bcm reboots for no apparent reason

[pmcilnay]

Has anyone run into problems with a 3.5 doing a hard reboot periodicaly? Calls are dropped so it wouldn't be maintenance, right? Customer stated that it happens once every 3 months or so.

 

[MetalFRO]

Hi, this is my BCM he's referring to. It's a Nortel BCM 400 still running 3.5 software. About once every 3 months it does a complete reboot, almost like a power cycle, shutting down all services, & causing quite a lot of havoc for about 20 minutes (usually always in the middle of the day). Today, however, I got some new information about what might be happening, but I don't know how to interpret it.

On the system's base phone, the message "Alarm: 44-0" showed up. In the BCM 400's management system (under Diagnostics -> MSC -> Network event log -> items 16 - 20 as most recent), there is a series of several events in a row:

Alarm 044
Severity 8
Repeats 1
Time 20070329125526
Parameters 00

Event 336
Severity 5
Repeats 1
Time 20070329125539
Parameters 00

Event 325
Severity 5
Repeats 1
Time 20070329125627
Parameters 00

Event 328
Severity 5
Repeats 1
Time 20070329125527
Parameters 00

Event 323
Severity 5
Repeats 1
Time 20070329125636
Parameters 00

Can anyone explain this or know what this means?

 

[biv343]

Those are all T-1 related alarms and events. The only times I've ever seen a system do a full core reset is if there is a MSC card issue, which you could potentially have in your release of software, or the system needing a core patch.

Bulliten 2005006051, may have been updated since then, explains the potential issues with the MSC card.

 

[acewarlock]

Are you sure the BCM is rebooting or is the T1 just dropping, these would be 2 different problems. When this happens do the phone flash? do the LED's on the BCM flash?
Can you make internal calls?

 

[MetalFRO]

Yes, the phones flash, & all telephony is down. I can't say whether or not the lights on the BCM flash, it almost always happens when I'm out of the building (usually during my lunch break, no less), so I can't verify that.

 

[acewarlock]

Have you pulled the BFT out to see if the Capacitors are Blue or Green?

If there Green, you have the BFT problem and need to get it replaced.

 

[MetalFRO]

I have to admit, I'm still a newbie when it comes to the BCM 400 in the physical sense, so this is going to sound stupid, but what's a BFT?

 

[skb2005]

BFT is a Base Function Tray (Mother Board).

I was running BCM 400 on 3.5 and had the same problem, it was more frequent like twice a week. The BFT and MSC card were replaced free of cost by Nortel.

But the problem was still there even after replacing the above stuff. It was suggested by Nortel to upgrade to 3.7 because they did not support 3.5. We were not able to do the upgrade for unknown reasons, the upgrade process was failing at the start. Then we purchased new hard drive with 3.5 and upgraded to 3.7 and configured from scratch. So far it is running clean.

 

[MetalFRO]

Looks like it's time to check this out, eh Pat?

 

[acewarlock]

There are 2 draws in the BCM the top 1 is the harddrive and the lower 1 is the BFT, remove the 2 blacke screws and pull down on the lerers and the tray will slide out far enough to see if the Caps are Green or Blue. when you pull the BFT out the system will shutdown, so don't do this during the day unless you can loose the phone system for about 20 min for it to reboot.