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View Full Version : How many days can i keep my PC on at a stretch?



rajeev1204
December 14th, 2007, 11:04 AM
hello

I have had some bad luck with my motherboard refusing to boot in the mornings after i shut it down the previous night.

I think i should never shut it down now :D

How long do you think we can do that without burning anything?

khurrum1990
December 14th, 2007, 11:20 AM
hello

I have had some bad luck with my motherboard refusing to boot in the mornings after i shut it down the previous night.

I think i should never shut it down now :D

How long do you think we can do that without burning anything?
I doubt u will burn anything, and since u use Linux u can keep it on for a month without noticing a decrease in performance. I read that on a website, I will try and find the link.

jinx099
December 14th, 2007, 12:11 PM
LOL, nope you wont burn anything. I've had my FreeBSD box up without rebooting it for almost half a year now.

See this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=558401

t0p
December 14th, 2007, 12:16 PM
I think i should never shut it down now :D

How long do you think we can do that without burning anything?

There have been reports of UNIX boxes being kept up for years. I remember reading about workmen at a university finding a plastered-over cupboard, in which was a switched-on computer. No one knew what it was for, so they turned it off - and the college network crashed. They later established that the net server had been in that cupboard for over 5 years.

pedro_orange
December 14th, 2007, 01:06 PM
LOL, nope you wont burn anything. I've had my FreeBSD box up without rebooting it for almost half a year now.


Save the planet! Turn off your computer at the plug! :)

saulgoode
December 14th, 2007, 01:11 PM
It is probably not a good idea to leave a laptop running continuously (although if the "power save" or sleep mode is functioning, it's OK); however, a desktop computer should not have any problem with being left on.

I leave my computer on for months at a time, I only shut it down when I go on vacation or during thunderstorms. The one area where there might be some concern is assuring that your harddrives are not so crowded (physically) that cooling is a problem. This would only be if you have more than one HD and even then it is not a grave concern (but if possible, leave an open bay between your drives).

daynah
December 14th, 2007, 01:56 PM
I actually did set my comp on fire. I probably left it on a few months. It was really dusty, though, was what got me. Well, not really fire. But there was smoke and the wires had melted themselves.

So if you're going to do this, take off the case periodically and take an air can to it. especially the power supply, and check the heat somehow.

With that, you shouldn't need to unless you install a new version or tho power goes out.

eldragon
December 14th, 2007, 02:23 PM
first off, if you computer is having a hard time booting during cold powerups, its probably a good idea to check that PSU of yours. that being aside. ive had mine running without a reboot for over a month, only rebooting during important updates



The one area where there might be some concern is assuring that your harddrives are not so crowded (physically) that cooling is a problem. This would only be if you have more than one HD and even then it is not a grave concern (but if possible, leave an open bay between your drives).

actually, a statistic driven by google on their server drives (and they have a lot) they found out there is no correlation on HDD heat and failure rate.

i found out drives trend to fail more often if the computer is being powered off and on regularly (aka every night)

Luggy
December 14th, 2007, 03:29 PM
The maximum uptime I have noticed for my computers was 53 days.

feest
December 14th, 2007, 03:49 PM
in windows: a couple of days, in linux: I can't anwer the question since my server is still running :P

dysolve
December 14th, 2007, 04:03 PM
these are all from person experance..

WIndows XP 28 days MAX ( memory gets full and does not empty)

windows vista 3 days MAX ( machine runs like a dog but everything looks good)

Ubuntu 7.04 server record for me is 60 + days currently 31 days

Ubuntu 7.10/7.04 desktop 5 days is the longest I have had them on but there was no problem

Win2003 RC2 65 days then all shared printers stopped working

win2003 SBS have the reboot at least once a month or Active directory permissions go funny..

win2003 terminal services server every few weeks or no connectivity..

WIn95 three weeks then the machine turned its self off and when I tried to reboot it would not start so I pulled the case off and saw that my internal modem and gotten so hot that it was stuck in the ISA slot LOL...


if you are having issues cold booting its most likely power supply, ( as some one else already said) I had the same issue so I unpluged power from my rom drives and floppy drives and the issue went away.. so it was power in my situation..

hkgonra
December 14th, 2007, 04:15 PM
There have been reports of UNIX boxes being kept up for years. I remember reading about workmen at a university finding a plastered-over cupboard, in which was a switched-on computer. No one knew what it was for, so they turned it off - and the college network crashed. They later established that the net server had been in that cupboard for over 5 years.


Do you have a link to that story ?
I would LOVE to send that out to some people.

tgalati4
December 14th, 2007, 04:25 PM
I remember them talking about it at the Linux Link Tech Show tllts.org. It was ~430 days of uptime and the IT guys were doing inventory and couldn't find a computer. They could ping it on their network, but couldn't find it. Only later had they discovered that it was plastered over in a closet.

