Compaq Proliant 5500 Power Supply question & spontaneous reboot problem..

Hi all.. I've got a Proliant 5500r that I've been running for a while now (~6 months). I've got both
power supplies installed and both of them exhibit this strange behavior with the LEDs indicating green color
for both of the supplies. According to the documentation, a green (non alternating) color isn't a
possibility for the light that has the "!" inside a triangle. The only (supposed) colors possible for that
LED are :

o amber
o amber flashing
o green/amber alternating
o green flashing.

In my case both power supplies (or if I only run one it's the same) have both LEDs indicating green.. What
does that mean?

On a slightly different note (but perhaps related?), this server tends to reboot itself every 12-18 hours
with occasions to run for a few days before it spontaneously reboots. I'm running Linux (Fedora Core 3)
and have no obvious way to read the proprietary sensors that Compaq has on the board. I realize that Compaq
has a driver for Linux, but it's out of date and won't work with the 2.6 kernels that I'm running.. Anyway,
I've got no clue as to why it's rebooting as there is nothing in any of the logs..

Any ideas on what the plain green LED's means, or perhaps why my server might be rebooting, or where I can
find a Linux Kernel 2.6 compatible set of h/w monitor drivers would be great! I really like this machine,
but don't like it rebooting regularly for no reason.. Last week it crapped out on me and lost my /etc/fstab
file and couldn't get going.. A little manual intervention helped, but I think this rebooting issue is
taking a toll on the system's stability.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

-- Rick

Rick F. wrote:

Hi all.. I've got a Proliant 5500r that I've been running for a
while now (~6 months). I've got both power supplies installed
and both of them exhibit this strange behavior with the LEDs
indicating green color for both of the supplies. According
to the documentation, a green (non alternating) color isn't a
possibility for the light that has the "!" inside a triangle.
The only (supposed) colors possible for that
LED are :

o amber
o amber flashing
o green/amber alternating
o green flashing.

In my case both power supplies (or if I only run one it's the same)
have both LEDs indicating green.. What does that mean?

It means that it's a normal Proliant 5500R. I am typing this on one
and both LEDs on both power supplies are steady green.

What documentation are you looking at? It sounds like it is wrong.

On a slightly different note (but perhaps related?), this server tends
to reboot itself every 12-18 hours with occasions to run for a few days
before it spontaneously reboots. I'm running Linux (Fedora Core 3)
and have no obvious way to read the proprietary sensors that Compaq
has on the board. I realize that Compaq has a driver for Linux, but
it's out of date and won't work with the 2.6 kernels that I'm running..

As far as I know, nothing appears in the logs (Linux or Windows) that
isn't on the integrated management display. If you don't have a IMD,
get one - they are cheap on eBay and are an invaluable tool.

Alas, most reboots on most computers leave no log entry. If it was
well enough to write to a log it would have been well enough to throw
up an error message on the screen and ask you to hit a key to reboot.

if its hardware related, it should be in the IML ... otherwise, its likely a
software issue.

- LC

"Guy Macon" http://www.guymacon.com/ wrote in message
...



Rick F. wrote:

Hi all.. I've got a Proliant 5500r that I've been running for a
while now (~6 months). I've got both power supplies installed
and both of them exhibit this strange behavior with the LEDs
indicating green color for both of the supplies. According
to the documentation, a green (non alternating) color isn't a
possibility for the light that has the "!" inside a triangle.
The only (supposed) colors possible for that
LED are :

o amber
o amber flashing
o green/amber alternating
o green flashing.

In my case both power supplies (or if I only run one it's the same)
have both LEDs indicating green.. What does that mean?

It means that it's a normal Proliant 5500R. I am typing this on one
and both LEDs on both power supplies are steady green.

What documentation are you looking at? It sounds like it is wrong.

