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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."
Servers just explode. Natural causes.
No. I stole something else.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
It was real. Sometimes programs would lose their minds and write all over the video memory.
http://pinopsida.com
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.
Sometimes programs would lose their minds.
Don't do that Dave.
It's slashdotted already, so it looks like we've ironically exploded one hosting a gallery of exploding servers. Or maybe it just got depressed and offed itself.
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.
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!"
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.
Be nice to whoever is handling your food!
Set your phasers on "funky"!
In the old days, when we liked to have an onion in our belts, because it was fashionable than, the Z-80 processor that drove our computer was the same that drove the video, i.e., took the bytes from the video memory and generated the corresponding image in the CRT. So, if you crashed the processor very badly, and it stopped responding to video interrupts, then your image generator could go "out". If it was connected to an RF generator (which was also fashionable at the day), it could turn that off also, and then, sshskhskhkshshskhsk no RF on channel 3/4, snow snow snow noise noise noise.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
use one of these when nobody else is watching. Problem solved.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
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.
My wife had this PC with an oldish power supply which had a power output so you could power other devices like a monitor. Years ago I built a power board so I could use the PC to switch on speakers, lamp, printer etc. All low power stuff. One cold day she plugged a 2400 watt fan heater into that power board....
No more power supply after that though the rest of the system was okay.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
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.