[CentOS] how to debug hardware lockups?

Thu Nov 20 08:51:25 UTC 2008
Rudi Ahlers <rudiahlers at gmail.com>

On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 10:38 AM, John R Pierce <pierce at hogranch.com> wrote:
> Rudi Ahlers wrote:
>>
>> This is when I realized that the Q9300 CPU could be too big a
>> processor for the fan that I have installed.
>>
>> The fan that I have, is:
>> http://www.dynatron-corp.com/products/cpucooler/cpucooler_model.asp?id=165
>>
>> So, it looks like it's not really made for a Q9300 CPU, although their
>> specs say it is
>>
>
> that fan says its for up to 135 watt CPUs, I don't think a q9300 is anywhere
> near that, so unless that heatsink fan is grossly under its speced
> capability, I dont think thats a problem.   Yeah, the Q9300 is 95W max, and
> thats with all 4 cores running heavy math...
>
> HOWEVER.  Intel desktop boards generally have a passive heatsink on the
> northbridge and expect the downdraft from a conventional CPU fan to cool
> said northbridge.  your 1U configuration might not be moving enough air past
> that northbridge.   I know on my DG33TL in a desktop minitower, the G33
> northbridge runs pretty hot, and I had to arrange for some extra airflow
> past it since I used a 'tower cooler' which blew the air sideways rather
> than down.
>
> I still think running four instances of mprime (from www.mersenne.org) each
> bound to a different cpu affinity (-a0, -a1, -a2, -a3) and running the
> 'torture test' overnight will tell you a lot.   do this with xen disabled,
> just the base system running at init 3.  any sort of computational or memory
> timing related glitch will show up as a numeric error and be logged by the
> program.
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________

Well, as you can imagine, I didn't think the CPU would / could be a
problem when I installed it, due to it's lower wattage rating.

Looking at the motherboard layout, I wonder what will happen when I
turn the CPU fan 90 degrees "down" so that it blows through the very
large northbridge heatsink? I was even thinking of trying to look for
a NB heatsink with a fan, but don't know if they exist. I'll give that
a try, and see what happens.

The 2 butterfly fans are pretty useless though, since they blow
directly into the memory modules, and don't even come close to the CPU
/ NB.

On a side note, I'm able to touch the NB heatsink and it doesn't
really feel that hot. Unfortunately I can't get lm_sensors to work on
the MB, so I can't even tell the temp / fan speeds


-- 

Kind Regards
Rudi Ahlers