System reboot

[dbaddour]

Hi,

At this location, have Asterisk/PBX in flash installed and running since last August. everything was working great until a week ago. when we noticed that the system is droping calls, and on some point when calling out it would hang without any dial out tone. checking the PBX status interface, and it seems that the system rebooted so is Asterisk. and it is been happening once or twice daily. not sure on the reason. I noticed under messages /var/... that the " syslog: restart" on different times.

Please any idea on the reason? where to find the proper reason? or what is the solution?

Much appreciated to all that can help.

Dave

 

[tshif]

If you haven't made any changes, and the environment hasn't recently become more hostile, I would suggest hardware related problems.

 

[dbaddour]

I thought so. No changes been made at all. one question, would that be register at syslog files, if it was a hardware failure? if so where i can find that file? do you think it is the power supply causing all this?

Thank you

 

[dbaddour]

tshif,
When you say "if the enviroment hasn't recently become more hostile" what would be refering to like? more users?

 

[Baylink]

This really does sound like hardware, to me, based on the information currently available.

Is the machine on a UPS? Have you tested it?

Was it new hardware when deployed?

 

[dbaddour]

I beleive it is on UPS, I will check on Monday. to test the UPS how can i do that? never done before?
What about droping the calls when the system did not restart? do you think that is an issue with UPS also?

 

[Baylink]

Unplug the UPS from the wall; see if the computer stays up.

 

[blanchae]

For your information FYI - just to make sure that we are all talking the same.

UPS - uninterruptable power supply: battery backed up AC supply. When the AC line fails, the UPS will run on batteries for a short period of time (usually about 5 minutes). The short period is determined by the average amount of time that power is lost in your area. If AC power is still lost after the time runs out, the UPS should send a warning signal to the server so that it can perform an orderly shutdown without losing data. When power is restored, the server can reboot. If set up properly, the server log should indicate the reason for the shutdown due to UPS, usually in /var/log/messages or in a log file particular to the UPS

 

[dbaddour]

Ok, I removed the server power from the UPS and pluged it to the wall. i was hoping that will solve the problem. unfotunatly, the server it rebooted it self twice in a matter of 5 hours. When i unpluged the UPS a minute after and gave anoying sound. now i believe the UPS is fine.

but why my system is rebooting? still a mistery. My first suspesion was the power supply? any suggestions?

Thank you all for you assistant, your help is much apreciated

Cheers

 

[Boolah]

You might want to run memtest on your memory to make sure you don't have a bad stick or RAM in there.

 

[dbaddour]

will the ram cause the system to hard reboot?

 

[dbaddour]

Boolah,
in Centos how to run the memtest?

 

[tshif]

Unfortunately, all kinds of things can cause a hard reboot. Many of them happen so suddenly that the systems never get a chance to log the problem.

RAM, CPU, even the Power Supply can easily cause this behavior - but so can many other things.

Diagnosing something like this may be better handled by a local hardware tech - there's so many nuances we could miss trying to help you via text messages here in the forums.

 

[Boolah]

dbaddour - burn the memtest ISO file to CD and boot the machine with the CD.

 

[jmullinix]

This smells like a bad power supply to me. Standard PC power supplies are fairly cheap, both in money and construction technique

When we have a customer's workstation that just randomly reboots, the power supply is the first thing we replace.

Theory:
The power supply gets old and tired and after many hours, the continual load gets to it. It allows the 5 volt line to drop a little below 5 volts and eventually the motherboard says, "I need to shut down since the 5 volt line is low voltage." Then, once the shutdown starts, the load on the 5 volt side of the power supply is relieved and the motherboard says "Power restored, I will start back up."

This is my theory on power supply failures.

 

[RayGannon]

You might also want to look over the capacitors on the motherboard. Look for domed tops and 'forign material' on the motherboard near them. This is pretty uncommon these days but there were a LOT of motherboards produced with bad capacitors a few years ago.

 

[dbaddour]

Ok,

I replaced the memory on the system, and tested the UPS ( is working fine). The system still rebooting again. Any other suggestions please. Any way can someone tell me on how to copy everything on the drive to a different system to replace this one please just in case, i need it to be done in less pain for the users and not much off down time please.

 

[jmullinix]

Have you replaced the power supply in the computer?

 

[dbaddour]

That was my last option and i Just did that 5 hours ago. and the system did not reboot as of yet. I will let you know by the morning.

 

[dbaddour]

It seems all the issue with reboot i was having was caused by the power supply. replace it and now everything is fine for the last 4 days

Thank you everyone for your help.

Cheers