pneumatic tools; you will kill them if you don't. [snip] I ran into a couple of post stating that the Abit VP6 had issues with components that fail. This seems to have happened. The old 1U box I switched the hardrive to yesterday is working flawlessly. However, this machine is a little on the underpowered side. Without actually checking, if memory serves there were a number of products from that time frame that used inferior electrolytic filter caps. You can easily spot these by examining the top where there is metal showing through in the center surrounded by the plastic wrapper. In the caps that fail the plastic wrapper part will be swelled up and puffy looking, possibly even so far as to have cracks with goo oozing out of them. I have an Abit KD7A powering a small home development server that I've been really lucky with, it just sits there and keeps on doing it's thing. But I have a feeling you may have hit the bad cap problem with the VP6. See http://www.badcaps.net for much more information about problems with bad capacitors, and yes the Abit VP6 is one of the boards that commonly exhibits that particular problem. -- Insert your favourite quote here. Erik Trulsson [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Server Freezing Solid
On Behalf Of Steve Bertrand Michael Powell wrote: Chris Maness wrote: [snip] For this reason, I'd advise that either you leave the PC unplugged for 10 minutes or so after you've cleaned it to let any residual moisture dry, or purchase an inline water filter. Should always put a drier on a compressor. You'll learn the hard way if you invest in pneumatic tools; you will kill them if you don't. ...but...how can I convince my wife that I need new tools when my existing ones last forever? Well, if you actually used them once in a while, and even did something she found useful, they wouldn't last so long and she wouldn't complain so loudly (B^). Bob McConnell ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Server Freezing Solid
Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: I atually bought a small portable compressor (designed for running a nailgun, basically) for this purpose. $80 at Harbor Freight for a new one, you can get them cheaper used. The canned air is really expensive, you end up using a half a can on a PC. If you do the compressor, make sure you put a regulator on your blow gun: 80-120 psi of air coming out of a blowgun is capabable of blowing components off the circuit boards along with the dust. The compressor is also very useful for blowing out the air conditioner coils every year, as well as the refrigerator coils on the refrigerator. Doing just this will pay for the compressor in a few years in energy savings. The compressor suggestion is a great idea Ted. I would like to point out that there is usually a considerable amount of moisture that condenses as the air is being compressed into the tank. For this reason, I'd advise that either you leave the PC unplugged for 10 minutes or so after you've cleaned it to let any residual moisture dry, or purchase an inline water filter. The compressor also makes it quite a bit more convenient for topping up your vehicles tire air pressure (you know you don't do this regularly enough ;) Steve ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Server Freezing Solid
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Michael Powell Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2008 8:26 AM To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Server Freezing Solid Chris Maness wrote: [snip] For this reason, I'd advise that either you leave the PC unplugged for 10 minutes or so after you've cleaned it to let any residual moisture dry, or purchase an inline water filter. Should always put a drier on a compressor. You'll learn the hard way if you invest in pneumatic tools; you will kill them if you don't. Really high quality pneumatic tools (industrial grade) can be completely disassembled, cleaned, and repaired. The consumer grade stuff usually can't. In large shops, the usual procedure is to distribute the air with really long runs of pipe and put water traps at the end - that's probably what your thinking of with a drier. The traps fill up and every once in a while you open their petcocks and they pee old sock-smelling water out on your shoes. With a small pancake compressor it is generally satisfactory to run it without a drier, and at the end of the day, pour a couple teaspoons of air tool oil into the tool air intake then reconnnect the airline and give it a puff to distribute the oil. [snip] I ran into a couple of post stating that the Abit VP6 had issues with components that fail. This seems to have happened. The old 1U box I switched the hardrive to yesterday is working flawlessly. However, this machine is a little on the underpowered side. Without actually checking, if memory serves there were a number of products from that time frame that used inferior electrolytic filter caps. You can The story I read was that the Chinese companies decided to get into making electrolytic caps a number of years ago. They sent spies into the Japanese companies to steal the electrolyte formula. Unknown to them the Japanese had anticipated this and so each batch of electrolyte was secretly treated with a stabilizer chemical that only the top chemists in the company knew about. The production chemists were unaware of it. When the Chinese firms stole the electrolytic formula, they produced caps that lacked this stabilizer. The result was the electrolyte broke down and the cap split. I don't know if it's a true story or not, but it sounded good! Ted ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Server Freezing Solid
On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 06:42:39AM -0800, Chris Maness wrote: I am having a new problem. I have been running FreeBSD for years with no crashing. All of a sudden my server starts crashing with no panic messages. I am suspecting hardware because there are no messages, but the CPU temp is fine. Weird --maybe bad RAM? Could be. But you can test RAM with e.g. memtest86. Or it could be a bad component (e.g. a capacitator) somewhere on the motherboard or in the powersupply. Or a spike or drop in the external power. Roland -- R.F.Smith http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/ [plain text _non-HTML_ PGP/GnuPG encrypted/signed email much appreciated] pgp: 1A2B 477F 9970 BA3C 2914 B7CE 1277 EFB0 C321 A725 (KeyID: C321A725) pgp6vW2Jmvoxu.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Server Freezing Solid
On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 07:40:47AM -0800, Chris Maness wrote: Roland Smith wrote: On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 06:42:39AM -0800, Chris Maness wrote: I am having a new problem. I have been running FreeBSD for years with no crashing. All of a sudden my server starts crashing with no panic messages. I am suspecting hardware because there are no messages, but the CPU temp is fine. Weird --maybe bad RAM? Could be. But you can test RAM with e.g. memtest86. Or it could be a bad component (e.g. a capacitator) somewhere on the motherboard or in the powersupply. Or a spike or drop in the external power. Roland I have swapped the HD back to the old box. I am up and running again. If it doesn't crash today, I can be certain the ol' grey mare needs to be taken out back and shot. Dual PIII on a Abit server board c. 2000. I hear that the Abit boards have issues with components. Anyone recommend a cheap (not necessarily the latest technology) mobo for my server? I am running a low load SoHo server here at the house. If you live in the US and would like a server-class Supermicro PDSMi+ board (just the board, although I could throw in some memory if you'd like), I have a spare which I could give to you for free. I just upgraded my home FreeBSD box to an X7SBA, so the older PDSMi+ sits in its box (I purchased it retail, so it comes with manual, cables, etc.). These boards retail for about US$240, and work very well with FreeBSD. Link to board: http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon3000/3000/PDSMi+.cfm Let me know. -- | Jeremy Chadwickjdc at parodius.com | | Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB | ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Server Freezing Solid
Roland Smith wrote: On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 06:42:39AM -0800, Chris Maness wrote: I am having a new problem. I have been running FreeBSD for years with no crashing. All of a sudden my server starts crashing with no panic messages. I am suspecting hardware because there are no messages, but the CPU temp is fine. Weird --maybe bad RAM? Could be. But you can test RAM with e.g. memtest86. Or it could be a bad component (e.g. a capacitator) somewhere on the motherboard or in the powersupply. Or a spike or drop in the external power. Roland I have swapped the HD back to the old box. I am up and running again. If it doesn't crash today, I can be certain the ol' grey mare needs to be taken out back and shot. Dual PIII on a Abit server board c. 2000. I hear that the Abit boards have issues with components. Anyone recommend a cheap (not necessarily the latest technology) mobo for my server? I am running a low load SoHo server here at the house. Chris Maness ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
