Re: Freebsd - restarting itself?!
Hi Jason, If there was not a clean shutdown, I would start looking for faulty hardware, assuming the power was not interrupted. Any machine that spontaniously reboots on its' own usually has a bad power supply, but it could be very well be the motherboard, or even something else. Further, as many other people have said, just because the hardware is new does not necessarily mean it is problem-free. Look especially for the condensators on the motherboard. There is a wide-spread problem with a Taiwanese company having produced bad electrolyte. The resulting condensators are found in motherboards of nearly all manufacturers and (as I can say out of my own experience) give exactly the behaviour, you described. This is off topic (sort of), but out of curiosity, could problems like that on a motherboard cause problems relating to memory? If so, I bet this explains my problems at work lately with an NT4 server giving me the BSOD all the time with memory errors. First, when I wrote condensators, I meant electrolytic capacitors, sorry for the Germanism. Look where your faulty capacitors are placed on your motherboard. There are several of them around the processor socket and some next to the memory banks. They supply these parts with current, if the demand heavily changes, as these fluctuations can't be compensated by the power supply unit. My faulty capacitors were placed around the processor and I've seen exactly the above-mentioned behaviour of spontaneously reboots. If your faulty ones are for the memory modules, all kinds of memory errors could be caused by this. BTW, if you think about replacing the capacitors, make sure you get low-ESR-capacitors, normal ones won't work. I got mine from farnell.com. Ciao Siegbert ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Freebsd - restarting itself?!
On Fri, Mar 28, 2003 at 01:28:53AM +0100, Siegbert Baude wrote: If there was not a clean shutdown, I would start looking for faulty hardware, assuming the power was not interrupted. Any machine that spontaniously reboots on its' own usually has a bad power supply, but it could be very well be the motherboard, or even something else. Further, as many other people have said, just because the hardware is new does not necessarily mean it is problem-free. Look especially for the condensators on the motherboard. There is a wide-spread problem with a Taiwanese company having produced bad electrolyte. The resulting condensators are found in motherboards of nearly all manufacturers and (as I can say out of my own experience) give exactly the behaviour, you described. This is off topic (sort of), but out of curiosity, could problems like that on a motherboard cause problems relating to memory? If so, I bet this explains my problems at work lately with an NT4 server giving me the BSOD all the time with memory errors. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Freebsd - restarting itself?!
On Mon, Mar 24, 2003 at 11:20:56AM -0800, Steve Warwick wrote: Hi All, Is it possible for FreeBSD to shut itself down and restart for no reason? My machine was restarted last night and my hosting company claims they did not touch the server or have any problems. This has been going of for a few months now -- intermittent restarts that no one claims responsibility for. This is a new machine with the latest OS (4.7) so I can't blame a faulty power supply or something like -- I have more fans than Britney in the server, for HD and CPU so I don't think it's a temp problem. Run /usr/bin/last and check the line below the last 'reboot' (which is when the system came up). If you see 'shutdown', then FreeBSD did a clean shutdown because someone or something told it to do so. Any users that are logged in to the system will have 'shutdown' as their logout time. If there is no 'shutdown' before the reboot, then the system did not cleanly restart. You would also likely see / not cleanly unmounted, checking (that is not the exact message, but it is similar) in dmesg before the Mounting root from ... line. If any users were logged in, you will see 'crash' as their logout time. Here are two examples; This is normal. I shut down the system myself: reboot ~ Thu Mar 27 17:40 shutdown ~ Thu Mar 27 17:39 root ttyv0 Thu Mar 27 17:27 - shutdown (00:12) This is a crash. The power flickered in this case: reboot ~ Mon Feb 24 00:52 jhuntttyv0 Sun Feb 23 12:31 - crash (12:20) If there was not a clean shutdown, I would start looking for faulty hardware, assuming the power was not interrupted. Any machine that spontaniously reboots on its' own usually has a bad power supply, but it could be very well be the motherboard, or even something else. Further, as many other people have said, just because the hardware is new does not necessarily mean it is problem-free. Hope this helps. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Freebsd - restarting itself?!
