Re: [gentoo-user] [Maybe OT]: Instability of system

First suspect the power line, brief surges/sags can do that( do you have access to a ups?).    

Is your' power supply near it's limits?  That can make power supplies rather sensitive.  

Could it be static electricity?  You can actually make a really good antistatic spray cheaply for any carpet etc.  Just get an empty spray  bottle, fill with water and add 1-2 drops of dish soap, this works really well though like any sprayed on antistat  you have to repeat occsionally (depends on traffic and carpet age, old carpet usually has enough ground in dirt to keep the static down).

Don't wear synthetics around computers (it's really dry here in colorado, even in summer often).

Could the processor heatsink etc. be dirty?(worth monitoring the temp).  i.e. the fan in the power supply.  also make sure all the fans are still spinning nicely.  power supplies sort of work for awhile without proper cooling, but they'll tend to overheat and shut down, assuming you have a good power supply.  If you have one with "no agency approvals" then that's likely you're problem.  Such supplies have no safety devices, no surge arrestors, no linefilerterin, no temp/power/short protection.  They radiate interference and have dirty, dirty outputs.  In any case you might try another power supply, they often get flakey with age and there are always some weak units in a production run.  You are using a grounded surge arrested power source?  Do you have a lot of lightning in your' neighborhood, it's that time of year.

Definately check all the power cables are in right as well as the graphics card and ram etc.  It's also worth checking the fan cables.  If the bios supports it see what the temp is and the fan speed, some bioses can provide some troubleshooting help.

It could be in response to something else in the house creating a surge or sag, to the extent possible it's worth thinking about what else is happening.  An airconditioner can cause all kinds of problems (they should always be on their own circuit).  Of course if you don't have air conditioning I'd suspect a heat issue strongly.

Also worth putting the parts of the system under high load with testing utilities to see if you can make it happen more often.

 A firmware issue would likely happen more often and consistantly.  Also, dred, run a smart tool on the hard drive though they usually don't cause reboot, just long hangs.

mad.scientist.at.large (a good madscientist)
--
<https://www.ted.com/talks/glenn_greenwald_why_privacy_matters <https://www.ted.com/talks/glenn_greenwald_why_privacy_matters>>



20. May 2018 14:54 by acm@×××.de <mailto:acm@×××.de>:


> Hello, Gentoo.
>
> I'm having problems with my machine hanging or rebooting spontaneously.
> It's doing this, perhaps, every three or four weeks.  I think that when
> I'm in X, the system usually reboots, when I'm on a tty, it hangs.
>
> This phenomenon has, up till now, been just below the level at which
> it's annoying enough to do something about.  But my machine just hung on
> me a few minutes ago, and now it's definitely reached tha threshold
> where spending effort fixing it seems justified.
>
> My actual Gentoo installation is fine, in fact, so good that I've not
> needed to post to the list for a long time.  :-)
>
> My system is an AMD Ryzen processor on an Asus Prime X370-Pro mainboard,
> and is just over a year old.  I don't think my RAM is unstable (though
> it's been a long time since I've run that RAM checking program).
>
> I honestly suspect the firmware on the mainboard.  When it was new, the
> board was practically unusable - with two sticks of RAM installed, it
> would crash after about 1 - 3 minutes.  With just one stick of RAM, it
> stayed up long enough to install new firmware (version 0604), which
> appeared to be stable.
>
> Going back to Asus's firmware page, there appear to have been many
> subsequent versions of the firmware released during the last year.
> Would it be a good idea for me to download and attempt to install the
> latest version?  Is this in any way risky?  (My mains supply is
> reliable.)
>
> Other than that, suggestions as to what to do would be welcome.
>
> Thanks!
>
> --
> Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).