That's serious uptime.

beniwtv
December 14th, 2007, 04:52 PM
17:02:07 up 371 days, 3:34, 3 users, load average: 3.07, 3.40, 3.27

... from a server in my company. The last time it rebooted was because of a faulty APC, which switched it off... (we never reboot servers)

It's a Linux server, obviously.

:lolflag:

toupeiro
December 14th, 2007, 05:06 PM
8:02am up 202 day(s), 16:14, 3 users, load average: 0.04, 0.02, 0.0

this is my backup server at work -- its a sun box, but I guarantee that any linux box can stay up just as long. The only reason it was shutdown then was because of a hardware change. besides the 1 shutdown 202 days ago, it has been up all year without being rebooted.

the way UNIX and Linux manage themselves, the longer they are on, the better they perform.

el_ricardo
December 14th, 2007, 08:13 PM
linux? months and months

in windows i have just about every non-essenstial service turned off, with no fancy effects or anything, and i can manage about a week before something decides the computer needs rebooting, i could probably manage longer though....

HermanAB
December 14th, 2007, 08:18 PM
I regularly have servers running continuously for more than a year. Usually they get rebooted due to a power problem somewhere, not due to a fault of their own.

cyclefiend2000
December 14th, 2007, 08:22 PM
i just checked our linux file server. it has been up for 29 days. the only times we have to reboot is when rsync between the server and the backup server fails. it happens occassionally.

regomodo
December 14th, 2007, 08:58 PM
have you recently got new hardware? If so your PSU may be maxed out.

When i bought a new g/card and an extra hdd my computer used to take several attempts before it started. Sorta had to let it warm up then reset the computer.

scorp123
December 14th, 2007, 09:19 PM
Do you have a link to that story ? Do you know bash.org? There people post all the funny chats and dialogues they saw in IRC channels. This stuff is too stupid to be all made up, so I'd give it the benefit of the doubt and I'd say most of this is authentic. Here we go:

http://bash.org/?741630

Quote from there: " .... up 2287 days ... "

timpino
December 14th, 2007, 09:28 PM
Maximum uptime I've had on a Linux box was my old server/firewall comp a p1 233MHz with slack 10 on it, it ran for about a year without a restart, then I moved to an apartment and old mcServie was retired.

Ubuntu desktop i've had run for about 2 months, and only restarting cause I felt like peace and quiet.

XP max uptime imo is between patch tuesdays, when there is a patch you need to restart, same with my 2003 server boxes.

I always power down my laptop when it's not in use to save the fans, since a bust fan on a notebook might mean more than your cpu goes, but I have easily had it on for around a week straight from time to time

scorp123
December 14th, 2007, 09:52 PM
Do you have a link to that story ? Found another one: http://bash.org/?5273

Quote: "... hm. I've lost a machine.. literally _lost_. it responds to ping, it works completely, I just can't figure out where in my apartment it is ..."

Seems to happen often:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1040282

http://www.informationweek.com/832/frontend.htm
Quote from there: ".... The University of North Carolina recently had trouble locating a Net-Ware server at one of its academic departments.

The school's IT staffers followed cables until hitting on one they thought would lead to the elusive server. Sure enough, say UNC officials, they found it, still operating, alone in a small enclosure. The officials say it had been mistakenly walled in by drywall built by maintenance workers.

Curious IT workers dug into records and it appears the server had been in solitary for at least three years. ...."

Prisma
December 14th, 2007, 10:00 PM
I keeped my old PC running Ubuntu for about a year. I only turn it off for few minutes to reboot (and clean it) after an update. I have a new, faster PC now and I seldom turn it off too, no problems so far. However you have to clean your PC regularly (say every month if you have pets, 3 if you don't) or it will burn.

rune0077
December 14th, 2007, 10:02 PM
So, is electricity like, totally cheap where all you guys are from? Me, I turn my computer off when I go to bed, just so I can afford the bills.

Lostincyberspace
December 14th, 2007, 10:08 PM
With Linux you only need to reboot with kernel updates so a 6months to a year are feasible, unless you don't want to update then until the power goes out.

fedex1993
December 14th, 2007, 10:28 PM
umm i turn mine off everynight because i think the cooling fan in the front of my first desktop is out and i cant find anyway to replace it. Umm on my current NFS server it has been up for about 60 days going on more. I might need to update i only acess one hardrive and ssh access but it is my second desktop to. My laptop i shutdown every night because it gets reallly hot and i havnt found a nice perfect size notebook cooler.

scorp123
December 14th, 2007, 10:36 PM
So, is electricity like, totally cheap where all you guys are from? Me, I turn my computer off when I go to bed, just so I can afford the bills. Also depends on the computer in question I guess. If you have one of those new gamer PC's with Nvidia 8800 GTX cards where the graphics card alone is drawing like 200 Watts and the whole system is taking like 800 and more Watts, then yes, I'd recommend switching that one off. But if you have a rather modest system that doesn't consume so much electric power then I'd assume it's no problem to leave it running overnight, e.g. for downloading things via BitTorrent, and so on.

