low-level format before install?

[Roland Smith]

On Tue, Apr 07, 2009 at 03:44:20PM -0400, John Almberg wrote:
> Apparently, power was fluctuating drastically before they decided to  
> cut power, so a hardware problem is a definite possibility. A PSU  
> failure would not surprise me in the circumstances.
> 
> Assuming I can ever ssh in again, what log would hardware failures be  
> reported to?

Often hardware problems can lock up or reboot the machine without any
warning in the logs. :-( It is next to impossible for PC class hardware
to catch hardware failures. But sysutils/healthd or sysutils/mbmon might
help in that they monitor vital motherboard parameters, which can then
be logged. 

Some systems log thermal events through the ACPI system or via the
coretemp driver, in which case devd(8) should get them. See devd.conf(5)
in a recent 7-STABLE, this manpage was recently enhanced by yours truly.

Big programs like compilers randomly dying with a signal 11 (SIGSEGV,
segmentation violation) can be a sign of memory problems.

If someone has access to the machine, have them make sure there are no
loose connectors and that any expansion cards are properly seated.

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith                                   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
[plain text _non-HTML_ PGP/GnuPG encrypted/signed email much appreciated]
pgp: 1A2B 477F 9970 BA3C 2914  B7CE 1277 EFB0 C321 A725 (KeyID: C321A725)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 196 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/attachments/20090407/9d9618fb/attachment.pgp