On Tue, 14 Jun 2016 11:19:15 -0400 Alvin Starr via talk <[email protected]> wrote: > With magical crashes I usually try to see if I can get any > diagnostics out a serial console because once in graphical mode a > crashing system usually has just a black screen. > Booting and running memtest would be a good idea. > I am assuming that the system does not have ECC memory so bad memory > could cause all kinds of funky problems. > Even if it has ECC depending on the motherboard failures can cause > reboots. > the 6300 is non ecc ddr3, I had a similar problem once and it turned out to be a contact issue i ran the system with the mb isolated from the case on an anti static pad - If it is a contact / power issue there will be no logs, reports or diagnostic info
It could also be some other things, but my money is on contact/power/mb as you have a reset at random times and under random load hth Andre > > > On 06/14/2016 11:10 AM, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote: > > We have a computer that started doing random and frequent restarts > > on the weekend. We don't know why. > > > > Any suggestions? > > > > It looks as if the power dips momentarily and the computer reboots, > > with no message that we have observe. But it could just as easily > > be a crash of some other kind that leaves no trace. > > > > The system is an HP Compaq Pro 6300 Small Form Factor PC running > > Fedora 20. > > > > The crash seems to be at different points (i.e. not one consistent > > software activity). The crashes don't seem correlated with heavy > > workloads (eg. it crashed a couple of times while I was staring at > > log files to see if there was any hint of the problem). > > > > Hypothesis: a Fedora 20 bug. But the software has not been changed > > in months. Updates have not been appled this year. Since the > > behaviour has changed without the software changing, I don't think > > that Fedora is to blame. > > > > Hypothesis: it might be heat-related (the room it is in gets > > warm). I vacuumed out the interior and defuzzed the heat sinks. > > This did not improve the uptime. > > > > Hypothesis: it might be contact-related. So I disconnected and > > reconnected most internal connectors and reseated the memory. > > This did not seem to improve the uptime. > > > > Hypothesis: it might be the power supply. Normally, I'd swap power > > supplies to test this hypothesis but this Small Form Factor computer > > has a unique (and probably expensive) power supply. I opted to move > > the disk to a Dell OptiPlex 990 Small Form Factor computer and use > > that. > > > > The Dell, with the HP's disk, seems stable. No rebooting. This is > > in the same warm room, but the weather has changed. > > > > In the original HP box, I installed a disk that I had laying around > > (a 60G drive from a discarded laptop), installed Ubuntu 16.04, and > > have been running four CPU-bound processes for 24 hours. No > > crash. I admit that this is in a cooler room. The heat and power > > load of a laptop drive is less than that of a 3.5" HDD, but I would > > not think that that is significant. > > > > The computer is a couple of years old but still has a year of > > warranty. There are confidential files on the disk drive so I'd > > like to narrow down the problem before calling in HP support. > > Asking for a particular replacement part is more convenient that > > shipping the computer back to HP. > > --- > > Talk Mailing List > > [email protected] > > https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk > --- Talk Mailing List [email protected] https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
