[Discuss] I think my server is running out of "something"

[tmetro-blu at vl.com (Tom Metro)]

David Kramer wrote:
> Home-built server/firewall/mail server/web server/MythTV back end/makes
> coffee.

Others covered this...I'll only add that a router appliance would
provide a fairly cheap "upgrade", hardly add any additional power usage,
and improve your security, while offloading some of your server workload.


>   1 sata drive for root
>   4 sata drives for MythTV recordings
>   1 sata DVD-RW
> 
> I decided to add another 1TB drive...the server won't boot.

What exactly do you see when it fails to boot?


> It's a Silverstone Olympia OP640  650W, which should be plenty.
> It's possible that just the SATA rail is maxed out.

I concur with the others that this sounds like a power supply issue,
though 6 hard drives should not be excessive for a 650W supply. (I have
as many or more drives on my MythTV server with something like a 450W
supply.) But if the supply is optimized for running high powered
graphics cards it may in fact be running out of current on the 12V line
used by the drives.


> Maybe I should try putting the drive in an external sata case for 
> power...

That wold be a good test and possibly a permanent work around.

For a quicker test that requires no additional equipment, try powering
up the system with the new drive attached to the SATA poet, but the
power connector detached, wait for the kernel boot messages to appear,
and then power up the drive. Hard drives use a peak amount of power
during startup, and this will stager the load among your drives.


> Then I discovered that eth1 was dark.
> I reboot AGAIN and finally both ethernet jacks are live.

As others speculated, probably related to the power problems. What did
you see from 'ifconfig'? Were the "dark" ports listed, but inactive, or
absent entirely? You may have some udev problems with the hardware being
recognized consistently. But if this only happens with the new drive
attached, then unlikely to be anything but power.

> Apparently some of my MythTV drives have been spinning almost
> continuously since 2007.  That is impressive.  And scary.

I have a set of 4 Seagate 320 GB drives in a RAID 5 that have been
running inn my MythTV server since Fall 2006. :-)

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/