Re: Rebooting PC automatically when it hangs?

[Nigel Orr <Nigel.Orr@xxxxxxx>]

At 17:30 25/05/00 +0200, you wrote:
>You can get 'heartbeat' boards that talk to a small app. in the system
>tray or run as a service that will automatically reboot is the app.
>doesn't respond.

Don't you mean 'watchdog' boards?  That's what a timer that detects crashes
and reboots a processor or system is normally called.  The X10 macro sounds
like a good idea, but if it reboots the system when it's just busy doing
something (like an automated defrag, or some other time/processor/drive
consuming process), by cycling the power, it _might_ cause even more
problems, just because the machine hasn't been shut down (or crashed!)
cleanly.  If the machine keeps managing to produce it's 'pulse' often
enough, it will be fine, so to all intents and purposes, an X10 watchdog
timer might be the best way for this problem

The best idea would probably be the 'reboot every night' application, or,
even better, shut down every night at x:00 am, and then use X-10 to switch
off at x:05 am and switch on again 5 or 10 minutes later.  Regular crashes
can be caused by faulty cards, dodgy memory, or overheating processors, as
well as just faulty software, so it's good to do a proper shutdown (to
avoid confusing Windows), then leave it off for a while (to let everything
cool a bit!), then power up again.

I know one of the Windows o/s's had a generic problem (was it 95 or 95/98
or 98?) where it would guarantee a crash after approx 47 days (assuming it
ran for that long without something else crashing it), but this one sounds
a lot more regular than that!  When I had one machine crashing regularly
every few days, it was because the processor was overheating (does his have
a _working_ processor and PSU fan?  Is the heatsink sitting on the
processor properly?  Is is overclocked?  Has the case been removed?  Is it
in a warm place?  Any of these can cause overheating)

As Mark said, it's a good argument for well designed standalone HA
controllers- I'm impressed that my Comfort system has been 'up' since I
first fixed it to the wall, which is longer than any of my PCs have been
running for (though the linux ones only come down when there's been a power
cut or I'm adding new hardware).  It's been reset a few times, but only
when a configuration change needs a reset.  There must be some genuine
software bugs in there (somewhere, there must be, I can't believe it's
perfect!!!!), but they've not done anything noticable yet!

Nigel


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