[clug] Linux Server does not want to do a POST

James McNeill james at heague.com.au
Fri Apr 4 09:57:33 EST 2003


In my experiance, the single greatest cause of 'it just sits there' syndrome
is the RAM. Pull it out, give the pins a good clean, give the slots a good
clean, and put it back in /really/ firmly.
Try powering on without the RAM installed. you should get a regular 'beep
.... beep ... beep' from the BIOS.

AGP cards also happen to come loose from time to time, with this result.
Make sure the card is puched all the way into the slot (some slots will
'click in') and bolted down well. you could try cleaning the pins on the
card too.

-james


| I got a problem withy my linux server that has me stumped at the moment.
| It won't even get past doing POST and its annoying the you know what out
| of me.
|
| Its a Celeron 400 on an Abit BE6-II motherboard with 128Mb RAM. hda is a
| 40G Seagate, hdc is a 8G Fujitsu & hdd is a CD.  There is also a Ricoh
| 7060S SCSI CD Burner hanging off its SCSI card (and its the card that came
| with the burner.)  S3 Trio AGPx2 video card an a RealTek ethernet card
| (ALN-325 I think).  Normally runs Debian 3.0 with custom 2.2.20 kernel and
| some of Adrian Bunk's updated packages.
|
| I had problems with it this time last year when I upgraded the HD
| (replaced a 20G Seagate with the 40G one) with the kernel doing an oops
| (bad reference to memory/swap if I recall - which led me to believe it was
|  HD or RAM problem but all checked out).  I finally beat it into shape and
| thought I had the problem licked, but the last week or so has proven that
| it is not the case.  (What did I do recently?  Installed the CD-Burner
| inside the case although the SCSI card was already installed.  Also
| shifted the Fujitsu HD off the HPT366 controller and put it as hdc to see
| if that would fix the problem.  HPT366 is currently disabled).
|
| What has been happening is that the system would normally boot but after a
| couple of hours would lock up.  Recently have not been able to determine
| why (video has blanked out).  Sometimes the system would not complete a
| POST (no beep) and sit there.  Power off/on and up it would come.  Now it
| just sits there.
|
| By sitting there I mean power is applied, HDs spin up and heads
| move/reset, the HD activity LED will light and stay on.  No further
| activity, no beeps, no video, no nothing.  Last night powered off the HDs,
| CD Burner, even disconnected the IDE cables from the motherboard, and the
| system will still not boot.  It had a good vacuum last year removing a lot
| of dust (and lowering the CPU and SYS temperatures a good 5 degrees C).
|
| Short of stripping it down and starting to swap parts with another system
| I have (Gigabyte M/B, PIII 550Mhz) which my son uses, does anyone have any
| startling insights as to what can be wrong?
|
| The only things I can think of are power problems (with the extra devices
| I've blown something in the PS), CPU has been fried sometime (unlikely as
| similar problems was happening last year), hairline crack on the
| motherboard (a distinct posibility), or one from left field - the
| capacitor problem that was noted a couple of months ago (although I can
| not see any damaged capacitors but have not had a really close look yet).
|
| Suggestions?
|
| Mark P.
| --
| ..sig - TBA
| CBR AU
|
|
| --
| ..sig - TBA
| CBR AU
|
|



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