Computer blocked because of error smpboot CPU2: Not responding

[Rick Stevens]

On 07/12/2013 01:00 PM, Paul Smith issued this missive:
> On Fri, Jul 12, 2013 at 8:54 PM, Reindl Harald <h.reindl at thelounge.net> wrote:
>>> I am experiencing the following problem while booting Fedora 19:
>>>
>>> smpboot: CPU2: Not responding.
>>>
>>> The computer seems to be blocked. Is there some way of rebooting it
>>> without having to power off the computer?
>>
>> https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
>>
>> nosmp           [SMP] Tells an SMP kernel to act as a UP kernel,
>>                  and disable the IO APIC.  legacy for "maxcpus=0"
>>
>>
>> however, if one CPU or core doe snot respond
>> all the time assume your hardware is dying
>
> Thanks, Reindl. The issue was caused by the fact that I rebooted the
> computer without having disconnected the external disk before. Since a
> hard power off, the computer has worked just fine. But I was keen to
> avoid the hard power off, as someone told me that it is maleficent for
> the hard drive. However, it seems that that opinion is not unanimous
> according to the discussions I have consulted meanwhile -- many claim
> that a hard power off is pretty safe regarding hardware.

Power cycling (more specifically thermal cycling) is harder on the
hardware than simply leaving it on. In my 35+ years in electronics,
generally if a piece of equipment is going to die, it's going to do so
during power up or a really big swing in temperatures (such as the loss
of aircon in a data center). I will say this observation is completely
empirical and I can't back it up with hard numbers, but it is my
experience.

The occasional hard, poweroff boot shouldn't be a big deal and you may
never experience a failure because of it. I have, which is one reason
my systems at home never get powered off other than when I perform
maintenance on them. I do turn off monitors and the like, but they're
cheap to replace if they croak compared with my computers and the data
contained thereon (and yes, I back up religiously).
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- Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, AllDigital    ricks at alldigital.com -
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