I myself use a few older laptops for this. They don't consume so much electric power like my desktop systems and when I don't need them I just close the lid .... which puts the laptop to sleep (consumes next to no power). When I open it up again it continues to do what it did before I closed the lid. Works tip top for me.

Today on the German news portal "golem.de" I read about them having tested a 3-way SLI setup of Nvidia's newest 8800 GTX graphics cards. For those who understand German:
http://golem.de/0712/56539.html

The three graphics cards alone are consuming 540 Watts(!!), the entire system was at 819 Watts (!!!!!) ... They had to use a 1200W power supply!!! Boah!! :mad: So yeah, I guess whoever own such a system sure doesn't leave it running 24 x 7 unless they happen to have their own nuclear fusion reactor in their basement :lolflag:

Prisma
December 14th, 2007, 10:42 PM
So yeah, I guess whoever own such a system sure doesn't leave it running 24 x 7 unless they happen to have their own nuclear fusion reactor in their basement :lolflag:


:lolflag: LOL

rune0077
December 14th, 2007, 10:46 PM
Also depends on the computer in question I guess. If you have one of those new gamer PC's with Nvidia 8800 GTX cards where the graphics card alone is drawing like 200 Watts and the whole system is taking like 800 and more Watts, then yes, I'd recommend switching that one off. But if you have a rather modest system that doesn't consume so much electric power then I'd assume it's no problem to leave it running overnight, e.g. for downloading things via BitTorrent, and so on.


Yeah, my graphics card certainly takes up it's share of my systems power consumption. Then there's the two monitors, the dual processors, the two cooling fans. And then there's the home theater and our two two televisions always on standy, and yeah, well, it adds up you know.

Now, where on the Net do I find a "Howto Build Your Own Basement Nuclear Reactor". :)

SOULRiDER
December 14th, 2007, 10:48 PM
When i used windows i think it was on for about a week or so but after that is all starts getting slugish. With linux the most ive seen was 2 weeks (although im sure ive had it on for more time).

scorp123
December 14th, 2007, 11:19 PM
Now, where on the Net do I find a "Howto Build Your Own Basement Nuclear Reactor". :) I found a good "How To":
http://reactor1967.fortunecity.com/

:lolflag:

Dimitriid
December 14th, 2007, 11:24 PM
I once managed 50 days uptime on an XP desktop but I was using a tool to liberate ram heavily to regain resources.

On Linux environmental factors and hardware failure are actually more likely. Ive done only 10 straight days on Arch but I actually had a complete gnome update in the middle and only had to kill and restart GDM, it was still as fast and responsive as a fresh boot up.

rune0077
December 14th, 2007, 11:25 PM
I found a good "How To":
http://reactor1967.fortunecity.com/

:lolflag:

Yeez, I can't believe you actually found one. Well, I'm off to try and build one. If tomorrows headlines are all about how half of Denmark was wiped out in a mysterious nuclear explosion, well, then you'll know why.

scorp123
December 14th, 2007, 11:31 PM
... If tomorrows headlines are all about how half of Denmark was wiped out in a mysterious nuclear explosion, well, then you'll know why. Yeah, because of your graphics card .... :lolflag:

iPower
December 14th, 2007, 11:34 PM
my pc has been on for 73 days

linuxonbute
December 15th, 2007, 05:11 PM
I had an old headless 486 with 32Meg ram, no hard disc, 2 isa network cards.

I booted it from floppy with firewall / router software on it - Freesco -. configured it and left it in a cupboard.

It ran for 2 years then it failed but not from software problems.

It was because the PSU burnt out.

http://www.freesco.org/

Josh1
December 15th, 2007, 05:13 PM
What about that SunOS computer that has been running since 2000/2001 or something? Wasn't there a similar thread a while ago that someone posted a site that has uptimes?

scorp123
December 15th, 2007, 05:49 PM
What about that SunOS computer that has been running since 2000/2001 or something? That's pretty much "standard" on SUN or any other commercial Unix for that matter, e.g. HP-UX too. Those installations can run for ages without ever needing a reboot.

Mateo
December 15th, 2007, 08:59 PM
I don't recommend keeping your computer on all the time. Unless it is a file server, in which case find the lowest power consumption computer that you can afford. Leaving desktops on all the time is flushing money down the toliet.