[conspire] Waah, my little server crashed...

[Nick Moffitt]

Rick Moen:
> Well, that's a real poser, because normally _software_ problems would
> not cause the machine to shutdown and power off.  They might make the
> machine hang with a kernel panic message, or have critical processes
> segfault, or just seize up and give no indication of what's wrong, or
> reboot -- but all of those fault outcomes would tend to leave the
> machine verifiably powered up although not necessarily "running" in
> the functional sense.
> 
> So, I'm concluding that it's pretty definitively a hardware problem.
> Of course, it could have been a one-time thing.

The possible corner case here, of course, would be a bug in the ACPI
stack.  

The possibility is unlikely enough, however, that I'd concur with Rick's
assessment.  Hell, it's more likely to be a bug in the ACPI hardware
than in anything software-related.  

Your usual Linux critical failure mode results in either failed system
calls and oopses (which may kill an individual service daemon or user
process), or a panic which will wedge your system hard but leave all the
fans spun up and the lights on.

Not being funny, but I don't suppose you had a nearby wall-powered
digital clock start flashing 12:00 as well?  It could have been the
result of a power interruption and a strict BIOS setting.

-- 
You are in an open field west of a big white house            Nick Moffitt
with a boarded front door.                              nick at teh.entar.net
There is a small mailbox here.
> _