We are running 30 or so RH8 machines with Ximian apps installed. They have been out there about 1 year, and are NEVER changed or updated. First we had one machine begin to spontaneously reboot itself, then another, and now two more within weeks of each other.

What I am trying to do is find somewhere where the cause of this, or even some symptoms, might be logged. We have been looking in dmesg, messages, boot, etc, and can find nothing pointing to a possible problem.

Any clues that anyone can share would be deeply appreciated. We have some experience with RH now after about 1 year, but are certainly not experts. Thanks.

Keith Starks

maybe bad motherboard capacitors, from bad electrolyte? are they duplicate machines?
look at the motherboard for busted or leaking capacitors. Bad power? More heat now than before? gunked up cpu heatsinks? Fans out?

These are all identical machines. We had them shipped back to our office and all of the hardware checks out. We can boot them into DOS and run applications and there are no problems with it rebooting, so we believe it to be a purely software related problem. Since the users are non-technical we suspected that they might be slamming the machine shut when they are done using it, but have no proof of that.

Also, I saw it reboot itself on the bench as the Gnome panel was loading on screen. We then tried to sign in as root (rather than the normal user) at the Gnome login screen, and it did not reset. We played with it for a while, then rebooted and logged in as the normal user, and this time it stayed up. Don't know what to tell ya' 'bout that!!

Thanks for any light you can shed!

Keith