A Failed CPU Cooler Fan, or heatsinks on modern processors get hot

I received a report that a machine was powering off erratically. After interrogating the user who made the report, I was reasonably sure that the problem was a matter of an overheating processor. Upon opening the case and powering the machine back on, the cpu fan was indeed malfunctioning. It tried desperatly to spin up, but could never quite work out a full rotation. Prodding provided the final bit of needing information; the bearing had fallen out of alignment.

I still felt the need to double check that the cpu was actually overheating. Instead of doing something sensible like booting into the bios menu and looking at the hardware monitor to see the temperature, I touched the heatsink. Ow.

Printing from Linux, or My that's a large test page

The image above is letter sized test page from CUPS printed on an inkjet printer from one of our linux workstations. This is the what happens when you print a test page to our 42 inch wide wide format inkjet. Note the letter sized test page in the upper left of the large image.

Dell Flat Panels, or an impressive failure rate

We have nearly one hundred 19 in. Dell flat panel monitors across four revisions of the hardware. A month ago I would have happily recommended the monitors to anyone. I just boxed up the 21st monitor that has been replaced because of screen burn in issues. There were bad monitors across nearly every batch of monitors purchased over a two year span, and across all four hardware revisions. I no longer recommend Dell flat panels.

My first indication of the epidemic occured nearly two months ago when I swapped out a pair of badly burned-in images for a user (which prompted a few other people to complain of the problem). With a half dozen bad monitors sitting in my office I finally got around to calling Dell. I went into the call expecting this to be simple. The monitors have unique serial numbers. I assumed I would spend some time on hold and then give the nice support technician a list of serial numbers. They would then tell me which monitors were still under warranty and which were not, and set up delivery of replacements for the ones that were. If only it were so easy.

Over the course of 4 hours, 3 phone calls, and about 10 different support technicians I learned a few things. 1) Dell does not repair monitors. 2) Support technicians can not look up warranty information on anything but express service tag (noting that express service tag numbers only come with computers and laptops). 3) Dell does repair monitors. After all of that, I still didn't know if any of the monitors were or were not under warranty.

The next day, my boss gave it a shot. He lasted about 30 minutes before giving up on tech support. In the end, we asked our salesperson to resolve the matter for us. With no response from the salesperson, we rejected the delivery of a fairly sizable order that was being delivered from Dell. We were then put in touch with a very helpful customer service representative who has helped replace all of our bad monitors without hestitation or further wasted time.

It's too bad all of our replacement monitors had been previously loved and half of them were sent to us in conditions that should never had been it through Dell's quality assurance group. Nothing serious, just things like damaged cables, poorly packed for shipping, not including cables. As you might have guessed by this point, we are no longer purchasing Dell monitors.

Life of a Sysadmin 11 2006

A Failed CPU Cooler Fan, or heatsinks on modern processors get hot

Printing from Linux, or My that's a large test page

Dell Flat Panels, or an impressive failure rate