Slashdot Mirror
When Servers Explode
1sockchuck writes "Have you ever lost your patience with a server? We're not sure who was the first person to intentionally blow up a server, but plenty of others have followed in their footsteps, and many seem to have captured the event on video. The Gallery of Exploding Servers documents the sometimes incendiary relationship between man and machine. Those who prefer a kinder, gentler disposition may prefer the guide to Flying and Crashing Servers."
First post to kick the crap out of a server
Servers just explode. Natural causes.
No. I stole something else.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash was named after a supposed phenomenon of the early days of computing where a failure was so bad that the display device went berserk and showed only television-style static. Is this kind of crash real or apocryphal? It does seem unlikely.
if its not loaded with c-4, it will never be a good explosion.
I believe the correct phrasing should be, "When Servers Asplode."
---- You are fully entitled to my opinion.
Where there some dells that had bad caps that burned down?
I was tossing decommissioned servers off the roof of my work back in 2000 and 2001. We just didn't have a Youtube to show off on.
There aren't many things (you can do at work) that are as satisfying as throwing an NT box off a roof...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
...but I've taken two printers out in the driveway and smashed the living crap out of them.
My new neighbor saw the second one...I was swinging it over my head by the power cord screaming "DIE YOU PIECE OF SHIT" when she came up with a mis-delivered package, and got to watch it shatter into a million pieces when I slammed it into the retaining wall.
She's still scared of me.
Sure there were. I had some PowerEdge 1Us do that (1650??). BANG and smokesmell (not much actual smoke) is *never* your friend in the server room.
By linking these pages on Slashdot, aren't we just adding to the cruelty against server-kind?
I think we just exploded their servers.
By the time it take to get the linked webpages, i think we manage to explode (or slashploder ?) 2 more servers from distance.
EULA : By reading the above message, you agree that I now own your soul.
I know of a local woman, here in Northern Arizona, who shot her home computer a few years ago, because she was so frustrated with it. The couple who was her landlord also lived on the property and kicked her out shortly afterwards.
I remember a raidcontroller in my office beaping for 2 or 3 weeks because one harddisc was defective and replacement unavailable. If I would have had a bazooka, it would have exploded.
Yup! Server: DEAD!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I used to admin this rickety old voicemail system which had been set up (by someone else, mind you) on a generic ("white box") DOS PC with a million cards sticking out of it.
One day, I came in to the office to complaints that the voicemail was down. I found the machine unresponsive, so rebooted it. I suspected the drive wasn't spinning because I didn't hear much sound coming from it. Due to loud noise in the closet, I held my ear to the box to listen better.
As I set my head against the server, the true problem became painfully evident... the cooling fan had stopped spinning, the PC had completely overheated, and it chose that moment for the power supply to literally explode from the heat. A plume of pure white smoke came out with a loud popping sound... My ear was ringing for hours afterward.
OK, so it didn't actually tear apart into tiny pieces, but it did effectively blow up.
That was many years ago when we used dial-up connection over phone line. One day we just couldn't get connected and I asked around neighbors, who couldn't either. Later the in the local TV news it was revealed the ISP's server room exploded...
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
In one clip, the guys were looking at the charred innards of their server, and while it was still smoking. one of the guys asks, "Did you get a backup?" THAT was too funny!
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
This was a single board computer that I determined was unrepairable:
Before
During
After
I love Tannerite.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Can't get the site. I hope it's me and the site is not slashdotted, because if it's hit by THIS article the server hosting it might actually explode!
Add one more to the list!
I feel bad when people take it out on a monitor, it's rarely the monitor's fault.
Woot Off
I used to work for a small ISP and we had several servers explode. And one melt. We took a direct lightning strike. This storm appeared out of nowhere, two of us were on the phone (because most customers did not have their PCs plugged in during this weather) and then BANG!
My co-worker's phone began to smoke and slowly warped over 10 minutes. My phone was unresponsive and I couldn't hear anything out of my left ear for three hours.
Oddly enough there was no structural damage to the building. It took out our mail and radius servers and a few other boxes.
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
You know I have had my iPhone crash when someoned called, I had iTunes delete all my music, I had Vista crash on my Dell laptop a hundred times! But hardware failure not so much. I now use Ubuntu Linux on my laptop and I will be fundraising for iPhone Linux. I think open source will help me with my problems and I hope it will help other with hardware problems.
To see a few of my Android apps goto: www.hartwired.com
Be nice to whoever is handling your food!
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Hey
my site (just pictures) has been online for 15 years.
http://www.cpu.lu/~gkes/pcrepair/
Funny enough it is always on the fist links in google when searching "how to repair a pc" :-)
Atari rules... ermm... ruled.