On a slightly different note (but perhaps related?), this server tends
to reboot itself every 12-18 hours with occasions to run for a few days
before it spontaneously reboots. I'm running Linux (Fedora Core 3)
and have no obvious way to read the proprietary sensors that Compaq
has on the board. I realize that Compaq has a driver for Linux, but
it's out of date and won't work with the 2.6 kernels that I'm running..

As far as I know, nothing appears in the logs (Linux or Windows) that
isn't on the integrated management display. If you don't have a IMD,
get one - they are cheap on eBay and are an invaluable tool.

Alas, most reboots on most computers leave no log entry. If it was
well enough to write to a log it would have been well enough to throw
up an error message on the screen and ask you to hit a key to reboot.

In article , Guy Macon wrote:

It means that it's a normal Proliant 5500R. I am typing this on one
and both LEDs on both power supplies are steady green.

Cool.. I was hoping that was the case..

What documentation are you looking at? It sounds like it is wrong.

Right off the HP website -- view this pdf : http://tinyurl.com/8c7hu
then go to page 2-38 and you'll see a table showing the possible combinations.

On a slightly different note (but perhaps related?), this server tends
to reboot itself every 12-18 hours with occasions to run for a few days
before it spontaneously reboots. I'm running Linux (Fedora Core 3)
and have no obvious way to read the proprietary sensors that Compaq
has on the board. I realize that Compaq has a driver for Linux, but
it's out of date and won't work with the 2.6 kernels that I'm running..

As far as I know, nothing appears in the logs (Linux or Windows) that
isn't on the integrated management display. If you don't have a IMD,
get one - they are cheap on eBay and are an invaluable tool.

I've actually got an IMD and nothing shows up on it either (other than the
occasional message from the raid subsystem indicating that data was left
in NVRAM and will be flushed to disk).
Now, I did upgrade all of my processors to 550Mhz versions all from the same guy.
When I first tried to run the machine at 550, it just gave me a steady beep
IIRC and nothing beyond that. I've currently got the machine running at
500Mhz on all processors and it's happy (for the most part).. I wonder
if this could be of a symptom where occasionally one of the processors
hiccups if it doesn't like that speed and gets a bad instruction or something?
I'd assume if there were some sort of unhandled processor exception, that
you'd know about it. I just wish I could get an idea of what the problem
is.. I suspect even with a debuggable Linux kernel, that I wouldn't glean
anything either.

Alas, most reboots on most computers leave no log entry. If it was
well enough to write to a log it would have been well enough to throw
up an error message on the screen and ask you to hit a key to reboot.

Yeah I guess..

-- Rick

In article , Nut Cracker wrote:
if its hardware related, it should be in the IML ... otherwise, its likely a
software issue.

Ok.. If thats true, then I've got some sort of software issue.. I've
tried moving to newer Linux kernels (currently running 2.6.11) with
no change in the characteristics of the problem. I've not tried loading
up Windoze and leaving it running for several days and don't have much
interest in trying that test.

-- Rick

Sounds like the problem I was having. It was a memory issue. Have you
checked the ram?

Rick F. wrote:
In article , Nut Cracker wrote:

if its hardware related, it should be in the IML ... otherwise, its likely a
software issue.


Ok.. If thats true, then I've got some sort of software issue.. I've
tried moving to newer Linux kernels (currently running 2.6.11) with
no change in the characteristics of the problem. I've not tried loading
up Windoze and leaving it running for several days and don't have much
interest in trying that test.

-- Rick

Now, I did upgrade all of my processors to 550Mhz versions all from the same guy.
When I first tried to run the machine at 550, it just gave me a steady beep
IRC and nothing beyond that. I've currently got the machine running at
500Mhz on all processors and it's happy (for the most part).. I wonder
if this could be of a symptom where occasionally one of the processors
hiccups if it doesn't like that speed and gets a bad instruction or something?
I'd assume if there were some sort of unhandled processor exception, that
you'd know about it. I just wish I could get an idea of what the problem
is.. I suspect even with a debuggable Linux kernel, that I wouldn't glean
anything either.

