Why Does My System Reboot Automatically?

[JimmyS]

For the last few days my system has intermittently rebooted itself. This isnt caused by a user as nobody else has access to do this. How can I find out what is causing this?
I am running SCO Version 5.0.5 (Release 3.2) on an old Osicom i386 machine.

 

[mrregan]

Do you possibly have a UPS battery that is going bad?

 

[JimmyS]

There isnt a UPS on the machine - could there be something else internal causing this?

 

[mrregan]

My guess is a power supply that is going bad, or your electrical connection is occasionally dropping. If you have access to a ups battery, you can eliminate external power problems as a possibility.

 

[edfair]

Anything that causes a fluctuation in the power good signal from the power supply will cause a reboot. Generally a flicker in the incoming power, or a brownout.
I would suggest the UPS like mrregan , but I would go further and suggest something like the APC650 or higher with the monitoring software for SCO for auto shutdown when the UPS is about to close up. Ed Fair
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[stanhubble]

check your /etc/default/boot file and see if you have a line that looks like:
PANICBOOT=YES

this causes the system to reboot in the event of a kernel panic. Which happens to remove any indication on the console screen as to what happened. If you set the above option to NO then the system will dump error information and then halt.

if it is a power problem then it will reboot automatically as it does now.

 

[JimmyS]

Thanks for this. The machine in question is based at another site from myself. Turns out the power supply to the fan had gone and the machine was overheating.

 

[jwilsterman]

I am having the similar issues. I have multiple new systems running running SCO Version 5.0.5. They are attached to seperate APC1000's. They will intermittently reboot themselves. PANICBOOT is set to NO.

I am baffled.

 

[PHV]

Have you checked /var/adm/syslog for some relevant info ?

Hope This Helps, PH.
Want to get great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at FAQ219-2884 or FAQ222-2244

 

[jwilsterman]

PHV,
I have checked the syslog. The only line that seems to show up before the server goes down is:

Nov 20 18:31:23 frz001 ftpd[5222]: #2 open of pid file failed: No such file or directory

I have seen this line on all of the servers that are shutting down as well as servers that are stable and have great uptime.

 

[PHV]

Are you using the PowerChute scripts ?
If yes you may take a look at the event logs.

Hope This Helps, PH.
Want to get great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at FAQ219-2884 or FAQ222-2244

 

[jwilsterman]

I just found more information. My motherboard calls for a 350W power supply. The computer shipped with a 320W.

The servers only go down at night when they are processing sales and backing up to tape.

The servers did not go down when I restored their data from the server I replaced.

Also, in the Bios, the IDE HDD Block Mode was set to enable. Would this be a problem?

Thank you