Apple xserve 10.5.8 connectivity, temperature and fan issues. Please help!!

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Apple xserve 10.5.8 connectivity, temperature and fan issues. Please help!!

Hi All

I am a Media Technician at a secondary school and sixthform and we run a lab of 20 iMacs out of a Xserve all running 10.5.8.

Recently, the servers fans started blowing at a million miles an hour with the server refusing to respond. After rebooting the server, the 20 iMacs lost all connectivity to any netwroked accounts on workgroup manager and none of my admin macs can remotly access work group manager. When on the local administrator account, all macs still have full internet access and show they are connected to the servers ip address.

I managed to connect the server moniter and everything reads as normal until the fans started overblowing again at which point the tempreture inside the GPU core on the system board registerd at -128 degrees ceclias!

The system identifyer light flashes 3 pulses consistantly. When pressed, it flashes continualy.

There is 230gb of free space on the server.

I have been able to fix most software falts witht he xserve in the past, but I have run out of options this time!

I contacted an engineer with an apple reseller who suggested that the proccessor, through wear and tear, may be overheating causing the server to spool up the fans. While this seems a sensible suggestion, I cant understand why none of the macs can access workgroup manager when all the servers diagnostics read as normal.

My confidence in his diagnosis wained slightly when he mentioned his company has had one xserve in over the last 6 years and they seem to be a "rare" piece of hardware to come across these days.

So i have 3 questions:

1 - Has anyone ever experienced problems like this before?

2 - Has anyone had good support from apple in recent years regarding xservers?

3 - Has anyone got advice on the potential issues in replacing it with a Mac Mini Server?

Any and all advice would be most welcomed, I currently feel lost in a wilderness with no one around with answers!!

Thanks so much for reading!

JD

Xserve, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Jun 4, 2013 2:16 AM

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Answer 1

Jun 11, 2013 8:37 AM in response to j.drury

Hi JD,

Here's a few things to check.

1) Open Activity Monitor on the affected Xserve, make sure you click the "My Proceses" button and change that to All Processes. This should show you the program that is failing to respond and how much CPU it's actually using. What programs do you have running on the Xserve.

Alternatively, if it's not a software issue.

2) Look at the front of the Xserve and between the slots where the drives are there are 2 vents. Check to see if these are clogged up with dust. If they are the the easiest thing is to get some compressed air, remove the xserve from the rack, take the lid off and spray the compressed air into the vents. You'll end up with dust balls inside but these can be removed.

3) If the vents aren't clogged and there is nothing inside the xserve that could be causing it to overheat report back with the specs of the xserve and I'll list some part numbers for you. If it's only the GPU that is overheating then it's not too hard to find a replacement or even a replacement Xserve on eBay.. You'll be able to swap the drives to a new chassis or replace the graphics card quite easily if needed.

Hope that helps

Beatle

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