Random crashes/reboots under F32

[Justin Moore]

About four weeks ago I upgraded from F30 to F32. I've been using this same
hardware for a few years now, and it worked fine* under multiple versions
of Fedora.

However since I upgraded to F32 I've been finding my system randomly
rebooting about every 8-14 days. I'll just come back to it and it'll be
sitting at the encrypted partition unlock screen. When I check system logs
(journalctl -b [bootID] -r) there's no indication that something went
horribly wrong. No error messages, no nothing. It's just fine until I'm
staring at a reboot screen.

It hasn't (yet) happened while I've been sitting at the computer so I can't
tell if it's a clean shutdown or a hard reboot. Googling for "fedora" or
"F32" and "random reboots" or "random crashes" doesn't
bring up anything
particularly helpful.

Tips? Suggestions?

Thanks in advance.
-justin

*Standard disclaimer about things like systemd and journalctl being an
absolute dumpster fire

[Richard Shaw]

On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 8:43 AM Justin Moore <justin.nonwork(a)gmail.com&gt;
wrote:

>  About four weeks ago I upgraded from F30 to F32. I've been using
> this same
>  hardware for a few years now, and it worked fine* under multiple versions
>  of Fedora.
>
>  However since I upgraded to F32 I've been finding my system randomly
>  rebooting about every 8-14 days. I'll just come back to it and it'll be
>  sitting at the encrypted partition unlock screen. When I check system logs
>  (journalctl -b [bootID] -r) there's no indication that something went
>  horribly wrong. No error messages, no nothing. It's just fine until I'm
>  staring at a reboot screen.
>
>  It hasn't (yet) happened while I've been sitting at the computer so I
>  can't tell if it's a clean shutdown or a hard reboot. Googling for
> "fedora"
>  or "F32" and "random reboots" or "random crashes"
> doesn't bring up anything
>  particularly helpful.
>
>  Tips? Suggestions?
>  
Purely a SWAG but newer kernels may either have a bug, or may be exposing a
problem which a previous kernel ignored or didn't trigger. For random stuff
like this I would look to see if there's a firmware update for your BIOS.

Thanks,
Richard

[George N. White III]

On Fri, 19 Jun 2020 at 10:43, Justin Moore <justin.nonwork(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

>  About four weeks ago I upgraded from F30 to F32. I've been using
> this same
>  hardware for a few years now, and it worked fine* under multiple versions
>  of Fedora.
>  
>  However since I upgraded to F32 I've been finding my system
> randomly
>  rebooting about every 8-14 days. I'll just come back to it and it'll be
>  sitting at the encrypted partition unlock screen. When I check system logs
>  (journalctl -b [bootID] -r) there's no indication that something went
>  horribly wrong. No error messages, no nothing. It's just fine until I'm
>  staring at a reboot screen.
>  
Start keeping a log.   For years I was going in to work 7 days a week to
babysit an unreliable system used to capture "irreplacable" data.   From
the logs I determined that the system never failed on Sunday, so I went
from a 7-day work week to 6 days.


>  It hasn't (yet) happened while I've been sitting at the computer so I
>  can't tell if it's a clean shutdown or a hard reboot. Googling for
> "fedora"
>  or "F32" and "random reboots" or "random crashes"
> doesn't bring up anything
>  particularly helpful.
>
>  Tips? Suggestions?
>  
"last" should show if you had an orderly shutdown or a crash.

There is a good reason that linux distros include a memory test -- use it.
Sometimes reseating memory cards is enough to get past a test failure.

After memory common old PC random crashes are due to bad cables,
connectors, or power supplies.   Particularly if you live in a hot, humid,
area (or take your PC to sea) you may find green corrosion on some
connections.   You can buy "contact enhancer" that is really helpful for
seagoing or ocean adjacent gear.   At my work we generally had a stack of
old PC's "all made out of ticky tacky. And they all look just the same…",
so I could swap cables and power supplies to keep a few running.   Before
retiring I managed a 7x24 industrial PC used to control a satellite dish.
Twice the system started having random crashes.  Inspection of the system
board revealed bulging capacitors.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague>   I bought a new MB and
replaced the bad capacitors on the original.   Then the new MB failed the
same way, so when I retired it was running on the repaired board.  That MB
supported a range of CPU clock speeds.  Normally I run 7x24 systems at the
lowest clock speed for longevity, but we were using time consuming software
decryption so the system used the fastest available CPU.


-- 
George N. White III

[Łukasz Posadowski]

Fri, 19 Jun 2020 09:43:12 -0400
Justin Moore <justin.nonwork(a)gmail.com&gt;:

>  It hasn't (yet) happened while I've been sitting at the
> computer so I
>  can't tell if it's a clean shutdown or a hard reboot. Googling for
>  "fedora" or "F32" and "random reboots" or "random
> crashes" doesn't
>  bring up anything particularly helpful.
>  
>  Tips? Suggestions? 
As George wrote, You can check all past reboots and shutdowns with
'last -x'. It is easier to browse the logs knowing the exact time.

-- 
Łukasz Posadowski