[Gllug] Mysterious reboots

[Nix]

On Tue, 4 Apr 2006, t. clarke suggested tentatively:
> I was under the impression that 'crashes' (due to a software problem)
> invariable resulted in a core dump to swap or wherever.

Not true unless you're running with the kdump patch installed (which
the vast majority of people aren't). Even then, only panic-and-reboots
will trigger a dump, and it's unreliable if the BIOS decides to
modify the RAM much, or if the CPU or RAM or HD interfaces or PSU are
faulty, one of which seems likely to me in this case.

> Whilst a 400W power supply might well be adequate,  it could be flaky.
> If you have a spare one it might be worth swapping to see if it makes any
> difference.

Yeah. Note that RAID will strain the PSU more than non-RAID, because
disks have higher power requirements when reading/writing than they
do when idle, and now you're incurring a lot of simultaneous disk
hits...

-- 
`Come now, you should know that whenever you plan the duration of your
 unplanned downtime, you should add in padding for random management
 freakouts.'
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