avatar382 Posted May 16, 2008 Share Posted May 16, 2008 Setup: ASUS P5WDH 4GB RAM Pentium Dual Core E2140 XFX GeForce 7600 GT PCIe (dual DVI out) MSI GeForce 6200 LE PCIe (1 VGA out, 1 DVI out) 3 Samsung 955BF LCD's, 2 connected to the 7600 GT, 1 connected to 6200 LE DVI out Kalyway 10.5.1 with 10.5.2 Combo update NVinject 0.2.0b 9.2.2 stock kernel I leave the machine on constantly, because I like to SSH in from work. For the past week, my machine has been seemingly powering itself off. I have observed this behavior about 6 times. I have never actually been on the computer when it has shut down, and there is no consistent log activity in anything in /var/log after each shutdown. After the shutdown, I can power the machine on and work normally. I have not noticed any crashes, slowdowns, or any other erratic behavior. It really does seem like the underpants gnomes are just shutting down my machine while I am away. There is no reason to suspect a power failure. I have my machine set to never sleep. I don't have a roommate. /var/log/secure.log does not show an intruder logging on. Does anyone have any ideas? I'm at wits end here! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avatar382 Posted May 16, 2008 Author Share Posted May 16, 2008 Well, forget what I said about having never been on the computer when it shuts down. I was just on it when it instantly powered itself off, as if someone pulled the plug from the wall. No indication that anything else turned off at the same time, as would happen if there were a power interruption. At least I know there isn't a rouge process somewhere issuing a shutdown command... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ztardust Posted May 16, 2008 Share Posted May 16, 2008 Well, forget what I said about having never been on the computer when it shuts down. I was just on it when it instantly powered itself off, as if someone pulled the plug from the wall. No indication that anything else turned off at the same time, as would happen if there were a power interruption. At least I know there isn't a rouge process somewhere issuing a shutdown command... This used to happen a lot on my laptop due to overheating. Perhaps you have somekind of overheating/power problem? Are all fans working as they should? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avatar382 Posted May 16, 2008 Author Share Posted May 16, 2008 This used to happen a lot on my laptop due to overheating.Perhaps you have somekind of overheating/power problem? Are all fans working as they should? I was thinking that as well, but I can't imagine how or why. I have an Freezer 7 Pro cooler with Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste. Temperature in the BIOS is showing under 40 degrees. With OSX running, the CPU heatsink is cool to touch. My power supply is literally brand new, got a Silverstone 350W unit in yesterday to replace an older, really loud 550W power supply. Since I only have two hard drives, midrange graphics card and a low power CPU, 350W should be plenty. Anyway, I have observed the shutdown problems with the 550W power supply as well. Is there a utility to check the CPU temperatures in OS X? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zurk Posted May 17, 2008 Share Posted May 17, 2008 bad motherboard. i used to have the same problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ztardust Posted May 17, 2008 Share Posted May 17, 2008 Is there a utility to check the CPU temperatures in OS X? Yes, but I don´t know if it will work on your machine. It doesn´t work on mine, since mine has an AMD processor. Give it a try, and make sure you install the osx86 driver option, when you start the program: Temperature Monitor Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avatar382 Posted May 17, 2008 Author Share Posted May 17, 2008 Well, this just keeps getting wierder. I seemed to have traced the problem to the onboard NIC. After running memtest-86 and passing with no problems, I tried to boot a Kubuntu 8.04 Linux live CD to try to run some stress tests. At the same point during the boot process, the computer would just shut off just like it did randomly with OSX. I kept pulling hardware out until it finally booted. I ended up with no hard drives, one stick of RAM, one graphics card (the 6200), no mouse, and -- network cable unplugged. It worked. Ubuntu booted. So I throw everything back in with the exception of the network cable -- Ubuntu booted again. Plugged the network cable in and tried again -- shutdown at the same spot. Also, in my testing I learned that the shutdowns are similair to loosing AC power. By that I mean that if I set the BIOS to turn back on after loss of AC power, the computer will turn itself back on after it shuts itself down. If the BIOS is set to stay off after loss of AC power, it (predicatably) will stay off. At the moment, I'm running stress tests in Leopard with the network cable out... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigPimpin Posted May 17, 2008 Share Posted May 17, 2008 Sounds like a hardware problem. There's plenty of evidence that bad network drivers will cause kernel panics, but they don't cause the machine to shut down. OTOH a broken or cracked trace on (or in) the mobo near a PCI slot can and will result in hardware triggered shutdowns. Try switching the cards around in the slots and see if you can pin it down to one PCI slot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avatar382 Posted May 17, 2008 Author Share Posted May 17, 2008 Well, I think I traced it to my switch, of all things -- a Netgear Gigabit 8 port switch. After running stress tests in Leopard for about 20 hours with no shutdowns, my suspicion of the network subsystem grew. Once I suspected my first onboard NIC, I tried the second -- Shutdown. Then I swapped the cable -- Shutdown. I bypassed the switch entirely, and plugged the machine directly into my Fast Ethernet Router -- It worked! I swapped the Gigabit Netgear switch for the Fast Ethernet 5 port Dlink switch it replaced -- It worked! So, my next step is to get another Gigabit switch and try that. Still not clear if it's the switch (which connects to a Vista PC and Xbox 360 without apparent issue) or a gigabit link that is causing the issue. Still, it floors me that the culprit in all this sudden problem is my switch, of all things... I'm really lucky that I was able to find a way to quickly replicate what seemed to be an intermittent problem ... Yes, but I don´t know if it will work on your machine. It doesn´t work on mine, since mine has an AMD processor.Give it a try, and make sure you install the osx86 driver option, when you start the program:Temperature Monitor Thanks for this, it did work for me and even though it seems my problem wasn't heat related, now I can see just how much hotter this CPU gets when I overclock it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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