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Date:      Fri, 10 May 2002 12:00:36 +0000
From:      Baldur Gislason <baldur@foo.is>
To:        "Taylor Dondich" <thexder@lvcm.com>
Cc:        chat@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: My horror story
Message-ID:  <20020510120055.9244F2744@tesla.foo.is>
In-Reply-To: <000701c1f804$47d5dc00$6401a8c0@penguin>
References:  <000701c1f804$47d5dc00$6401a8c0@penguin>

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I once lost the /usr hard drive in one of my servers, taking out my home 
directory that contained a lot of programs I had written :(
I have a Uninterruptable Power Supply, APC Smart-UPS 620 and I graph the line 
voltage at http://status.foo.is/ups.png
What happened in my server wasn't a power outage, the processor fan died, 
processor overheated and machine started spontaniously rebooting, and when it 
rebooted for one time when I was editing something in vi, I got so pissed off 
that I kicked the machine, thus taking out the hard drive. The / and /var 
drive survived though and my named zones were intact (lucky me) but no more 
/usr

Baldur

On Friday 10 May 2002 09:23, you wrote:
> Okay, so I finally came across horror in my time of using FreeBSD.  Sit
> back, grab some popcorn, I have a gruesome tale to tell.  Well, it's not
> that bad, I guess.  Taught me a few things.
>
> I run three servers in my home, all running FreeBSD, of course.  One server
> is my internal DNS server, my other two, web servers, each with it's own
> purpose; however, one hosts all the sites of my clients, so it's very
> important to me.
>
> Well, I just purchased a new Cisco router (go me!) and was installing it on
> my network.  Once I was finally satisfied with the configuration and felt I
> could leave my server room (wow, I've even got a server room.  Go me!) I
> walked out.  On my way out, I instinctively flipped the light switch;
> however, I forgot that light switch was NOT the switch to the light, but
> the outlet that powered my server goodies.  As my heart jumped in horror to
> the sound of hard-drives whirring down, I immediately flipped the switch to
> the on position (this was probably a bad idea).  This, in effect, caused a
> brown-out situation.  My servers came back up, all beeping in terror.
>
> Now, I've never really came across this situation before.  Only once before
> has the power gone out.  I don't have a universal power supply (don't go
> me!) and when the power's out, my server's are out.  Not a good thing. 
> But, that one time, the machines came up, fsck ran, checked everything out
> and booted back up, no problems.
>
> This....was different.
>
> The webserver that hosted my clients came up, fsck said things were a bit
> scary but will boot up anyways.  I sighed a sigh of relief, hoping the
> other two machines would be the same.  They weren't.  My other webserver
> screamed in terror as it said it had a problem with the filesystems and
> booted to a prompt, requesting me to get my act together.  I have no
> experience in this, so I simply typed fsck, and it went through it's merry
> way, telling me data at certain inodes were unsalvagable and would need to
> be removed (hope nothing important, I couldn't tell what they were).  But
> eventually, after about 3 passes of fsck, it allowed me to boot.  It was in
> pretty good condition.  Now, as I turned to my internal DNS server, I felt
> a shiver go down my spine.  The errors were different, fsck was complaining
> more, it just wouldn't let me go through it.  I didn't have enough
> experience in fsck, my hands became sweaty, I wiped my brow with a
> Microsoft EULA, it was getting late.
>
> After many attempts, all bearing no fruit, I lowered my head and said my
> goodbyes.  My server was gone.
>
> The hard-drive took a serious hit.  And the system was extremely old.  It
> held it's head high as it served internal DNS requests and pumped its arms
> in fury as my web requests hit it as hard as it could.
>
> It fought a good fight.  Orion, I only had you for a short time.  Your day
> will come again.
>
> So it's time to rebuild a new server, and get more experience with
> filesystems and fsck.  Any tips you have would be extremely greatful.
>
> Also, I'm now looking into a Universal Power Supply solution.  Something
> from APS, I feel.  However, I don't know if the PowerChute software they
> supply will work with FreeBSD.  Anyone have any ideas or comments?
>
> Thank you all for listening to my tale.  I scroll up and realize I wasted a
> good amount of bytes typing this and hope you found it enjoyable to laugh
> at my dismay.  :)
>
> I'm going to bed.
>
> Taylor
>
>
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