SUSE 10.3 randomly powers off and reboots [SOLVED!]
 

SOLVED! I installed a new power supply over a week ago, and the system has not shut down since!!...Thanks!!




I have had 10.3 installed on my system since May/2008, and it has been absolutely rock solid.I have automatic updates enabled, and the system is up to date. This is the longest I've had any distro installed.

A few weeks ago the system started to randomly power off (does not go through the shut down process) and reboots. I had a similar problem a few months back, and it turned out the fan died on my nvidia graphics card, so I replaced it with an ATI card I had laying around and that solved the problem that time.

I have already cleaned the PC, removed the fans, cleaned/vacuumed the heat sink, and checked all the connections. All the fans are running, and everything seems to be OK.

This has happened 5 or 6 times in the past few weeks. Only once has it happened while I was actually using the PC. The rest of the times it has occurred have been either when in screen saver (the default analog clock screen saver), or it seems like a few times it happened right as it went from screen saver to the all black screen (suspend?)

I was wondering if anyone might know what might be causing this. I was hoping I would find other posts with the same subject, but no luck.

Any input would be sincerely appreciated.

What are your system temperatures? Have you recently installed/changed your RAM? Overheating and/or bad RAM are 2 very common issues that can lead to random freezes/crashes

Thank you for your reply!!


I can't find any program that monitors system temperatures, I have seen it in other distros. I'll search the repositories for a program for this.

From my experience in the past I mentioned in my post, I thought the same as you, most likely a heat/fan/hardware problem. The last time the graphics card fan died, so I figured either the graphics chip got too hot, or a voltage sensor picked up the fan problem. There was some consistency to it last time though, while this time it is very random (and not nearly as often). I've cleaned/inspected everything inside the PC....everything seems to be as it should. The only thing I can figure at this point is something goofy is happening when it leaves the screen saver, most likely caused by an update. But if that was the case, I thought I would have found other threads when I searched.

I have not changed my RAM, or any other hardware in my system for months.

I already downloaded and burned 11.1, but when I ran the live CD, I could not get the graphics right with my monitor. The desktop was slightly too big for the screen @ 1024X768, and my menu on my monitor doesn't have an option to adjust the size, only can adjust position(seriously). The auto adjust does not help. Have never ran into this problem before with any distro. I might still try to install it and hope the problem goes away after the install, or at least I can try and find away to correct it.

Thank you again for your time!!....Dan

I suspect your power supply.

A very good overall monitoring utility is gkrellm

From what you've described, if the temperatures are within normal range and you haven't made hardware changes recently, then it could be an issue with the PSU as lxthusdan mentions.

Thanks again for the replies!!

I installed gkrellm yesterday, but the temperatures option would not work with my MOBO. I know my board has that capability, because I used to use a windows utility when I was running XP, and I believe I was able to monitor system temperatures when I had PCLOS installed.

I also like the power supply idea, it makes sense and is easy enough to swap out.

Thanks again......appreciate the input.....Dan