[conspire] Fwd: Another motherboard was _not_ burned out today

[Ross Bernheim]

> Begin forwarded message:
> 
> Subject: Re: [conspire] Another motherboard was _not_ burned out today
> From: Ross Bernheim <rossbernheim at speakeasy.net>
> Date: February 16, 2015 at 1:16:06 PM PST
> To: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
> 
> Rick,
> 
> We tend to think of AC power as being reliable and consistent. In many areas it 
> is not. And even at the best of times it is subject to sags, spikes, noise and other 
> problems.
> 
> You taught me the importance of a good power supply many years ago. But I 
> also put at least a good UPS with MOV’s to handle spikes and filtering between 
> my computers and the AC grid. It has prevented a lot of problems.
> 
> It seems that where you are tends to be subject to some issues if you are seeing
> such large spikes. You are wise indeed to put line conditioners or good UPS’s 
> between the power and your computers.
> 
> Ross
> 
> 
>> On Feb 16, 2015, at 1:03 PM, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:
>> 
>> This morning, my server was cut off from power, and that was A Good
>> Thing[tm].
>> 
>> Let's roll the timeline backwards a bit, then forward again.  
>> 
>> 
>> Saturday, January 24, 2015:
>> 
>> We had a CABAL meeting and I finally caught up on two more
>> deferred tasks:
>> 
>> 1. Swapping out a failed drive forming half of a mirrored pair, and
>> remirroring the RAID1 filesystems (/home, /var/lib, /usr/local,
>> /var/spool, /var/www) onto a replacement hard drive.
>> 
>> 2.  Finally putting the machine behind a (very good) AC power
>> conditioner unit, about which more below.
>> 
>> 
>> ~Sunday, January 4, 2015:
>> 
>> Michael Paoli and I work out that, against all probability, I indeed had
>> suffered another Intel L440GX+ motherboard failure, and so now move my
>> hard drives and RAM to yet another spare VA Linux Systems 2230 system
>> box and PSU.  Fixing the software problems that were simultaneous with
>> the hardware failure on August 27th takes a while after this.  (I am now
>> finally out of spares, by the way, but it's past time to cease using
>> 2001-era PIII servers anyway.)
>> 
>> 
>> Wednesday, September 3, 2014:
>> 
>> I swap out another failed motherboard, after finding that it had burned
>> out while I was on holiday in the UK and Ireland.
>> 
>> 
>> Wednesday, August 27, 2014:  In the middle of a software upgrade, I get
>> a kernel panic and then the machine fails to even produce video at all.  
>> Eventually, I isolate the cause to burned-out motherboard and swap it
>> for a spare Intel L440GX+.
>> 
>> 
>> 2010:  
>> 
>> Deirdre's ShuttlePC-style lunchbox-sized Celeron server that she's had
>> on house voltage dies and appears to be completely burned out.  She's
>> had it running since 2004, but it's now totally destroyed.  She moves
>> her domains to a VPS provider.
>> 
>> 
>> Wednesday, April 15, 2009:  Power fluctuations destroy my VA Research
>> model 500 server including all hard drives, the motherboard, all but one
>> stick of RAM, and the power supply unit.  I rebuild onto a spare VA
>> Linux Systems 2230 box and restore from backup.  Time to rebuild:  3
>> hours for basic server function, 2 days for restoration of all
>> services.[1]
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Rolling forward again to this morning:  My server is buffered from the AC 
>> supply by a Furman PS-8R Series II power conditioner / sequencer that I 
>> got for very little money at a De Anza College Electronics Fleamarket.  
>> It came with no manual, but there is one here:
>> http://www.furmansound.com/pdf/manuals/PS-8R_II_manual.pdf
>> 
>> This morning, my server wasn't pingable.  A visit to console showed it
>> to be powered off.  The Furman unit underneath it showed a red LED
>> marked 'Extreme Voltage'.  Quoting the manual:
>> 
>>  If the unit has been operating with an acceptable input voltage 
>>  and subsequently that voltage exceeds 135V, it will shut off power 
>>  to the outlet and the Extreme Voltage LED will light.
>> 
>> OK, so we have power spikes for some unclear reason, and server hardware
>> is at risk if not behind quality power conditioning.  
>> 
>> 
>> Yay, Furman PS-8R Series II!
>> 
>> I'll not even be unhappy about the need for a manual power reset when
>> this happens, long as it happens not too often.  ;->
>> 
>> 
>> I also own a (spare) APC-branded, smaller, less heavy duty power
>> conditioner unit, currently still in retail box. I think I'll deploy it
>> with my planned back-end server that will serve as the house LAN's
>> regular backup target, NIDS box, and configuration management master.
>> Possibly a Raspberry Pi 2 with attached hard drive.
>> 
>> 
>> [1] Large amounts of data had to be rsync'd from offsite storage on a
>> Joyent.com OpenSolaris box.  Because the data had been rsync'ed to there 
>> using Deirdre's non-root customer UID, all file-ownership metadata had
>> been flattened out (lost), and so I had to very carefully chown data
>> subtrees as needed, and rebuild many services manually to get ownerships
>> right.
>> 
>> 
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