this post was submitted on 25 May 2024
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Hello,

Today my washing machine completely broke down. My parents desperately tried to get it working, but it resulted in the circuit breakers tripping and my server (an old Dell Wyse thin client) experiencing a hard power off.

When I tried to turn it back on, I received these errors on the screen.

I ran a memtest, and it completed without any issues. I also created a disk image backup just in case.

Is there any chance of getting this machine running again, or is it only fit for utilization?

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[–] [email protected] 82 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

You haven't given us much information about the CPU. That is very important when dealing with Machine Check Errors (MCEs).

I've done a bit of work with MCEs and AMD CPUs, so I'll help with understanding what may be going wrong and what you probably can do.

I've done a bit of searching from the microcode & the Dell Wyse thin client that you mentioned. From what I can garner, are you using a Dell Wyse 5060 Thin Client with an AMD steppe Eagle GX-424 [1]? This is my assumption for the rest of this comment.

Machine Check Errors (MCEs) are hard to decipher find out without the right documentation. As far as I can tell from AMD's Data Sheet for the G-Series [2], this CPU belongs to family 16H.

You have two MCEs in your image:

  • CPU Core 0, Bank 4: f600000000070f0f
  • CPU Core 1, Bank 1: b400000001020103

Now, you can attempt to decipher these with a tool I used some time ago, MCE-Ryzen-Decoder [4]; you may note that the name says Ryzen - this tool only decodes MCEs of Ryzen architectures. However, MCE designs may not change much between families, but I wouldn't bank (pun not intended) on it because it seems that the G-Series are an embedded SOC compared to the Ryzen CPUs which are not. I gave it a shot and the tool spit out that you may have an issue in:

$ python3 run.py 04 f600000000070f0f
Bank: Read-As-Zero (RAZ)
Error:  ( 0x7)

$ python3 run.py 01 b400000001020103
Bank: Instruction Fetch Unit (IF)
Error: IC Full Tag Parity Error (TagParity 0x2)

Wouldn't bank (pun intended this time) on it though.

What you can do is to go through the AMD Family 16H's BIOS and Kernel Developer Guide [3] (Section 2.16.1.5 Error Code). From Section 2.16.1.1 Machine Check Registers, it looks like Bank 01 corresponds to the IC (Instruction Cache) and Bank 04 corresponds to the NB (Northbridge). This means that the CPU found issues in the NB in core 0 and the IC in core 1. You can go even further and check what those exact codes decipher to, but I wouldn't put in that much effort - there's not much you can do with that info (maybe the NB, but... too much effort). There are some MSRs that you can read out that correspond to errors of these banks (from Table 86: Registers Commonly Used for Diagnosis), but like I said, there's not much you can do with this info anyway.

Okay, now that the boring part is over (it was fun for me), what can you do? It looks like the CPU is a quad core CPU. I take it to mean that it's 4 cores * 2 SMT threads. If you have access to the linux command line parameters [5], say via GRUB for example, I would try to isolate the two faulty cores we see here: core 0 and core 1. Add isolcpus=0,1 to see the kernel boots. There's a good chance that we see only two CPU cores failing, but others may also be faulty but the errors weren't spit out. It's worth a shot, but it may not work.

Alternatively, you can tell the kernel to disable MCE checks entirely and continue executing; this can be done with the mce=off command line parameter [6] . Beware that this means that you're now willingly running code on a CPU with two cores that have been shown to be faulty (so far). isolcpus will make sure that the kernel doesn't execute any "user" code on those cores unless asked to (via taskset for example)

Apart from this, like others have pointed out, the red dots on the screen aren't a great sign. Maybe you can individually replace defective parts, or maybe you have to buy a new machine entirely. What I told you with this comment is to check whether your CPU still works with 2 SMT threads faulty.

Good luck and I hope you fix your server 🤞.

Edited to add: I have seen MCEs appear due to extremely low/high/fluctuating voltages. As others pointed out, your PSU or other components related to power could be busted.

[1] https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-us/wyse-5060-thin-client/5060_wie10_ug/system-specifications?guid=guid-cbeecec5-25ac-4103-8b4b-7d3a975e91f0&lang=en-us

[2] https://www.amd.com/content/dam/amd/en/documents/archived-tech-docs/datasheets/52259_KB_G-Series_Product_Data_Sheet.pdf

[3] https://www.amd.com/content/dam/amd/en/documents/archived-tech-docs/programmer-references/52740_16h_Models_30h-3Fh_BKDG.pdf

[4] https://github.com/DimitriFourny/MCE-Ryzen-Decoder

[5] https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.html

[6] https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/v6.9.2/source/Documentation/arch/x86/x86_64/boot-options.rst

[–] [email protected] 24 points 5 months ago

Amazing. I'm not OP and have no use for this info, but it was fun to learn it still.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yes, this is exactly the Dell Wyse 5060 with an AMD GX-424CC processor. This thin client is already old, which is why I decided to purchase a newer one with a better processor.

Anyway, thank you for your analysis! I learned a lot of new things. I will try to get it running with your advice and let you know how it goes.

However, this server will probably no longer be needed, since half of its cores are damaged. Previously, its computing power was fully utilized (the load was almost always 4.0), and it handled my tasks very well with four cores. Therefore, I cannot imagine using it with only half of its power available 😁

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Are you planning to scrap the CPU? I may be interested in it as I find faulty hardware fun to experiment on.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I will no longer use this device, rather I will throw it away, because I will have no more use for it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Would you consider sending it to Austria? I'd pay shipping charges (if it's within reason lol). If you are, you can send me an email at: sneela-hwelemmy92fd [at] port87.com

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Thank you, I'll send you an email within a day.