Probably a troll, but I'll bite.
Many of those crashes were hardware related. It's a dirty little secret in the computer industry, but none of the chips really work as documented. The BIOS tunes the chips until they work well enough to boot windows, and then assume Microsoft will get the blame.
Windows crashes so much more often than the hardware, that everyone always blames the software. If Windows ever did work well, it would still crash because the hardware didn't work, and Microsoft would still take the blame.
I wanted to blow up my Windows server by feeding it with 12470 volts. But I think Microsoft is in bed with the power company because they refused my request to connect directly to the 12470 volt wires up on the pole.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Ok, who exploded the gallery of exploded servers?
We're not sure who was the first person to intentionally blow up a server, but plenty of others have followed in their footsteps, and many seem to have captured the event on video.
We're not sure who was the first person to intentionally pop a baloon, but plenty of others have followed in their footsteps, and many seem to have captured the event on video.
We're not sure who was the first person to intentionally eat a sandwich, but plenty of others have followed in their footsteps, and many seem to have captured the event on video.
We're not sure who was the first person to intentionally pop a wheelie, but plenty of others have followed in their footsteps, and many seem to have captured the event on video.
We're not sure who was the first person to intentionally chop down a tree, but plenty of others have followed in their footsteps, and many seem to have captured the event on video.
We're not sure who was the first person to intentionally fall down stairs, but plenty of others have followed in their footsteps, and many seem to have captured the event on video.
We're not sure who was the first person to intentionally sing a song, but plenty of others have followed in their footsteps, and many seem to have captured the event on video.
We're not sure who was the first person to intentionally fire a gun, but plenty of others have followed in their footsteps, and many seem to have captured the event on video.
We're not sure who was the first person to intentionally kick a cat, but plenty of others have followed in their footsteps, and many seem to have captured the event on video.
We're not sure who was the first person to intentionally discuss politics, but plenty of others have followed in their footsteps, and many seem to have captured the event on video.
We're not sure who was the first person to intentionally have sex, but plenty of others have followed in their footsteps, and many seem to have captured the event on video.
We're not sure who was the first person to intentionally jump on a trampoline, but plenty of others have followed in their footsteps, and many seem to have captured the event on video.
We're not sure who was the first person to intentionally sail a boat, but plenty of others have followed in their footsteps, and many seem to have captured the event on video.
etc.
"We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all." - Douglas Adams
Still down. Oh we of the great /.! We salute you!
Another one bites the dust.
Just for reference
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
Consumer hardware is pants. Bits flip and stuff randomly breaks - sometimes one leads to the other. It's a miracle that this messaË even reaches you at allËÎÏ
"Strangers have the best candy" -Me
I'm indebted to those that posted here, and heartily, if tearfully, thank them. That made my day.
.
Now, can we do something about the Canadian government? I know they're supposed to "serve" us, but look at the track record. Our politicians have only twenty digits. Ancient MIT devices parsing primes could do better back in the eighties. Please, please! Send up an Obama replacement for our "server," and we won't nuke it!
.
After your President leaves today, of course... :-)
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. ~~ Hunter S. Thompson
This demonstrates the advantages of not being seen.
The exploded servers just exploted the servers...
I totally just did a double take when it said only 6 comments,then I realized its not news, its idle.
...lmao! the fish-flying-into-the-new-tank analogy slays me
In any DTP class at least one student would declare that either they hated computers or computers hated them.
"But dear student it is just a hunk of plastic and metal, it honestly harbours no feelings for you neither good nor bad."
This was in a room where six imacs were set to giggle randomly.
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
EtherKiller
Letting the magic smoke out of electronics since 1992.
Never had a server explode on me but I did get a call once 10 years ago when I was working tech support at a University from a scared professor about a his printer smoking. I told him to unplug it and laughed thinking it was the usual type of user hysterics. I smell a little bit of burnt plastic thinking maybe there was some plastic left from when the printer was packed up by the manufacturer. I plug it in and right as it starts up its print head check flames start shooting up out of the back of the printer. I quickly extinguished it but looking around we really dodged a bullet. This printer was networked, and sitting on top of a large stack of student papers. The entire room was some college professor cliche with dozens of massive stacks of paper in this tiny 6x6 office. One unattended network print and the entire office goes up in flames in less than a minute.
In 2008, I bought a lot of 10 computers off of ebay for a couple bucks. They were old PIII computers. I was testing one of them with the sides off to see if it worked. I was poking around in the BIOS and all seemed to be good. Then, the Air Conditioning kicked on dimming the lights in the room. The power supply had sparks shooting out the side of it. I never reached so fast to unplug something in my life. Since I had the sides off of the tower, it was a rather spectacular display.