If there was not a clean shutdown, I would start looking for faulty hardware, assuming the power was not interrupted. Any machine that spontaniously reboots on its' own usually has a bad power supply, but it could be very well be the motherboard, or even something else. Further, as many other people have said, just because the hardware is new does not necessarily mean it is problem-free. Look especially for the condensators on the motherboard. There is a wide-spread problem with a Taiwanese company having produced bad electrolyte. The resulting condensators are found in motherboards of nearly all manufacturers and (as I can say out of my own experience) give exactly the behaviour, you described. Ciao Siegbert ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Freebsd - restarting itself?!
On Fri, 28 Mar 2003 10:58, Siegbert Baude wrote: If there was not a clean shutdown, I would start looking for faulty hardware, assuming the power was not interrupted. Any machine that spontaniously reboots on its' own usually has a bad power supply, but it could be very well be the motherboard, or even something else. Further, as many other people have said, just because the hardware is new does not necessarily mean it is problem-free. Look especially for the condensators on the motherboard. There is a wide-spread problem with a Taiwanese company having produced bad electrolyte. The resulting condensators are found in motherboards of nearly all manufacturers and (as I can say out of my own experience) give exactly the behaviour, you described. Ciao Siegbert I take it that by 'condensators' you mean eletrolytic capacitors? Malcolm Kay ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Freebsd - restarting itself - followup
Right now I have the exact same thing happening to one machine. It is located offsite (naturally) and about 10 days ago it had a random shutdown (did not come back up) followed by a random reboot a couple days later. It had been running 50-60 days previous. The shutdown occurred just after business hours, the reboot at about 4am. I now have the machine emailing me at specific intervals to try to narrow things down. I have a couple ideas for the both of us. One is that maybe the machine is plugged into a faulty power line, something that is borking the current enough to cause reboots. Another is that maybe the PSU is dying prematurely (3mos old for me). I wish us both good luck. -Derrick Almost certainly heat related. Even really good cpu/ps fans in a clean environment will only last a year or so running 24/7. Most just weren't built with this kind of use in mind. I made a habit of checking fans yearly and replacing as needed. However, I've never had box shutdown, only reboot. Did it really shut down, or was it maybe hung on boot wanting a manual fsck or something? If it actually shutdown, and you're not connected to a ups running a shutdown daemon, I would suspect someone did it accidentally or intentionally... Maybe something like kill 1? :) I was also never a power supply snob in the past, but I can honestly say now that I will not buy generic p/s anymore. I went thru 2 generic p/s on my home machine before buying the nice $100 antec... I haven't had any problems since... No lockups/reboots/etc. It definitely turned my thinking around. Brent To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Freebsd - restarting itself?!
Hi All, Is it possible for FreeBSD to shut itself down and restart for no reason? My machine was restarted last night and my hosting company claims they did not touch the server or have any problems. This has been going of for a few months now -- intermittent restarts that no one claims responsibility for. This is a new machine with the latest OS (4.7) so I can't blame a faulty power supply or something like -- I have more fans than Britney in the server, for HD and CPU so I don't think it's a temp problem. Thoughts, suggestions? TIA Steve To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: Freebsd - restarting itself?!
This is a wild guess, but it might be due to kernel panics related to write caching (which is on by default since 4.6) Such a panic will happen when ever heavy disc load occurs. Try setting hw.ata.wc=0 in /boot/loader.conf and see if the problem goes away. Will On Monday 24 March 2003 21:20, someone, possibly Steve Warwick, typed: Hi All, Is it possible for FreeBSD to shut itself down and restart for no reason? My machine was restarted last night and my hosting company claims they did not touch the server or have any problems. This has been going of for a few months now -- intermittent restarts that no one claims responsibility for. This is a new machine with the latest OS (4.7) so I can't blame a faulty power supply or something like -- I have more fans than Britney in the server, for HD and CPU so I don't think it's a temp problem. Thoughts, suggestions? TIA Steve To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message -- Willie Viljoen Freelance IT Consultant 214 Paul Kruger Avenue, Universitas Bloemfontein 9321 South Africa +27 51 522 15 60 +27 51 522 44 36 (after hours) +27 82 404 03 27 (mobile) [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: Freebsd - restarting itself?!
