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crash left no trace

 
Dave Chamberlin
Trusted Contributor

crash left no trace

My dev machine, a k200 running HPUX 11.0 rebooted for no apparent reason yesterday. There are no cores, crashes or errors in the syslog.log file. The system does not have stm. I would like to know what might have happened. Can someone suggest any other places to look for a clue?
8 REPLIES 8
James R. Ferguson
Acclaimed Contributor

Re: crash left no trace

Hi Dave:

At the risk of stating the obvious, make sure that you are looking at '/var/adm/OLDsyslog.log' when you look at your "syslog".

Have a look at '/var/tombstones/ts99' for the more recent hardware picture.

Regards!

...JRF...
Stefan Farrelly
Honored Contributor

Re: crash left no trace


nothing in /var/tombstones/ts99 ? (chassis codes indicating a hardware fault)

Ive seen this happen lots of times (no trace) and it was in my experience (in order);

1. someone disloged the power cable (ie. bumped it - causing a power reset but not enough to knock it out or else it would have stayed down)
2. the power supply was disrupted by say a UPS power level switchover (power level dropped a little or exceeded specification, again causing a reset). This was mostly in the old days before power smoothers which ensured power levels remained constant in the event of a ups battery/generator failover.
3. the power unit on your K is faulty (rare in my experience - but it does happen. If this is true just wait - it will happen again and then you will know)

Do you know for sure there were no power problems (or work being done - no matter how many assurances you have that it shouldnt have caused a problem!), or that nobody was near your machine at the time ? last time this happened to us someone had simply opened the cabinet to get a cable, and bumped the main power cable!

Im from Palmerston North, New Zealand, but somehow ended up in London...
Dave Chamberlin
Trusted Contributor

Re: crash left no trace

Hi James,

Yep - I am looking at the correct syslog file. I know it only rebooted once, since the OLDsyslog file has entries up to the reboot. I don't have tombstones...

Thanks
Dave Chamberlin
Trusted Contributor

Re: crash left no trace

It is possible it is power related - though unlikely. It is on a UPS, and the power cord itself cannot be bumped (it goes up in to the ceiling). Someone could have turned off the key switch, but the access to the room is restricted to very few persons.

thanks
Patrick Wallek
Honored Contributor

Re: crash left no trace

Have you checked /etc/shutdownlog to see if anything was logged there?
Dave Chamberlin
Trusted Contributor

Re: crash left no trace

Yea - I looked in the /etc/shutdownlog - there are no entries from yesterday. There were also no disk problems on boot noted in the syslog.log file.
Patrick Wallek
Honored Contributor

Re: crash left no trace

With all these indications, or lack thereof, I would agree with Stefan that it really sounds like a power issue.

I would call the response center and log a hardware call, assuming you have a hardware support contract, and have them check the power supply on the box. I may indeed be going bad. And if it does just click off at some point, you won't see any indications anywhere.

If the power supply in the box itself is bad, it won't matter that you're on a UPS since you are on the downstream side of it.
Dave Chamberlin
Trusted Contributor

Re: crash left no trace

I will have support check out my power supply since that sounds most likely thus far. Thanks for the quick replies. Have a good holiday all!