Server shuts down suddenly *HELP*

[manueln19]

Hi. I have a Server running fedora core 8.
The client is a small office.
The server is used for storage only.

They doesn't work 24hours, for this reason, at the moment they close the office, they put the breakers down. Turn Off the office complete.

The server is always shuts down suddenly.

So, i edited the file: /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit
and add this line at the begining:

/sbin/fsck -y

I did this, so, everyday when the server start, when boot process, before mount the disk, clean the disk for possibles errors. And it does!.

But sometimes it doesn't work, because sometimes the server says:

*** Warning -- SELinux ${SELINUXTYPE} policy relabel is required. "
 *** /etc/selinux/config indicates you want to manually fix labeling"
*** problems. Dropping you to a shell; the system will reboot"
*** when you leave the shell."
...
...
..etc

so, i need to run manually:

umount /dev/sda1
fsck -y /dev/sda1
reboot

Then the system boot normally.

What I want?
I want this never happen! I want the server always boot without any issue, at least is not a physical problem.
How can i solve this?

[glennzo]

Simple. Tell then to stop turning off all of the power. Tell them that when they do that the server, and their data, risk serious damage. They need to leave the power on for the server.

[manueln19]

Can someone give another solution?

---------- Post added at 11:01 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:45 PM ----------

The error is something like this:

************* FILESYSTEM CHECK FAILED ************
*
* Please repair manually and reboot. Note that the root
* file system is currently mounted read-only. To remount
* it read-write type: mount -n -o remount,rw /
* when you exit the maintenance shell the system will
* reboot automatically.
*
*************************************************

Give root password for maintenance
(or type Control-D to continue):

[pete_1967]

Originally Posted by manueln19

Can someone give another solution?

Yes, two:
1) Add small UPS to the server so it shuts down cleanly on power failure
2) Don't bother, they want to screw their systems, let them unless you make a small fortune from cleaning up their mess all the time

[DBelton]

A small UPS is one solution, another solution is if they shut off the power at the same time every day, then power down the system normally before they do so. You could schedule a job with cron to run after the work day ends but before they shut off the power to shut down the server.

Another option would be to add fsck.mode=force as a kernel parameter to force a filesystem check upon every boot.

Edit:
I forget exactly which kernel version they added the fsck.mode parameter to. If it's not an option for your older kernel, you could always do a touch /forcefsck upon each boot so that a check would be forced.

[jpollard]

The problem is that some filesystem corruption cannot be fixed automatically. And forcing a "y" to fsck can destroy your data (a thousand errors reported... a "y" puts a lost directory in lost+found... system fails completely due to loss of /bin.

Or worse, the directory inode gets cleared... leaving thousands of lost files... in addition to a lost /bin.

[manueln19]

Ok, The office close at 6PM but the boss sometimes keep working to 10PM.
So, I I program a Cron job to automatically shutdown the server, the server will be always shut down at 6PM. But, The boss still working using files in the server sometimes to 10PM.

What Can i do?

[DBelton]

I would tell the boss exactly what it's doing to the server by them shutting off the power every night.

It's possible that whoever shuts the power off could do a clean shut down of the server before they hit the breaker. Or they might be able to change how they do things and leave the power up.

You pretty much have your options here in this thread

[manueln19]

And what to do if instead a Server for storage, is a PBX based on Linux.
A phone system.

What can i do in case is a PBX ?
A PBX is always ONLINE because you probably want to make a call whenever you want.

[DBelton]

In that case, you would not shut off the power to it. It isn't going to be online if you shut off the power, unless you have a good UPS.

If it's critical that the server be up, then get a good UPS and don't go flipping off the breakers.