On Mon, 2003-03-24 at 14:20, Steve Warwick wrote: Hi All, Is it possible for FreeBSD to shut itself down and restart for no reason? My machine was restarted last night and my hosting company claims they did not touch the server or have any problems. This has been going of for a few months now -- intermittent restarts that no one claims responsibility for. This is a new machine with the latest OS (4.7) so I can't blame a faulty power supply or something like -- I have more fans than Britney in the server, for HD and CPU so I don't think it's a temp problem. Have you checked your logs? Are there any indications of something going terribly wrong? Maybe someone has remotely exploited your box and is rebooting it just to be a bastard? New machines are not always perfect. In fact, I consider them untested. I've installed plenty of machines at work that didn't work right out of the box. So, hardware problems cannot be ruled out just by saying the machine is new. -- Adam [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: Freebsd - restarting itself?!
Don't rule out hardware just because it is new... I've had plenty of new hardware fail on me within the first 24 hours of operation, and the symptoms can be rebooting or shutting down completely. What do the log files in /var/log/ say? At 11:20 AM 3/24/2003 -0800, you wrote: Hi All, Is it possible for FreeBSD to shut itself down and restart for no reason? My machine was restarted last night and my hosting company claims they did not touch the server or have any problems. This has been going of for a few months now -- intermittent restarts that no one claims responsibility for. This is a new machine with the latest OS (4.7) so I can't blame a faulty power supply or something like -- I have more fans than Britney in the server, for HD and CPU so I don't think it's a temp problem. Thoughts, suggestions? TIA Steve To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message -- Peter Elsner [EMAIL PROTECTED] Vice President Of Customer Service (And System Administrator) 1835 S. Carrier Parkway Grand Prairie, Texas 75051 (972) 263-2080 - Voice (972) 263-2082 - Fax (972) 489-4838 - Cell Phone (425) 988-8061 - eFax I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though she's too young to have logged on yet. Here's what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 years from now, she will come to me and say Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet? -- Mike Godwin Unix IS user friendly... It's just selective about who its friends are. System Administration - It's a dirty job, but somebody said I had to do it. If you receive something that says 'Send this to everyone you know, pretend you don't know me. Standard $500/message proofreading fee applies for UCE. To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: Freebsd - restarting itself - followup
Hardware could still be an issue... It might be a CPU fan going out. That would explain the reboots. CPU overheats and then reboots. If it's been running fine for 4 months, yes, then it's burned in, but the fan (or some other hardware) might have failed in the mean time. Peter At 01:09 PM 3/24/2003 -0800, you wrote: Hi All, Thanks to all of you that replied so promptly to my question. However I think I failed to outline the situation clearly enough so with the responses so far in mind... Question was: Is it possible for FreeBSD to shut itself down and restart for no reason? - The new server in question has been running at another facility without any problems for about 4 months so I am assuming it is burned in and stable. - The logs (var/log/messages, /var/log/httpd-error.log) do not show any obvious issues such as kernel panics, just a hard restart (/ not dismounted correctly) - As far as I can tell the box has not been exploited -- if someone we restarting the machine via software then / would dismount correctly. Further thoughts, suggestions? TIA Steve --- Previous question in full: My machine was restarted last night and my hosting company claims they did not touch the server or have any problems. This has been going of for a few months now -- intermittent restarts that no one claims responsibility for. This is a new machine with the latest OS (4.7) so I can't blame a faulty power supply or something like -- I have more fans than Britney in the server, for HD and CPU so I don't think it's a temp problem. To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message -- Peter Elsner [EMAIL PROTECTED] Vice President Of Customer Service (And System Administrator) 1835 S. Carrier Parkway Grand Prairie, Texas 75051 (972) 263-2080 - Voice (972) 263-2082 - Fax (972) 489-4838 - Cell Phone (425) 988-8061 - eFax I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though she's too young to have logged on yet. Here's what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 years from now, she will come to me and say Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet? -- Mike Godwin Unix IS user friendly... It's just selective about who its friends are. System Administration - It's a dirty job, but somebody said I had to do it. If you receive something that says 'Send this to everyone you know, pretend you don't know me. Standard $500/message proofreading fee applies for UCE. To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: Freebsd - restarting itself - followup
