[sf-lug] Another motherboard was _not_ burned out today

[John F. Strazzarino]

Rick,

Thanks for the history of your CPU problems/concerns/successes.

If you would like a newer computer, I have several Dell Optiplex 760 P4 - 3.2 GHZ (2 GB) machines available for FREE.

Thanks

John

--------------------------------------------
On Mon, 2/16/15, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:

 Subject: [sf-lug] (forw) [conspire] Another motherboard was _not_ burned out	today
 To: sf-lug at linuxmafia.com
 Date: Monday, February 16, 2015, 1:15 PM
 
 
 ----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
 -----
 
 Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2015 13:03:20 -0800
 From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
 To: conspire at linuxmafia.com
 Subject: [conspire] Another motherboard was _not_ burned out
 today
 Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.
 
 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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