Complete crash / reboot cycle on Proxmox 1.8 - Not sure the cause, help

[lowno]

I have a new setup, but it is not the supported install. Hardware is a dell quad xeon, 16 gig ram, 3 terabyte hd, new system. I had to install Debian and then do a manual install to use the 3 terabyte hard drive. Set it all up and has been flawless all week, but I added a new vm today that crashed the system. The system would then reboot and crash all over again.

I figured the reason it would keep crashing is because my vm's are set to start at boot, so I quickly logged in on the console and stopped all the vm's one by one. After that the system is stable, but I have not tested the system with all the vm's running.

BTW, I am running the KVM kernel only, what 2.6.35 something like that.

Anyway, I am just not sure what the cause is and I am confident it will happen again if I start all my vm's.

So my question is:
1. Sound like a memory issue possibly? I know wacky things happen when there is defective memory
2. If I look at the memory usage on the vm list and the home page for the while system, they are far off from each other. Possible memory issue clue?
3. Since I have the kvm ksm kernel, how should I issue memory? Meaning can I assign more memory then the system physically has because of the ksm?
4. What happens if the vm's need more memory then is available?

For now I changed the vm config to not start on boot, while I am in this debug phase.

I must say that I love proxmox. This issue is most likely not caused by proxmox, since proxmox is pretty solid. This is more of a hobby / dev system, with a few asterisk and windows vm's. Just trying to get a better understanding.

 

[tom]

yes, could be a RAM issue, maybe a mainboard bios issue - any updates for this mainboard?

as you got reliable crashes you should replace the RAM and test again.

 

[lowno]

Thanks Tom.

So here is my follow up report for everyone. I updated the bios, the dell bmc, and ran a memory test. While doing this the computer was shutting off left and right then it occurred to me to check the voltage setting on the power supply. And sure enough, it was set to 220 by default from dell. I have no idea why they would do this, it just makes no sense. I live in the US, they shipped it to me in the US. At the end of the day I should have just checked it, but over the many years of working with computers, I have only had this problem one time.

Anyways, thanks for helping and I am so glad it has nothing to do with my proxmox install.