Hello Steve: On Monday, March 24, 2003, at 01:09 PM, Steve Warwick wrote: Hi All, Thanks to all of you that replied so promptly to my question. However I think I failed to outline the situation clearly enough so with the responses so far in mind... Question was: Is it possible for FreeBSD to shut itself down and restart for no reason? - The new server in question has been running at another facility without any problems for about 4 months so I am assuming it is burned in and stable. - The logs (var/log/messages, /var/log/httpd-error.log) do not show any obvious issues such as kernel panics, just a hard restart (/ not dismounted correctly) - As far as I can tell the box has not been exploited -- if someone we restarting the machine via software then / would dismount correctly. Further thoughts, suggestions? I would seriously suspect my provider at this point. Are they supplying you with AC power straight from the wall, or do you have a UPS of some sort in line between the power source and your server? If you're running straight, you may want to consider getting a UPS that has either SNMP or syslog facility so you can trap out any alarms if/when the AC from the wall fails. Mike -- Michael K. Smith NoaNet 206.219.7116 (work) 206.579.8360 (cell) [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.noanet.net To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: Freebsd - restarting itself - followup
On Mon, Mar 24, 2003 at 01:09:19PM -0800, Steve Warwick wrote: Hi All, Thanks to all of you that replied so promptly to my question. However I think I failed to outline the situation clearly enough so with the responses so far in mind... Question was: Is it possible for FreeBSD to shut itself down and restart for no reason? No. If it's restarting, there's a reaon. - The new server in question has been running at another facility without any problems for about 4 months so I am assuming it is burned in and stable. Is it possible the box was damaged in transit? - The logs (var/log/messages, /var/log/httpd-error.log) do not show any obvious issues such as kernel panics, just a hard restart (/ not dismounted correctly) So heat related issues are possible, also bad ram, video, or PSU. I've seen all 4 of those cause spontanious reboots with nothing in the logs. - As far as I can tell the box has not been exploited -- if someone we restarting the machine via software then / would dismount correctly. I'm pretty sure that if I had root on a box I could figure out a way to make it reboot as you are describing. I'm not saying that's feasable, but it could happen. Further thoughts, suggestions? TIA Steve I'd also agree with the others who said to suspect the power condition at your colo. Josh To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
RE: Freebsd - restarting itself - followup
Hi All, Thanks to all of you that replied so promptly to my question. However I think I failed to outline the situation clearly enough so with the responses so far in mind... Question was: Is it possible for FreeBSD to shut itself down and restart for no reason? - The new server in question has been running at another facility without any problems for about 4 months so I am assuming it is burned in and stable. - The logs (var/log/messages, /var/log/httpd-error.log) do not show any obvious issues such as kernel panics, just a hard restart (/ not dismounted correctly) - As far as I can tell the box has not been exploited -- if someone we restarting the machine via software then / would dismount correctly. Right now I have the exact same thing happening to one machine. It is located offsite (naturally) and about 10 days ago it had a random shutdown (did not come back up) followed by a random reboot a couple days later. It had been running 50-60 days previous. The shutdown occurred just after business hours, the reboot at about 4am. I now have the machine emailing me at specific intervals to try to narrow things down. I have a couple ideas for the both of us. One is that maybe the machine is plugged into a faulty power line, something that is borking the current enough to cause reboots. Another is that maybe the PSU is dying prematurely (3mos old for me). I wish us both good luck. -Derrick To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: Freebsd - restarting itself?!
