30th of December 2023

Farm status
CPU only
Off

Nvidia GPUs
Off

Raspberry Pis
On and off depending on how hot it gets.


Blackout killed UPS
We had a blackout a fortnight ago. That cost me a CyberPower 650VA UPS that only had to power the internet cable modem and ISP's router. It appears to have totally killed the battery inside and it wouldn't power on. I have purchased another one (they are cheap) but if the power goes off for more than an hour it seems its too stupid to shut itself down and totally drains the battery. It has a lead-acid battery so if they get below about 50% that is the end of the battery.

Fortunately most things were off or in the case of the raspberries were idle.


Debian 12.3 point release
Following the issues with the Debian 12.3 point release they decided to stop the release. A day later they did a 12.4 point release which included an updated kernel that didn't have the ext4 corruption issue. They then followed that up with another kernel update a few days later due to issues with WiFi drivers.

Raspberry Pi OS still seems to be running an effected kernel that has the ext4 data corruption issue.


Parts orders
I mentioned in my last post about getting Contact Frames (or Secure Frames) for my Ryzen 7900's. I decided to get Thermal Paste Guards instead. I've ordered them so should be able to complete the builds in the new year.


Altra server issue
I decided to upgrade my Ampere Altra to debian bookworm. Unfortunately the installer fails with a "grub install dummy" failed message. This seems to be related to booting in UEFI mode, which it seems to be booting in, so I am not sure if I need to create legacy boot media for it. I'll make another attempt when the house is empty due to the noise that the server makes.