I later took the power supply apart and found a cap that was melted. I assume the reverse current from the AC drawing that much power must have melted it.
There is this mentality at work that a bug in code is often refered to as "The server blew up". I think this is the only time I have witnessed an actual computer blowing up.
freak3dot
It's true, but I will say that there is something to be said about good software, using the iPhone we see how much software alone can do with just a touch screen and Internet, and cell phone connection! I think should be a focus on software improvement just like there is in hardware improvement and that, I beleive will only happen in Linux, or what Apple takes from the OSS community.
To see a few of my Android apps goto: www.hartwired.com
When a server is causing too much downtime: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCY5IiJZQb8
The closest I've come to a pc self-exploding is only partial self-combustion: ...that lit the wall up with pretty lights and turned out to be full of disconnected black pieces when I opened it. The fuse in the power cord (5A@240V) blew, meaning more than double the PSU's rating had flown through it. I'm surprised the motherboard survived, let alone everything else in the case. ...which wasn't itself stable, and fell out. Followed by a loud *crack* from the motherboard's own power circuits, seeing flames through the window my pc had in the side at the time, and needing to replace the cpu, gfx card, and mobo. If I'd had any pci cards they'd probably have died too. Thankfully my drives survived. ...which didn't have the cooler on properly, was about 150W, and didn't have temp throttling. The spacer pads in the corners crackled as they melted, then the core went *bang* and the pc turned itself off. I was in the bios at the time, just got to the sensors page, first time I'd seen a 3 digit temp on there...
One power-supply:
One motherboard with optional power-stabilization add-in-card:
One cpu:
I've also lost two more psus, two more cpus, and a graphics card or two to apparently random unspectacular failure.
And that's only my home systems!
The guys at http://www.nohardware.com/ have some serious knowledge on how to destroy some servers... However, it's an ad, so these guys are probably simply paid to kill that old pile of junk. Still, for me (as a good ole weapons-hating european pacifist) it's more or less the only example for allowing every goon to cary around some serious firepower. Schnomp.
I have never really understood the exploding computers in Bond movies. Thus, when the slashdotted TFA-site revitalizes itself, I am sure it will host a great gallery of Sean Connery and Roger Moore blowing up mountains and sinking ocean-liners just by shooting at any computer.
Once I was using compressed air to blow out the dust from a Sequent Symmetry SE60. All the power supplies started sucking in the dusty air and going sparkle-BANG-dark. That sucked.
Whenever I get frustrated with a piece of electronics, I defenestrate like mad and feel much better afterward. Just don't do it too much or you might go blind.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
I want to see movies and pictures of servers blowing up. That site it just two pages of text squeezed between adverts.
Are server internals flying all over the place and a little fire too much to ask for?
Some animals WERE harmed in the making of this video (HP's)
Link
"Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer." -Adolf Hitler
"We are one Nation, we are one People." -The One 'leader'
So wait, why do they work fine with Linux and BSD? Maybe it really is the software's fault, if other software works correctly.
Sam ty sig.
I had a hard drive explode in my face. Okay, just a chip on the logic board that went pop and smoke spiraled upward. When my manager wouldn't approve a request for safety goggles ("how often does a hard drive explode?"), I had to go to his manager. I went from exploding hard drive to exploding manager.
We are not sure how it started -- but we know it was the machines that struck first.....
What's with all the paper in the GoGrid explosion? Were they running a document imaging app?
I'd love to see the pictures of the folks doing the smashing: 1. The motive: futility; 2. The preparation: anticipation; 3. The action: thrill; 4. The aftermath: that was...uh...fun...let's have a doughnut.
Several years ago while working in the service department of a local retailer, a farmer [this is on the Canadian prairies] brought in his entire system with the power bar it had been plugged into.
This was one of those power bars that we'd either shrug or laugh off the "$15,000 insurance" advertised on its packaging.
This guy's home was fed by an overhead power line that split from the mains line between his work sheds and house at a lamp post.
The lamp post got struck by lightning.
That was the ONLY time I've ever seen one of those insurance claims go through because the power bar exploded - shortly after the computer's motherboard, PSU, hard drive, and CRT did the same.
We didn't joke about the power bars' insurance coverage after that.
I saw something like that being sold at the Phoenix Gun show saturday in jars.
If 'the people' in Amendment 2 are 'the state' then Amendments 1, 2, 4, 9, and 10 benefit the state, not you.