[CentOS] Emergency rescue help needed

Fri Jan 30 10:45:11 UTC 2009
Michael Simpson <mikie.simpson at gmail.com>

On 1/30/09, Anne Wilson <cannewilson at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Friday 30 January 2009 09:32:27 Sorin Srbu wrote:
> > >-----Original Message-----
> > >From: centos-bounces at centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On
> > > Behalf Of Scott Silva
> > >Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2009 5:37 PM
> > >To: centos at centos.org
> > >Subject: Re: [CentOS] Emergency rescue help needed
> > >
> > >If you had many power failures, the filesystem might just be severely
> > > trashed. Journals and files out of sync, etc... If a good fsck didn't fix
> > > it, you might just be in for a wipe-reinstall, or many hours of finding
> > > and fixing corrupted files.. [...]
> >
> > A UPS hasn't previously been mentioned AFAICT, or possibly I missed it...
> > You do have one connected, don't you?
> >
> > The controlled shutdown a UPS usually offers at power/brownouts, is a
> > really good solution IMHO.
> >
> The APC unit has had more to handle lately than you should reasonably expect.
> It wasn't getting chance to recharge before the next incident.  I'm not
> blaming it.
>
> Anne

We had a back-hoe related episode about 4 mnths ago which led to much
flakiness for weeks until a "power company from scotland" got round to
sorting it out. Lots of time spent at 110VAC (from 240V) and many
momentary flickerings.

Eventually the older (nearing their natural end of life) apc batteries
finally failed, the newer apc were unaffected. All boxen not connected
to ups died because of psu failures (brandname - full range input
voltages) One box had a mobo failure as well but this we suspect was
secondary to the psu letting out the magic smoke.

The sumo boxen sailed through it all with no problems whatsoever not
even stuttering

<http://www.sumotech.com/english/home/>

the old laptops that we use for non-essential network services were ok
as were the big servers/switches and routers behind the new UPSs.

We have now fitted an isolating switch and a generator as this is a
regular occurrence (17miles from Glasgow but rotten infrastructure)

now we just need to work out how to get BT to replace the rotten
copper in the POTS system -used to get 1.4Mbs, now getting a flaky
300Kbs down (yet 800 up!) and BT's response was to decrease the "fault
report level".

mike