*BSD News Article 85068


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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.Hawaii.Edu!news.uoregon.edu!arclight.uoregon.edu!panix!news.mathworks.com!worldnet.att.net!uunet!in1.uu.net!198.133.164.1!omega.metrics.com!tomh
From: tomh@metrics.com (Tom Haapanen)
Subject: Re: BSDI 2.1 STOPING RANDOMLY
Organization: Software Metrics Inc.
Message-ID: <E2H0pC.I5@metrics.com>
References: <3233cbc4.17400812@news.ni.net> 
Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 19:56:00 GMT
Lines: 36
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:5448


stephen@sysconi.com wrote:
> Has anyone seen an issue where bsdi just stops and the main screen
> lockups with no responce at the login prompt, its happening now every
> weekday once a day. The only way to reslove it is reboot.
>
> My system on Friday also rebooted on its own, any ideas would be a
> great help

Our BSDI system has been wonderfully stable, but all of a sudden, about
a week and a half ago, it started rebooting randomly, easily 5-6 times
a day, with no panics, no messages in logs, no symptoms of any kind.
And *really* nothing had changed!

We eventually tracked this down to a failing power supply -- it would just
cut out randomly, and all of a sudden the BIOS boot screen would appear.
Ouch!

We couldn't get the right power supply quickly, so as a temporary workaround
we ran with an "external" supply -- a loose power supply sitting on a 
cardboard box next to the open case, with all power cables connected to
the appropriate places.  This fixed the random reboots, but now we were 
getting the hanging symptoms similar to yours ... it would just stop
responding.  This *might* have been due to lack of grounding and/or static
accumulation -- not sure.

Finally we got the right power supply in on Friday morning, and the system
has now been stable for 48 hours without a glitch, so I'm hoping that we
have eliminated the issue.

So it might be your power supply, but the only way to know for sure is to
swap it.  Not an expensive exercise, but a bit of a hassle.

-- 
[ /tom haapanen -- tomh@metrics.com -- software metrics inc -- waterloo, ont ]
[ "i don't even know what street canada is on"                  -- al capone ]