2009/12/11 Alex Birchall <a.birch...@mdx.ac.uk>: > Hi, > > I've emailed this list before regarding my Hardy Heron 8.04 server and > it's worrying propensity to shut itself down. > > When this happens I lose all remote access to the server, but I can > still ping it and get a speedy reply. And when I go into the server > room to look at the server, I can see that there seems to be a lot of > activity on the hard disk (indicated by flickering lights). > Unfortunately, the monitor shows "No Signal Input" and nothing I do on > the keyboard has any effect. So the only option is to physically switch > the server off and on.
Have you tried using the Magic SysRq key on the keyboard? In case you don't know: while holding down Alt+SysRq, press the following keys R E I S U B It's either BUSIER backwards or the mnemonic "raising elephants is so utterly boring", depending on which you prefer. I normally release the Alt+SysRq keys after pressing each letter, but I don't know whether or not that's necessary. Hopefully, this will sync the disks and reboot the machine without you needing the power switch. This will also give syslog a chance to write a log of what's gone wrong to the disk! The meanings of the keys, IIRC: R - raw keyboard mode (stop X grabbing the key presses) E - send SIGTERM to all processes I - send SIGTERM to init S - sync the disks U - unmount the mounted partitions B - reboot > Am I right in thinking that the server has not actually shut down but > has gone into some kind of low level hibernation state? Could it have > taken this action as a "sensible" response to some condition? If so, > what kind of event would trigger this behaviour? Is there a way of > finding out from one of the many log files? Can I stop it taking this > action? You'd need to find out what the reason for the action is in order to stop it. Try the suggestion above to see if there's anything written to the logs, somewhere under /var/log - maybe dmesg or messages or syslog. HTH Cofion/Regards, Neil. -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
