[CentOS] Unusual System State

Wed Dec 7 22:31:44 UTC 2016
m.roth at 5-cent.us <m.roth at 5-cent.us>

Lincoln Fessenden wrote:
> I have seen *some* similar activity in different machines through the
> years and it *always* turns out to be a hardware issue.  If this machine
> is particularly old, I would be suspicious of that.
>
My version of it has been on both Dells and Supermicros (rebranded by
Penguin).

    mark
>
> ________________________________________
> From: CentOS [centos-bounces at centos.org] on behalf of m.roth at 5-cent.us
> [m.roth at 5-cent.us]
> Sent: Wednesday, December 07, 2016 1:51 PM
> To: CentOS mailing list
> Subject: Re: [CentOS] Unusual System State
>
> Chris Olson wrote:
>> Our smallest network of systems has only four computers connected
>> via Gigabit Ethernet.  The oldest and most stable platform is an eight
>> year old Dell E520 running CentOS 6.8.  We often try out applications
>> on this Dell/CentOS machine before moving them to other systems on our
>> other networks.
>>
>> Last night, one of our users decided to create a single, 228GB home
>> directory tar archive on an empty, 500GB, external, USB, Ext4 disk
>> drive. This was obviously a poor decision. The extent of the results
>> were not obvious until this morning.
>>
>> All disk activity had stopped and the system appeared to be hibernation.
>> A push on the power button usually brings the system back to life, but
>> in this case, the unlock screen was presented for only three seconds
>> and then the hibernation mode was resumed.  Repeated attempts to log
>> on were all thwarted due to this behavior.  ssh from other systems
>> wasalso
>> not possible.
>>
>> Holding the power button in order to initiate power down did not work
>> either.  The result was the same as a one second press of front panel
>> power button bringing up the unlock screen for only a short time.  We
>> eventually removed the power cord for five minutes and then restarted
>> the machine.
> <snip>
>
> Not that this will be of any help, but we, once in a while, will suddenly
> find a machine unresponsive, and in an undefined state. IIRC, pingable,
> but can't ssh in, nor is there any response whatsoever to plugging in a
> keyboard and monitor. Power cycle is the only answer, and there's never
> anything in the logs.
>
> Mostly, those systems are used for very serious scientific computing (as
> in, no VM, and I've seen loads of > 80).
>
>       mark
>
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