I had a similar "unexplained rebooting" problem on my AP500 (running
Fedora Core 4) after I added a second processor. In my case, it turned
out that FC4 had no ability to sense the addition of the second
processor. In order to utilize it (and this will certainly be the same
in your case) the kernel file must be clearly marked with the .smp
extension. In order to get my AP500 working properly, a full re-install
was necessary. The single processor kernel can not handle the upgrade.

In general, Linux is not very good at healing itself. My experiences
have lead me to distrust ANY hardware additions to an existing Linux
system. The only way to be secure is to have all of the hardware, that
you are ever going to install, in place before you load OS. I know the
Linux people will hate hearing this, but it is the bottom line: Windows
heals itself...Linux doesn't.

Jeff

In article , Alex Blanco wrote:
Sounds like the problem I was having. It was a memory issue. Have you
checked the ram?

Nope.. Got a good way to do that? I did have to reconfigure the sticks
when I first bought it as the previous owner had the machine really farged
up to be virtually unusable (disconnected raid cage, floppy missing the power,
RAM plugged into the wrong slots, etc)

Is there any good program that can do the checks or is this a take it out and
send to somewhere to have it checked sort of deal?

-- Rick

In article .com, Jeffrey Alsip wrote:

I had a similar "unexplained rebooting" problem on my AP500 (running
Fedora Core 4) after I added a second processor. In my case, it turned
out that FC4 had no ability to sense the addition of the second
processor. In order to utilize it (and this will certainly be the same
in your case) the kernel file must be clearly marked with the .smp
extension. In order to get my AP500 working properly, a full re-install
was necessary. The single processor kernel can not handle the upgrade.

Hmm.. In my case, I've got full SMP going right out of the box care of FC3
with no real mods needed in my particular case.

Here's the top portion of the output from my "top" :

top - 10:00:48 up 2:36, 2 users, load average: 0.08, 0.03, 0.01
Tasks: 83 total, 1 running, 82 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu0 : 1.0% us, 0.1% sy, 0.0% ni, 98.5% id, 0.4% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.0% si
Cpu1 : 0.1% us, 0.1% sy, 0.0% ni, 99.8% id, 0.1% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.0% si
Cpu2 : 0.0% us, 0.0% sy, 0.0% ni, 99.5% id, 0.4% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.0% si
Cpu3 : 0.2% us, 0.0% sy, 0.0% ni, 99.4% id, 0.3% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.0% si
Mem: 1296208k total, 144580k used, 1151628k free, 9880k buffers
Swap: 2048152k total, 0k used, 2048152k free, 81104k cached

In general, Linux is not very good at healing itself. My experiences
have lead me to distrust ANY hardware additions to an existing Linux
system. The only way to be secure is to have all of the hardware, that
you are ever going to install, in place before you load OS. I know the
Linux people will hate hearing this, but it is the bottom line: Windows
heals itself...Linux doesn't.

I did have everything plugged in, and interestingly enough, I still find that FC3
still thinks my hardware configuration changed every time it boots.. I'm not
too sure how it determines this, but I get this text-gui thing that asks if I want
to probe for new hardware or something like that. If I'm around when it does this
I just tell it to skip it and continue booting..

-- Rick

memtest86 ... you boot from the floppy, fire up the program, and come back
in 2 or 3 days when its finished it testing loops.

Very good tool.

- LC

"Rick F." wrote in message
news
In article , Alex Blanco wrote:
Sounds like the problem I was having. It was a memory issue. Have you
checked the ram?

Nope.. Got a good way to do that? I did have to reconfigure the sticks
when I first bought it as the previous owner had the machine really farged
up to be virtually unusable (disconnected raid cage, floppy missing the
power,
RAM plugged into the wrong slots, etc)

Is there any good program that can do the checks or is this a take it out
and
send to somewhere to have it checked sort of deal?

-- Rick