Involuntary Reboot Log #44

Another kernel panic.

• Kernel panics: 20
• Hard resets: 24
• Total failures: 44
• Start of recording keeping: 21 May 2006
• Total days to date: 864 days
• Average time between failures: 19.67 days

Server maintenance

The server will be going down for minor maintenance at approximately 12:20 PM EDT today (Sunday 28 September 2008). Service should be interrupted only for a couple minutes while the server is rebooting.

Update: [50 minutes later] The server is now back up. Although the initial phase of the reboot went as quickly as expected (the usual 60 seconds), the system insisted on doing a forced fsck (File System Check) which ended up delaying things by about 30 minutes before the network interfaces and services came back online. For those of you who are interested in the technical details of the update process, and information about why such a long-running fsck might be triggered, see, "Updating the kernel to version 2.6.18-92.1.13.el5 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1".

Update 2: [6 hours later] It has come to my attention that email services didn't come back up after booting due to a misconfiguration (not detected previously because this was actually the first reboot for this server, ever); this has now been fixed. If you've tried to contact me you may have seen temporary delivery failures during the intervening period, but most likely your mail transfer agent will retry automatically for you without any intervention on your part.

Involuntary Reboot Log #43

Another kernel panic, again on application launch (the same app has now kernel panicked four times on me).

• Kernel panics: 19
• Hard resets: 24
• Total failures: 43
• Start of recording keeping: 21 May 2006
• Total days to date: 836 days
• Average time between failures: 19.51 days

nginx consolidates hosting share

Just saw last month's Netcraft web server survey and was pleased to see that nginx has cemented it's fifth-place spot with a solid 2.4 million hosts in (survey link). This is of interest to me because nginx is the HTTP server that powers this site (at least, the new Rails-backed portions of the site).

Involuntary Reboot Log #42

Another kernel panic, this time on application launch (the same app has now kernel panicked three times on me). With this failure the venerable iMac smashes (downwards) through the 20-day barrier for "time between failures".

• Kernel panics: 18
• Hard resets: 24
• Total failures: 42
• Start of recording keeping: 21 May 2006
• Total days to date: 836 days
• Average time between failures: 19.905 days

Involuntary Reboot Log #41

Another unattended kernel panic, only a day or so after the last one (although I am a couple of days late making this post).

• Kernel panics: 17
• Hard resets: 24
• Total failures: 41
• Start of recording keeping: 21 May 2006
• Total days to date: 834 days
• Average time between failures: 20.341 days

Involuntary Reboot Log #40

Another unattended kernel panic, this time with the screensaver password prompt visible on screen and the standard kernel panic text overlaid on top of that. This is running from the external backup disk because the internal drive seems to be irrecoverably hosed (won't accept copies after formatting), so I'm definitely concerned about the precariousness of the system.

• Kernel panics: 16
• Hard resets: 24
• Total failures: 40
• Start of recording keeping: 21 May 2006
• Total days to date: 829 days
• Average time between failures: 20.725 days

Involuntary Reboot Log #35, #36, #37, #38 and #39

I've been too disappointed with this machine of late to post new entries to the involuntary reboot log, but now that HFS+ has failed me yet again and I'm waiting for SuperDuper! to finish restoring my boot volume (second time it's saved my skin) I may as well post this update. There are over 1.5 million files to be restored so I expect I'll be here twiddling my thumbs for quite some time.

Since the last log entry and over the last month I've had 3 kernel panics and 2 hard resets, so the reliability of the machine is definitely declining. The average time between failures over the lifetime over the machine is now at 20 days, down from an initial 30 days when the machine was younger, but if we take the average over a shorter time frame the number drops down to a mere 6 or 7 days, which places it in Windows 98 territory, more or less.

Now more than ever I am hoping that my finances will permit purchasing a new machine before the end of the year (if this one even lasts that long).

• Kernel panics: 15
• Hard resets: 24
• Total failures: 39
• Start of recording keeping: 21 May 2006
• Total days to date: 807 days
• Average time between failures: 20.69 days

INetU most reliable hosting company again

Nice to see that my host, INetU, was ranked as most reliable hosting company again in May. It took the honors back in March as well.

Involuntary Reboot Log #34

Hot on the heels of involuntary reboot #33 we have another one, this time a kernel panic, cause unknown.

• Kernel panics: 12
• Hard resets: 22
• Total failures: 34
• Start of recording keeping: 21 May 2006
• Total days to date: 753 days
• Average time between failures: 22.14 days
• Uptime at time of failure: about 2 hours