get a ups that has a usb connection. What you can do then is when you loose power after x amount of time the ups software will gracefully shutdown the server automatically. some ups software will even start the server back up once a sufficient charge has been obtained. On 3/24/2012 7:33 AM, Timothy Murphy wrote: > I have a CentOS-6.2 server in Italy. > Every few months the server gets into a strange state > and stops working after a power outage. > I should say that this does not occur after every power outage; > I suspect, but have no real evidence for this, > that if the power comes back too quickly > then the machine gets confused because it is in the middle of closing down. > > If I am in Italy the solution is simple; > I just press the power button on the machine until it stops > and then switch it on again, and everything works fine. > > I guess that the proper solution is to get a UPS. > PowerTrust (or Trust) UPS's are available at a reasonable price (€40-€50). > But I have one question about this solution. > What if the outage lasts longer than the "life" of the UPS, about 10 > minutes? > I'd actually like the UPS simply to halt the machine in the proper way > after say 1 minute; but can this be arranged? > (If the machine knew it had gone onto UPS, > this could be arranged fairly simply.) > > There is one other possibility. > There is a Billion modem/router between the ADSL input and the computer. > This does not seem to have any problem with power outages. > So if it were possible to send a message to the router > which would cause the computer to be turned off and on again, > that might offer an alternative solution. > One problem with this is that the Italian ISP > only offers a dynamic IP address. > I run ddclient with dyndns on the server to translate this > into a fixed domain-name. > But this means that any action of this kind would have to be taken > before the IP address changes. > I think it usually stays the same for several days, > but I guess this might not be true if there is an outage at the ISP's site, > during a big electric storm. > > Any suggestions, advice or experience of this problem gratefully received. >