While I was away on vacation, the server hosting this blog become unresponsive, twice.

The first failure was a kernel oops shortly after mounting my backup disc

kernel BUG at mm/slab.c:3109!

invalid opcode: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP

It was several days before somebody with a key could get to the computer and restart it.  A week later, shortly before I returned from vacation, the machine become unreachable again.  This time, when I came into the house, I could hear a continuous audible alarm from the UPS.  I reset that, and the machine came up and worked normally.

So, two apparently unrelated problems knocking the machine offline when I wasn’t around to handle it.  I checked my SMART logs for the backup disc, there’s no sign that it’s a hardware issue, and the UPS logs are entirely empty of anything incriminating.

If I figure out the causes of either of these failures, I’ll update this post.

Update #1: 2014-06-20

The UPS triggered its alarm again this morning, and the server lost power.  The UPS is an APC Back-UPS ES 750, and a continuous tone indicates that the battery is missing or has failed.  I’ve replaced the battery, and hope that the issue does not repeat.