Re: System Panic Makes My Life Easier

On 07/29/2016 08:09 PM, Rick Moen wrote:

> problem with mass storage, so by process of elimination it pretty much
> had to be motherboard/CPU or bad RAM.  I really didn't want to buy
> replacement parts (what can I say?  I'm cheap), but I _especially_
> didn't want to replace part of my system and then find I also had to
> replace another part.  In other words, I _greatly_ wanted to isolate
> which component.

> Thus _if_ I could make the system completely cease to display the
> symptom _under heavy load of the RAM, CPU, and motherboard_ with a
> subset of all its parts, then all non-removed parts became known-good.
> Add back the removed parts one at a time.  The moment the symptom
> returned, you know where the problem lay.

What should I say?

Nostalgia Ain't What It Used to Be.[tm]

Other times... I bet that that was a pretty expensive box at least in 
use value if not money.
I hate that process.
Once upon a long ago when I was really young I had a company selling 
custom made PCs and servers. I was young and I was enjoying the process 
and at that time it made sense.
Then I got more in software development and hardware changed and I 
didn't find assembling hardware fun again.
I started to buy pre-build PCs and servers with on-site NBD service.
Now pre-build PC don't have anymore the correct balance of the things I 
need so I started again to build my hardware.
It is much easier, much fewer parts, better designed, fit just in one 
place, colored... etc... but there is always the annoying moment when 
you think... what if something doesn't work and I have to find out what 
it is to get it replaced.
And since my work is different than before I have much fewer spare parts 
around, so properly testing stuff may be hard.

I talked with other friends that work in the "cloud" business and they 
told me that boxes worth to buy have a lot of auto diagnostic features.

>> CTCS and its successor most probably were better engineered than
>> something that does some computation on CPU and send it to the disk
>> but... supposing your computer hang during a kernel compilation, which
>> part of your PC failed?  And what if sometimes the kernel get compiled
>> but in a wrong way? Are you going to compare the images?

> You didn't read the story at my links, did you?  Well, I've now recapped
> it above, so I hope my rationale and thinking are clearer.

If you're referring to the "Burn-in" page, I admit I didn't reach the 
end but went to look for the CTCS2 code.

BTW I stumbled on
https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en/v7-hardware-certification-test-suite/

they say it is open source, but I didn't invest enough time to find it.
If someone is seriously interested I can ask.

>> Most of the time is not economical even to find it out.

> But I would have been really irritated at myself if I'd not bothered to
> isolate the cause of _that_ problem and had just thrown away the system
> -- because I'm stubborn and because I'm cheap.  And I sort of liked the
> challenge.

Oh well you're sugarcoating the pill. I bet that in your eyes being 
stubborn and cheap are qualities. Unfortunately the truth is you were 
just younger ;)

> And I also liked the fact that a bit of sodding around and _thinking_
> gave my definitive results in a situation where the recommended tool for
> the specific symptoms (spontaneous reboots and ''NMI: Dazed and confused
> but struggling to continue' on a just-installed, quiescent Debian
> server that also replicated IIRC with a live CD distro), memtest, hadn't
> found any problem.
>
>> Diagnosing hardware is something that is better to leave to the
>> vendor.
>
> Maybe, but I have had really good luck doing in _many_ problem scenarios
> -- and my main tool has always just been logical thinking, really.
> Maybe I'm just better at it than you?  ;->

My logical thinking include factoring in the fun and the cost.
It's not fun anymore and I'm lucky enough I can blame the cost to keep 
looking professional.
Furthermore logical thinking is a fraction of the whole process.
While assembling PCs now has become much easier it still require 
swapping parts, holding screws in the right places, being delicate and 
precise with your hands, dealing with dust...
It's like when I'm cooking, I just would like to have assistants ;)

> (Also, being cheap, I almost never have an in-force warranty to fall
> back on.  If I did, I'd certainly rejoice and use it -- assuming I knew
> which thing to RMA.)

Return everything and let the vendor decide otherwise you're paying 
something you're not really using.

I've to say that for the kind of hardware I'm buying now I haven't had 
any problem recently on self assembled boxes but I may just have been 
lucky, these days I don't buy that much hardware.
Crossing fingers. Now I seriously find terribly boring diagnosing 
computer hardware problems.

For the kind of hardware problems I've to solve now, I have assistants 
and I don't even have to be there most of the times ;)

-- 
Ivan Sergio Borgonovo
http://www.webthatworks.it http://www.borgonovo.net