freebsd stable - Sep 2006 - 6.1-STABLE spontaneously reboots!

This server was in production and rock steady with 4.10-STABLE for years.
Before moving it to a colo center, I took it offline and did a clean
install of 6.1, cvsup'd to STABLE on 8/30/06 and then installed the latest
stable versions of all the applications and mods.

It's now back in production and for no cause that I can find, it reboots
itself roughly twice a day.  Nothing in the syslog or console log, it
looks basically like a power event...system comes back up with uncleanly
dismounted file systems.  However, it is on very clean power, has dual
power supplies and none of the other boxes on that circuit has any pwer
problems.

On boot, I had noticed some complaints about ACPI, but I even tried
disabling it, but it still did this several hours later.

The ONLY hardware change I'd made was to remove a SCSI passthrough cable
that enabled the on-board SCSI (it's an L440GX+) to be used with an
external tape drive.

If somebody can point me in the right direction, or to the right list, I'd
greatly appreciate it!

(please reply directly, as I am not subscribed to all lists)

James Smallacombe		      PlantageNet, Inc. CEO and Janitor
up@3.am							    http://3.am
=========================================================================

On Tue, Sep 05, 2006, up@3.am wrote:
> It's now back in production and for no cause that I can find, it
reboots
> itself roughly twice a day.  Nothing in the syslog or console log [...]
Try setting `dumpdev' in your rc.conf to the swap device. After the
machine reboots, you might get a dump in /var/crash.

On Tue, Sep 05, 2006 at 10:55:04AM -0400, up@3.am wrote:
> 
> This server was in production and rock steady with 4.10-STABLE for years.
> Before moving it to a colo center, I took it offline and did a clean
> install of 6.1, cvsup'd to STABLE on 8/30/06 and then installed the
latest
> stable versions of all the applications and mods.
> 
> It's now back in production and for no cause that I can find, it
reboots
> itself roughly twice a day.  Nothing in the syslog or console log, it
> looks basically like a power event...system comes back up with uncleanly
> dismounted file systems.  However, it is on very clean power, has dual
> power supplies and none of the other boxes on that circuit has any pwer
> problems.
It sounds like hardware trouble to me. I had a box go buggy on me after it
had been running for a long time. After I powered it on again it became
unstable. I suspect some part in the powersupply or on the mobo got
fried. 

But there are some things you could check.

Get syslog to log to another machine. That way you can check at which
time the reboots happen. If they are regular, there might be a
connection to running programs, cron jobs etc.
> On boot, I had noticed some complaints about ACPI, but I even tried
> disabling it, but it still did this several hours later.
> 
> The ONLY hardware change I'd made was to remove a SCSI passthrough
cable
> that enabled the on-board SCSI (it's an L440GX+) to be used with an
> external tape drive.
Check all internal connections; cables, and PCI cards if any. Check if
the RAM is properly seated. Maybe run a RAM test. Check the board for
bad capacitators.

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith                                   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
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