debian lenny sudden restart

[Shimon Panfil]

Quoting Steve Litt <slitt at troubleshooters.com>:

> On Thursday 16 July 2009 11:21:58 am Shimon Panfil wrote:
>> Hi folks,
>> today my main box running debian lenny made sudden restart. How can I
>> investigate what was the reason? What log should I inspect? I use UPS
>> so the reason might be more interesting that simple power failure.
>
> Hi Shimon,
>
> You have a sparsely occurring intermittent -- as a matter of fact so far it's
> a single event. If the cause was software, it's possible you can find a clue
> in the logs.
>
> If I were in your shoes and there's no clue in the logs, I would just wait
> until the problem becomes frequent enough to be a bother. But if you want to
> address the problem right now, I'd suggest corrective maintenance:
>
> 1) Feel if the power supply is getting too hot, and replace it if so.
> 2) Vacuum out all the dust from the inside.
> 3) Pull off, lubricate (electronics lubricant) and reseat all cables.
> 4) If your motherboard batter is more than a year old, replace it.
> 5) Disable (open circuit) your reboot button, and replace your on/off button
> with a simple, non-lighted doorbell button.
>
> I learned #5 the hard way -- the reboot and power switches that come with the
> case can go intermittent, and not just intermittent open, but intermittently
> close without pushing.
>
> None of the preceding is diagnostic in nature, but given the rarity of the
> symptom, if the log files don't have something telling, the preceding are
> probably the best use of your time.
>
> HTH
>
> SteveT
>
> Steve Litt
> Recession Relief Package
> http://www.recession-relief.US
> Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt
>
>
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>
Hi folks,
I've got a few more restarts. I have switched off gdm so Xserver  
failure should not cause a restart. The box seems not too hot, but the  
problem might be connected with power, all restarts occur after few  
hours of heavy load.
There is nothing in logs. It looks like restart button was pressed.

My box is still under warranty so I can not play with hardware.  
However  I should like to understand how it works.  In particular I  
wander, is it possible that some user program cause immediate restart?  
Is it kernel which does it, or BIOS or whatever?

CPU: AMD QUAD 9750
MB: GIGABYTE-GA-MA790
OS:debian 5.0.2 (lenny)

Any ideas?




-- 
Shimon Panfil: Industrial Physics and Simulations
http://industrialphys.com