rebooting and crashes on dell server

Sun Aug 6 17:43:14 UTC 2006

I had a very similar experience with a Dell PowerEdge 2800
recently, not even 3 weeks have elapsed!
The problem, as we realized from some Dell engineer, was with
the firmware on the mobo of this model.
I was running FreeBSD 4.11-STABLE on the box.
I bought HP ML350, migrated the whole setup to it and no problems
even as I speak now!
I am still waiting for a replacement motherboard from Dell (local
vendor) for the 2800.

There is a Dell 2850 that I setup as a server for a client, using
FreeBSD 5.2.1. It's been running rock solid, and the only update
I ever did was to update it to 5.2.1-patch14, which it will never
go beyond, as I see no need.

So, the moral of the story? Put the Dell aside, get a good HP and
sit easy.

* On 28/02/06 21:44 -0800, BSD Guy wrote:
| Theres alot to this problem, but I'll try to be
| concise so I don't loose people.  I started out with a
| cheap dell server running scsi raid and 5.x  It
| crashed or locked up with a kernel panic in a
| different process (everything, syslog, you name it)
| ever few days.  I swapped ram around figuring it was
| at fault since it was bought used on ebay.  Still no
| luck.
| 
| Tired of messing with it, I bought a new dell
| poweredge 2650, with scsi raid, a couple gigs of ram,
| duals, and just a new system, configured it, copied
| user data over and switched to it.  Sure enough still
| the worst stability I've ever seen.  It has dual power
| supplies, each in a different UPS. I don't believe
| power is the problem or I'd see similar problems on
| the other server or router I have plugged in there.  I
| even upgraded to 6.0-Release-p1 but no luck.  
| 
| It panics from time to time, but usually now it just
| randomly reboots.  Often at least every 36 hours. 
| Often 2-3 times a few minutes apart when it does.  I
| did install a debug kernel 2 weeks ago to try to get a
| crash dump, but no panic's since then.
| 
| My make.conf is pretty simple:
| KERNCONF=crapbox
| CPUTYPE?=p4
| CFLAGS= -O -pipe
| NO_BLUETOOTH=   true    # do not build Bluetooth
| related stuff
| NO_I4B= true    # do not build isdn4bsd package
| NO_LPR= true    # do not build lpr and related
| programs
| NO_GAMES=        true    # do not build games (games/
| subdir)
| MAKE_IDEA=     YES     # IDEA (128 bit symmetric
| encryption)
| # added by use.perl 2005-09-29 11:26:41
| PERL_VER=5.8.7
| PERL_VERSION=5.8.7
| 
| Its not all that stressed of a box:
| load averages: 0.14, 0.07, 0.06
| Mem: 235M Active, 367M Inact, 160M Wired, 33M Cache,
| 99M Buf, 81M Free
| Swap: 1024M Total, 1024M Free
| 
| I've tweaked all the kernel values mentioned in the
| tuneable section of the manual, but the reboots
| continue.  The box runs radiator (a perl based radius
| server), apache+mod_ssl-1.3.x with php5, postfix-2.2,
| amavisd-new-2.3, courier-imap-4.0, pure-ftp, nrpe
| (nagios), net-snmp, ssh, and bind 9.3.1 all from ports
| (except radiator).  
| 
| I run the same mail server setup on another server
| with no problem, although it processes far less mail. 
| I use radiator on another server with no problem. 
| This is a unique combination of packages I'm running,
| but no unique programs or configurations to this
| server. Between amavis and radiator it does alot of
| perl, and everything is a mysql lookup to another
| server.  While all logic and experience points to a
| hardware problem I feel like the complete hardware
| replacement has pretty much laid the blame on
| software.  
| 
| I'm open to any suggestion as to what I might need to
| look at to clear this up. I'm about to have a nervous
| breakdown and insteall debian in desperation heh. I've
| tried a kernel without smp, I've tried disabling acpi
| on boot.  If you need any more information feel free
| to ask for it, I'll happily provide it.
| Thanks!  
| 
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-Wash

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... I'm IMAGINING a sensuous GIRAFFE, CAVORTING in the BACK ROOM of a
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