Hi All,
Long time ghoster/hardly ever poster here. I did a tech refresh of sorts on my Linux box to bring the hardware up to date and get away from an external RAID-5 array. This machine runs 24x7 as a file and media server for my home with occasional use as a general-use PC. Here's what I built.
MB: ASRock Steel Legend (X570)
CPU: Ryzen 5 3400G
RAM: 32G (16x2) DDR4 3200MHz (XPG)
SSD: 1TB PCIe M.2 2280 (System)
RAID: x5 4TB Seagate IronWolf NAS HDs (Planned to set up as RAIDZ2, but not yet functional)
OS: Various Linux distros
Dual 1920x1200 monitors (one on DP and the other HDMI. They have DVI connections so I'm using adapters.)
Since this is a Linux machine and not used for gaming, I elected to save some cash and go with the integrated graphics of the 3400G CPU and X570 MB. I built the machine and installed Kubuntu. It booted right up and seemed to be running great. I installed ZFS and got ready to setup the RAID and then POOF! No video. Both monitors go dark with their LEDs flashing indicating they have no video signal. Computer appears to still be running, but no amount of mousing or keyboard banging will wake it up. I forced it to power off with the power button and fired it back up. Once I was logged back in, I went into the OS settings and turned off all the screen savers and power management thinking that maybe something in there was misbehaving. It ran fine again for a while and then POOF! No video again. I thought maybe it's something flaky with Kubuntu, so I tried Neon. Same thing happened. So I tried Ubuntu-Mate. Again, same thing, so I'm pretty much sure it isn't software since it's doing the same thing with different desktops. Something has to be going on with the hardware. I poked around in the BIOS, but didn't really see anything that looked promising. (Everything is set to defaults/auto. Not OC'd. Bone stock.)
I've even tried both active and passive DP adapters. Made no difference. Now while I'm in the BIOS, I can leave it there for hours, perhaps days, and the video remains on. Once I boot into the OS, that's when the problem surfaces. I should also mention that there isn't any specific interval for this. I've had it die right after login and I've had it run for hours, but it always happens eventually. It has never run overnight. There is no load on the machine, so no heat to speak of. You can touch pretty much everything and it's basically cold to the touch. The air blowing out of the case is cold too. I've watched the temp and voltage readings in the BIOS. They are all good, at least while I'm watching.
Another tidbit is that I don't actually know if the computer is actually functioning when this happens. I mean all the lights and fans are on and everything SEEMS like it's running, just no video, but I haven't actually confirmed this yet. I would have to set up some sort of service that I can check from the network to see if it's still actually running. I'm thinking as I'm typing here. Maybe I can setup SAMBA or apache. Trick will be getting it set up before the video goes away. I'll give that a shot tonight. I'll have to get it on the network first. Haven't gotten that far yet.
Besides that, at this point I only have 2 hardware ideas left. One is to update the BIOS. I haven't done that yet because I'm only one minor release behind the latest and the release notes don't indicate that the changes had anything to do with video. (Yeah, I know that they don't always put everything in the notes, so there is that.) My other option is to install a video card and see what happens. That kind of defeats the point of the build, but I'm really running out of options. If I have faulty hardware, I can't really tell if it's the CPU or MB. I can't really see it being anything else.
Hmmm... one other thing occurred to me as I've been proof reading my post. All of the distros I've tried have been based on Ubuntu. Don't know why I haven't realized that before. Maybe I'll try something different like openSUSE or Fedora to see if there's something in the core Ubuntu software that's causing this.
So that's where I'm at. Anyone have any other ideas or suggestions? Thanks.
Long time ghoster/hardly ever poster here. I did a tech refresh of sorts on my Linux box to bring the hardware up to date and get away from an external RAID-5 array. This machine runs 24x7 as a file and media server for my home with occasional use as a general-use PC. Here's what I built.
MB: ASRock Steel Legend (X570)
CPU: Ryzen 5 3400G
RAM: 32G (16x2) DDR4 3200MHz (XPG)
SSD: 1TB PCIe M.2 2280 (System)
RAID: x5 4TB Seagate IronWolf NAS HDs (Planned to set up as RAIDZ2, but not yet functional)
OS: Various Linux distros
Dual 1920x1200 monitors (one on DP and the other HDMI. They have DVI connections so I'm using adapters.)
Since this is a Linux machine and not used for gaming, I elected to save some cash and go with the integrated graphics of the 3400G CPU and X570 MB. I built the machine and installed Kubuntu. It booted right up and seemed to be running great. I installed ZFS and got ready to setup the RAID and then POOF! No video. Both monitors go dark with their LEDs flashing indicating they have no video signal. Computer appears to still be running, but no amount of mousing or keyboard banging will wake it up. I forced it to power off with the power button and fired it back up. Once I was logged back in, I went into the OS settings and turned off all the screen savers and power management thinking that maybe something in there was misbehaving. It ran fine again for a while and then POOF! No video again. I thought maybe it's something flaky with Kubuntu, so I tried Neon. Same thing happened. So I tried Ubuntu-Mate. Again, same thing, so I'm pretty much sure it isn't software since it's doing the same thing with different desktops. Something has to be going on with the hardware. I poked around in the BIOS, but didn't really see anything that looked promising. (Everything is set to defaults/auto. Not OC'd. Bone stock.)
I've even tried both active and passive DP adapters. Made no difference. Now while I'm in the BIOS, I can leave it there for hours, perhaps days, and the video remains on. Once I boot into the OS, that's when the problem surfaces. I should also mention that there isn't any specific interval for this. I've had it die right after login and I've had it run for hours, but it always happens eventually. It has never run overnight. There is no load on the machine, so no heat to speak of. You can touch pretty much everything and it's basically cold to the touch. The air blowing out of the case is cold too. I've watched the temp and voltage readings in the BIOS. They are all good, at least while I'm watching.
Another tidbit is that I don't actually know if the computer is actually functioning when this happens. I mean all the lights and fans are on and everything SEEMS like it's running, just no video, but I haven't actually confirmed this yet. I would have to set up some sort of service that I can check from the network to see if it's still actually running. I'm thinking as I'm typing here. Maybe I can setup SAMBA or apache. Trick will be getting it set up before the video goes away. I'll give that a shot tonight. I'll have to get it on the network first. Haven't gotten that far yet.
Besides that, at this point I only have 2 hardware ideas left. One is to update the BIOS. I haven't done that yet because I'm only one minor release behind the latest and the release notes don't indicate that the changes had anything to do with video. (Yeah, I know that they don't always put everything in the notes, so there is that.) My other option is to install a video card and see what happens. That kind of defeats the point of the build, but I'm really running out of options. If I have faulty hardware, I can't really tell if it's the CPU or MB. I can't really see it being anything else.
Hmmm... one other thing occurred to me as I've been proof reading my post. All of the distros I've tried have been based on Ubuntu. Don't know why I haven't realized that before. Maybe I'll try something different like openSUSE or Fedora to see if there's something in the core Ubuntu software that's causing this.
So that's where I'm at. Anyone have any other ideas or suggestions? Thanks.
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