At 02:20 PM 3/24/2003, Steve Warwick wrote: Hi All, Is it possible for FreeBSD to shut itself down and restart for no reason? No. It won't happen spontaneously without a reason. The reason is not always intuitively obvious, but it won't happen without a reason. I've had FreeBSD servers run for 14-18months without a single reboot. When one of them starts crashing or rebooting, there is a reason. Recently I began having this happen on a previously stable machine (no reboot for 9 months) and I eventually traced it down to a hard drive that began to fail. I've seen it be RAM, CPU cooling fan, HD, video card. I've learned the hard way to spend the extra money and buy good hardware. I've got an Intel providence dual ppro MB box that typically will run 12+ months between reboots, only rebooting it when the HD gets full and I need to add another one, or i feel like i really want to reinstall the OS because i wonder if someone cracked it and replaced all the binaries ;). My machine was restarted last night and my hosting company claims they did not touch the server or have any problems. This has been going of for a few months now -- intermittent restarts that no one claims responsibility for. If they have the root passwd i'd change it. UPS is also mandatory. This is a new machine with the latest OS (4.7) so I can't blame a faulty power supply or something like -- I have more fans than Britney in the server, for HD and CPU so I don't think it's a temp problem. I've actually found that new hardware is more likely to fail than old hardware, (except perhaps hard drives). If hard ware doesn't fail initially i've found it will last until it becomes obsolete. (generally speaking). I've found this can be a long process to track down. It usually requires changing one thing at a time, and waiting. If you change too many things at once then you won't know which one made the diff. I'd start with a root passwd change and make sure I have a good UPS. good luck dave To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: Freebsd - restarting itself?!
On Mon, Mar 24, 2003 at 11:20:56AM -0800, Steve Warwick wrote: Hi All, Is it possible for FreeBSD to shut itself down and restart for no reason? Yes. My machine was restarted last night and my hosting company claims they did not touch the server or have any problems. This has been going of for a few months now -- intermittent restarts that no one claims responsibility for. The machine is probably rebooting itself. This is a new machine with the latest OS (4.7) so I can't blame a faulty power supply or something like -- I have more fans than Britney in the server, for HD and CPU so I don't think it's a temp problem. Thoughts, suggestions? TIA Steve Why can't you blame the power supply? Just because it's new? It's new is not really a valid troubleshooting technique, especially when you have the evidence that something is broken staring you in the face. I'm not trying to say you don't have a software issue, but in my experience with FreeBSD, if you're having reboots I start looking for faulty hardware right away. My first test is always to swap out the RAM, and then go from there. soapbox One of the things I really like about FreeBSD is that it does not play nicely with flakey, old, broken, or otherwise fux0rd hardware. I don't care if it's brand new, worked fine in windows AND linux, or any other excuse, if you are seeing reboots that's a pretty good sign there's flakey hardware in the box. /soapbox Josh To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: Freebsd - restarting itself?!
One more thing check you cpu. You could have a bad fan on the cpu, rebooting usually mean it's overheating. Are you ovoerclocking the CPU? You could always as stated faulted hardware. You could put out everything that is not needed to boot up. Then start replace each part until you find out what is bad. Payne On 3/24/03 2:44 PM, Josh Paetzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, Mar 24, 2003 at 11:20:56AM -0800, Steve Warwick wrote: Hi All, Is it possible for FreeBSD to shut itself down and restart for no reason? Yes. My machine was restarted last night and my hosting company claims they did not touch the server or have any problems. This has been going of for a few months now -- intermittent restarts that no one claims responsibility for. The machine is probably rebooting itself. This is a new machine with the latest OS (4.7) so I can't blame a faulty power supply or something like -- I have more fans than Britney in the server, for HD and CPU so I don't think it's a temp problem. Thoughts, suggestions? TIA Steve Why can't you blame the power supply? Just because it's new? It's new is not really a valid troubleshooting technique, especially when you have the evidence that something is broken staring you in the face. I'm not trying to say you don't have a software issue, but in my experience with FreeBSD, if you're having reboots I start looking for faulty hardware right away. My first test is always to swap out the RAM, and then go from there. soapbox One of the things I really like about FreeBSD is that it does not play nicely with flakey, old, broken, or otherwise fux0rd hardware. I don't care if it's brand new, worked fine in windows AND linux, or any other excuse, if you are seeing reboots that's a pretty good sign there's flakey hardware in the box. /soapbox Josh To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
