Re: CPF181A Message

From Al Macintyre

The most obvious idea to me is that the brown-outs/black-outs were so severe 
as to drain UPS power so that the UPS sent messages (that the AS/400s did not 
see so did not act on) that the battery power was drained so you gotta shut 
the system down NOW, then the power from UPS was shut down, causing an 
abnormal AS/400 down, then after the utility power was Ok again, the UPS went 
back on, and the AS/400 had power, and did a re-IPL which was much longer 
than usual, because of the abnormal power down.

Another idea is that if the load on two UPS is not identical, one will run 
out of electrical power before the other.  Thus, with a series of outages, 
one UPS might have to shut down, while another makes it through the crisis, 
just barely, so a computer attached to the latter is not interrupted, while 
one attached to the former is.

I know you said that was not the case ... I am just throwing out possible 
ideas here ... ARE YOU SURE ... perhaps someone reconnected stuff other than 
how you thought it was connected.

The next most obvious idea is that some hardware is less sensitive to 
interrupted power than others ... when we have momentary brown out power 
flickers ... right after, go walking around the office ... some PCs without 
any UPS are chugging along like nothing went wrong, while others are down 
down.  I guess part of the issue is whether the power drain of those units 
was enough so that not enough power available so something adverse happened.

Once upon a time we had a "3 phase" computer (whatever that means) which 
meant in practical terms that it went out in brown outs, and we needed to 
have IBM check out the breaker panels to make sure they were wired correctly. 
 We also have intermittent gremlins in our twinax.

You might also check WRKSYSVAL for system values related to what you wnat 
your AS/400 to actually do under a variety of power disruption events.

>  From:    SRobertson@dpsciences.com (Robertson, Scott)

>  Over the weekend, we experienced multiple brown-outs/black-outs to our data
>  center.  Our server farm (including 2-AS/400s) are fed by two APC Matrix
>  5000 UPS units.  There is a communications cable between one UPS and our
>  mail server, and this unit sends out the pages for "on battery" and 
"utility
>  power restored".  There is no communications cable to either AS/400.
>  
>  On our model 720 (V4R3), I show messages logged stating:
>  CPF181A - Message . . . . :   System power failed at 000805154915.
>  
>  Cause . . . . . :   The system's power failed and power was switched to
>  internal batteries.
>  
>  CPI097A -    Message . . . . :   System power restored at 000805154926.
>  
>  Cause . . . . . :   The system's power source failed and was switched to 
run
>  on internal batteries for 11 seconds.  The system remained powered during
>  this time, and no recovery is necessary.
>  
>  A couple of questions came to mind:
>  1)   Since there was no cable between AS/400 and the UPS, power should
>  not have been interrupted.
>  2)   The other AS/400 (a model 300) was on the same UPS, but showed no
>  power messages logged.
>  
>  What is the difference between CPF1816 (System Utility Power Failed) and
>  CPF181A (System Power Failed)?  If a RTFM is a valid response, please give
>  me a clue as to which one!  I've looked on the Web and the CD to no avail 
on
>  this message.
>  
>  I'm hoping that since the UPSs were cycling on and off (5 times within a
>  half hour) had something to do with that.  The 720 is the only 208 volt
>  machine on that UPS, so maybe the power wasn't "clean" enough?  Or worse,
>  might I have a problem with the 720's power supply that just happened to
>  show up during a power failure???
>  
>  Any ideas???                                  
>                                             
>  Scott S. Robertson
>  Information Systems Manager
>  Data Processing Sciences Corp.
>  srobertson@dpsciences.com <mailto:srobertson@dpsciences.com> 
>  http://www.dpsciences.com/ <http://www.dpsciences.com/> 

Al Macintyre  ©¿©
MIS Manager Green Screen Programmer & Computer Janitor of BPCS 405 CD Rel-02 
running on AS/400 V4R3 http://www.cen-elec.com Central Industries of 
Indiana--->Quality manufacturer of wire harnesses and electrical 
sub-assemblies
+---
| This is the Midrange System Mailing List!
| To submit a new message, send your mail to MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com.
| To subscribe to this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-SUB@midrange.com.
| To unsubscribe from this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-UNSUB@midrange.com.
| Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com
+---