OS X G4 Shuts Down With NO Warning?

[dstranathan]

OS X G4 Server Shuts Down With NO Warning?

I had a Dual G4 867 OS X Server 10.2.6 box SHUT DOWN for no reason today.

I checked the logs and it said "10:02 AM System Shut Down." Whoa!

NOBODY manually shut it down. No power was interrupted. No scripts are running to power the server.

It runs a few simple AFP shares, a Samba PC share and Apache for a small intranet page.No big deal.

It has 1.2 GB RAM, and a Ultra160 SCSI RAID.

It has ran with no problems since Feb 2003. Worked great. I had an uptime of 43 days at one time. I t has never crashed. The only time it goes down is when I TELL IT to go down.

I installed a security update about a week ago. Ran great. Been up for a few days since then. I have an identical server with the same patches and it works fine.

I have a Gigabit switch. Works fine.

No other users (except the ones connect to the server) were dropped or shutdown.

Other servers on the same APS UPS/powertap and circuit were not shut down.

Anyone have a clue?

Is there a more detailed log to check somewhere?

[mattyj]

I've had that a couple of days ago too. Don't know what the case could be, but I know it wasn't a power shortage...

Just pray that it doesn't happen again.

[thuh Freak]

well, i dont know what caused it, but i have suggestion to find the cause. you could try a search by content on the whole drive for 'System Shut Down'. you can do this in terminal with grep, like this:
sudo grep -rn 'System Shut Down' /;

and supply your password when/if asked. its executed as root, to make sure it will check files that are only readable by root (which might be unnecessary, but better safe than redoing the search). fyi: grep is a by-content search program. the '-rn' means search recursively, and print the line number of the resulting match (along with the file name). the search will probably take a long time, so i recommend reading ai posts while it churns out its answers. when it finishes, if it finds nothing it wont print anything. if it finds something, each match will be printed on its own line, following the file name and line number (as i mentioned earlier). if you don't find anything, that probably means that whatever caused the restart was either (a) a binary program, which grep couldn't search through or (b) the file(s) relating to the restart were deleted or moved off the computer. hopefully the file(s) will be found, so we can track down this problem.

[Altivec_2.0]

if you have a UPS hooked up to your computer, check that it's not set to shutdown at a preset time. Otherwise someone could be pulling your leg by using a shutdown script. which is very easy to create.

[JimDreamworx]

I had a Dual G4 867 OS X Server 10.2.6 box SHUT DOWN for no reason today.

I have the same type of box, and with being brought down by the recent eastern seaboard blackout (even though I had a UPS keep it up for a bit), it wouldn't come on again. Hit the button, the power light came on, but nothing else.

Found out that if you Reset the PMU (Power Management Unit) on the motherboard, that helps. And it doesn't unexpectedly shut down either. There is an Apple support doc that describes it in detail...

[Alexander the Great]

I have a iMac DV 400 and a G4 400. I switched the hard drives and took the iMac DV to my new dorm. I re-installed the OS and updated it. I have heard some very crazy sounds from the HD or CD/DVD drive. I can't send email messages from Mail and my computer has been shutting down unexpectedly. I'm almost ready to trade HDs back.

[Spart]

j00 have teh MSBlaster!!1

Seriously though, my iMac had the same problem when the CPU was overheating. I forgot to reapply thermal paste.

[Dark Seraph]

Originally posted by Spart
j00 have teh MSBlaster!!1

Seriously though, my iMac had the same problem when the CPU was overheating. I forgot to reapply thermal paste.

got any good links on where to obtain, how to reapply fresh thermal paste to a dual 500 g4, I didn't believe my pc friend when he came over and told me that he reapplies thermal paste about every 6 months or so and in that case I am LONG overdue with my 3year old box...

am I the only one that doesn't do this...

[Spart]

Originally posted by Dark Seraph
got any good links on where to obtain, how to reapply fresh thermal paste to a dual 500 g4, I didn't believe my pc friend when he came over and told me that he reapplies thermal paste about every 6 months or so and in that case I am LONG overdue with my 3year old box...

am I the only one that doesn't do this...

Have you been breaking the contact between the CPU and the heat sink?

If not, then you don't really need it.