<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><br class=""><div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">Begin forwarded message:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;" class=""><span style="font-family: -webkit-system-font, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1.0);" class=""><b class="">Subject: </b></span><span style="font-family: -webkit-system-font, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif;" class=""><b class="">Re: [conspire] Another motherboard was _not_ burned out today</b><br class=""></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;" class=""><span style="font-family: -webkit-system-font, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1.0);" class=""><b class="">From: </b></span><span style="font-family: -webkit-system-font, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif;" class="">Ross Bernheim <<a href="mailto:rossbernheim@speakeasy.net" class="">rossbernheim@speakeasy.net</a>><br class=""></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;" class=""><span style="font-family: -webkit-system-font, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1.0);" class=""><b class="">Date: </b></span><span style="font-family: -webkit-system-font, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif;" class="">February 16, 2015 at 1:16:06 PM PST<br class=""></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;" class=""><span style="font-family: -webkit-system-font, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1.0);" class=""><b class="">To: </b></span><span style="font-family: -webkit-system-font, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif;" class="">Rick Moen <<a href="mailto:rick@linuxmafia.com" class="">rick@linuxmafia.com</a>><br class=""></span></div><br class=""><div class="">Rick,<br class=""><br class="">We tend to think of AC power as being reliable and consistent. In many areas it <br class="">is not. And even at the best of times it is subject to sags, spikes, noise and other <br class="">problems.<br class=""><br class="">You taught me the importance of a good power supply many years ago. But I <br class="">also put at least a good UPS with MOV’s to handle spikes and filtering between <br class="">my computers and the AC grid. It has prevented a lot of problems.<br class=""><br class="">It seems that where you are tends to be subject to some issues if you are seeing<br class="">such large spikes. You are wise indeed to put line conditioners or good UPS’s <br class="">between the power and your computers.<br class=""><br class="">Ross<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">On Feb 16, 2015, at 1:03 PM, Rick Moen <<a href="mailto:rick@linuxmafia.com" class="">rick@linuxmafia.com</a>> wrote:<br class=""><br class="">This morning, my server was cut off from power, and that was A Good<br class="">Thing[tm].<br class=""><br class="">Let's roll the timeline backwards a bit, then forward again. <br class=""><br class=""><br class="">Saturday, January 24, 2015:<br class=""><br class="">We had a CABAL meeting and I finally caught up on two more<br class="">deferred tasks:<br class=""><br class="">1. Swapping out a failed drive forming half of a mirrored pair, and<br class="">remirroring the RAID1 filesystems (/home, /var/lib, /usr/local,<br class="">/var/spool, /var/www) onto a replacement hard drive.<br class=""><br class="">2. Finally putting the machine behind a (very good) AC power<br class="">conditioner unit, about which more below.<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">~Sunday, January 4, 2015:<br class=""><br class="">Michael Paoli and I work out that, against all probability, I indeed had<br class="">suffered another Intel L440GX+ motherboard failure, and so now move my<br class="">hard drives and RAM to yet another spare VA Linux Systems 2230 system<br class="">box and PSU. Fixing the software problems that were simultaneous with<br class="">the hardware failure on August 27th takes a while after this. (I am now<br class="">finally out of spares, by the way, but it's past time to cease using<br class="">2001-era PIII servers anyway.)<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">Wednesday, September 3, 2014:<br class=""><br class="">I swap out another failed motherboard, after finding that it had burned<br class="">out while I was on holiday in the UK and Ireland.<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">Wednesday, August 27, 2014: In the middle of a software upgrade, I get<br class="">a kernel panic and then the machine fails to even produce video at all. <br class="">Eventually, I isolate the cause to burned-out motherboard and swap it<br class="">for a spare Intel L440GX+.<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">2010: <br class=""><br class="">Deirdre's ShuttlePC-style lunchbox-sized Celeron server that she's had<br class="">on house voltage dies and appears to be completely burned out. She's<br class="">had it running since 2004, but it's now totally destroyed. She moves<br class="">her domains to a VPS provider.<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">Wednesday, April 15, 2009: Power fluctuations destroy my VA Research<br class="">model 500 server including all hard drives, the motherboard, all but one<br class="">stick of RAM, and the power supply unit. I rebuild onto a spare VA<br class="">Linux Systems 2230 box and restore from backup. Time to rebuild: 3<br class="">hours for basic server function, 2 days for restoration of all<br class="">services.[1]<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">Rolling forward again to this morning: My server is buffered from the AC <br class="">supply by a Furman PS-8R Series II power conditioner / sequencer that I <br class="">got for very little money at a De Anza College Electronics Fleamarket. <br class="">It came with no manual, but there is one here:<br class=""><a href="http://www.furmansound.com/pdf/manuals/PS-8R_II_manual.pdf" class="">http://www.furmansound.com/pdf/manuals/PS-8R_II_manual.pdf</a><br class=""><br class="">This morning, my server wasn't pingable. A visit to console showed it<br class="">to be powered off. The Furman unit underneath it showed a red LED<br class="">marked 'Extreme Voltage'. Quoting the manual:<br class=""><br class=""> If the unit has been operating with an acceptable input voltage <br class=""> and subsequently that voltage exceeds 135V, it will shut off power <br class=""> to the outlet and the Extreme Voltage LED will light.<br class=""><br class="">OK, so we have power spikes for some unclear reason, and server hardware<br class="">is at risk if not behind quality power conditioning. <br class=""><br class=""><br class="">Yay, Furman PS-8R Series II!<br class=""><br class="">I'll not even be unhappy about the need for a manual power reset when<br class="">this happens, long as it happens not too often. ;-><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">I also own a (spare) APC-branded, smaller, less heavy duty power<br class="">conditioner unit, currently still in retail box. I think I'll deploy it<br class="">with my planned back-end server that will serve as the house LAN's<br class="">regular backup target, NIDS box, and configuration management master.<br class="">Possibly a Raspberry Pi 2 with attached hard drive.<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">[1] Large amounts of data had to be rsync'd from offsite storage on a<br class="">Joyent.com OpenSolaris box. Because the data had been rsync'ed to there <br class="">using Deirdre's non-root customer UID, all file-ownership metadata had<br class="">been flattened out (lost), and so I had to very carefully chown data<br class="">subtrees as needed, and rebuild many services manually to get ownerships<br class="">right.<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">conspire mailing list<br class="">conspire@linuxmafia.com<br class="">http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/conspire<br class=""><br class=""></blockquote><br class=""></div></blockquote></div><br class=""></body></html>