Allegedly, on or about 31 May 2017, William Mattison sent: > I recall hearing and reading that the output of lithium batteries is > almost flat (better than any other type of battery), but then very > quickly drops (faster than any other type of battery) as it reaches > end-of-life. I can't say that I'm familiar with their discharge pattern, but I have read that an in-use lifespan of three years is considered normal. So, you're at the time it might be worth replacing, even if it's not the cause of current problems. At the very least, you stop this being a potential problem in another year or so. > Is there a Fedora command that I can use to check the hard drive (not > the file systems) for bad blocks, sectors, tracks, etc? Is there a > Fedora command that I can use to check the controller? Look up S.M.A.R.T., though be aware that some controllers may not co-operate, but that tends to be things like outboard USB interfaces, or RAID. Ordinary hard drives plugged straight into the motherboard are likely to be checkable. It's the hard drive, itself, that checks its health and produces the stats, smartctl just gives you an interface. > Both problems occurred immediately after doing a "dnf upgrade". What > is that telling us? That you ought to try rebooting using a previous kernel, and see if problems persist. There are two red flags about problems after doing an update: 1. That a new kernel has changed hardware drivers, or created other incompatibilities. 2. That your hard drive had some bad spots that hadn't been used before, but as you filled it up with more files (the recent downloads and installs), you hit the problem area. Those are the two things that immediately jump to mind. Yes, an update can be more stressful than other PC activities, for *some* users. But for other users, they're always subjecting their PC to a heavy workload, so a prolonged update session is nothing different from normal use. > Does "dnf upgrade" access the hard drive or the controller in a way > that normal daily use does not? I would say not. It's just files in and out, under the control of some program, onto storage system in the usual way. > When I bought the system 4+ years ago, I bought separate parts. This > is a DIY desktop. I was advised to buy more power supply than needed. > I did so. So unless the power supply is failing, I would think it's > not a good candidate for the cause of the two problems. There have > been no problems until this month, and I've been doing weekly patches > since I got the system in 2013. Power supplies do fail, sometimes gradually, sometimes spontaneously combusting, sometimes just randomly glitching. It can be complete coincidence that some technical failure happens at the same time as you did something you considered more special than it merely sitting there. I agree with the concept of getting bigger than you think you need, but it's hard to work out the criteria. Few devices specify their power requirements, at all, or specify them adequately. i.e. A graphics card may say it needs a 100 watt power supply. That claim may be bogus, they may be overestimating so you buy an adequate one, it may be accurate. It doesn't specify how many watts it requires from the different supplies in your PC (12 volt, 5 volt, 3.3 volt, etc). So it could require a lot from a 12 volt supply, less from the 5 volt, and your power supply could be inadequate in one of those areas. Then there's the power supply specs. Do they list the power it can continuously supply, the momentary higher peaks that it can supply? And there's a similar thing with the devices, does a graphic card's power supply requirements specify continuous and momentary peaks. The momentary peaks, as something suddenly needs more power, as it turns on, or changes modes, etc., can be the kind of thing that cause enough trouble to make a system unstable. If you have a simple system, e.g. motherboard, graphics card, hard drive, optical drive, it's not too hard to ensure you put in a sufficiently beefy supply. If you have a PC loaded with gadgets, it's harder to estimate the requirements. But what type of power supply did you put in? Did you match the wattage your supplier said you needed, did you overcompensate by an extra 100 watts? Did you get some generic Chinese thing, or something that had a reputation? As an opposing example: I stripped apart a friend's Mac, it has a ridiculously beefy power supply, with large fat bus bars that bolt to the motherboard, rather than those multi-pin molex connectors you see on the average PC. And that system is designed as a whole, so the manufacturer ought to know the full system specs, as opposed to a PC assembled from multiple different vendors who never collaborated. > I did watch the youtube that Tim provided. I don't recall seeing > screws on the underside of the motherboard. I'll look again Friday or > Saturday (God willing!). I could see them on one of the videos, quite small silver ones, underneath the motherboard (you had to completely remove the board). But maybe they've switched to black ones, that need careful inspection to find. I agree with the comments that ASUS made a prize design goof by burying the CMOS battery with that plating. I understand the value of covering the whole board (forcing cooling across it, making it harder for accidentally dropped things to land on exposed conductors, etc), but they should have left a way to easily access the battery. -- [tim@localhost ~]$ uname -rsvp Linux 3.9.10-100.fc17.x86_64 #1 SMP Sun Jul 14 01:31:27 UTC 2013 x86_64 (always current details of the computer that I'm writing this email on) Boilerplate: All mail to my mailbox is automatically deleted, there is no point trying to privately email me, I only get to see the messages posted to the mailing list. Long ago I gave up on using Windows (TM) [Tantrum Machine], and I've never regretted it. _______________________________________________ users mailing list -- users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
