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I've recently installed a server in colocation, and my server is rebooting every 4.5-5.5 minutes. Regardless of the OS I run, it reboots. I have all ECC memory in the server, so it should correct errors if there is a bad bit in the memory, right? It's weird because it always happens about 4.5-5.5 minutes after bootup. My motherboard is a Supermicro X8DTL-iF. I read on a blog that another person had the problem, and supermicro recommended to do a BIOS update. Is this the right course of action?

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2 Answers

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Fixed this problem by disabled the Watchdog function in my BIOS. It was rebooting my server every five minutes for some really weird reason. Oh well, at least no hardware is bad! :)

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Shouldn't this one be marked as the answer then? :) – emtunc Jan 16 '11 at 9:54
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Probably because you did not isntall... the driver for it. Without a driver this is waht the watchdoc does. The driver is supposed to reset the timer every period (like 10 seconds). In case the computer freezes, the watchdog reboots. Without timer... ;) the watchdog reboots, too. – TomTom Jan 16 '11 at 11:24
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Consistent lockups/reboots are often caused by heat problems. Make sure all your fans are spinning and nothing is blocking the airflow.

After that, certainly try the bios update, and plan on swapping out the memory too - you could have bad memory that's causing the reboots. ECC won't fix that.

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Temperatures aren't a problem. The sensors are showing normal amounts of heat. The fans are spinning at a normal speed too. I'll take a trip (1.5hr drive.. urgh) down to the datacenter to do a bios update. I'll bring some extra RAM down to test with. I've emailed supermicro too, but I've heard their support sucks. – Andy Jan 16 '11 at 9:09
You could always double check that heat is not the problem by running several CPU intensive tasks to see if it still reboots in the 4.5-5min period – emtunc Jan 16 '11 at 9:53
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