Solaris 10 on x86 kills power supply on shutdown.
I've had Solaris 10 kill two different power supplies on two different x86 machines (one power supply on each machine). These machines are completely different, with different motherboards and power supplies. The only thing they had in common was Solaris 10, using the Java Desktop Environment, and then being shut down by choosing "logout", and "turn off the machine".
After shutdown, the power supplies were dead, and would not power on. One was completely dead and had to be replaced; while the other one resumed working after I unplugged all the cables from the motherboard and peripherals, and reconnected them. Needless to say, I immediately uninstalled Solaris 10 from both these machines and went back to using Windows XP Pro, RHEL 4, and FreeBSD (which all work perfectly on the machines, and have never killed a power supply).
Before I try installing Solaris 10 again, I thought I'd check to see if anyone has any idea why this occurred? Thanks!
Kevin
[988 byte] By [
kevinh741] at [2007-11-26 9:16:33]
# 1
Hello.
I've heard that you can kill some very old displays when using a wrong screen frequency and you can kill the BIOS flash chip by software (actually you do not really kill the hardware in this case but you'll have to remove the chip from the motherboard to reflash it).
These are the only cases I heard that it is possible to kill hardware by software.
In fact the power supply is one of the few components of a computer which cannot be accessed by software (with exception of the "PS_ON" pin which is there to swich on the power supply from wake-up events and to switch off the power supply by software).
I can imagine two scenarios:
1)
>> ...while the other one resumed working after I unplugged...
I have a similar problem. You'll have to switch off the 220V (110V) voltage to really switch off the computer. (Normally you should not need to disconnect the motherboard etc.)
Btw.: MS-DOS running on modern computers would behave the exactly same way!
2)
>> ...one was completely dead and had to be replaced...
Maybe this has nothing to do with Solaris and would have happened at this time with any operating system.
Another cause could be too many power consumption - Windows has an effective power regulation mechanism, newer Linux versions, too. Under Solaris all components of the computer run at 100% power consumption (developers are working on this problem). Maybe the power supply was too weak for the computer.
Martin
# 2
I happen to agree with Martin - I cannot envision any way
that an OS shutdown procedure does specific damage to a system's power supply.
I consider myself more of a hardware 'geek' than a software one ...
I happen to glance through a number of online forums, mostly for their hardware info.
Perhaps you were unfortunate to have two systemboards with mediocre or failing capacitors.
Capacitors are used to regulate the power that goes through circuits on boards.
Motherboards need many capacitors to function properly.
Bulging and/or leaking capacitors are a known issue for many years.
Many big name manufacturers have seen it on their products.
There is a web site that describes this "Bad Caps" frustration:
http://www.badcaps.com/
Give it a glance, including the How-To links on that page.
If your boards happens to have the problem, you may need to sharpen your soldering skills.
