News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Intel’s Atom C2000 chips are bricking products, and it’s not just Cisco hit. Parent comment

Re:Intel’s Atom C2000 chips are bricking products, and it’s ... by kyrra on Monday February 06, 2017 @06:26PM (#13585337)
The title is technically correct, just annoyingly written. As someone who's build a PFSense box using a supermicro board with one of the affected chips, I'm definitely sad that I'll have to rip it apart to replace the parts.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Intel’s Atom C2000 chips are bricking products, and it’s ... by ovidiup on Monday February 06, 2017 @08:16PM (#13586072)
I have the same problem: I'm using various C2000-based Supermicro boxes running pfSense. The most cost-effective DIY, rack mountable solution for a pfSense box was until now SYS-5018A-FTN4. Do you know if Supermicro issued a technical bulletin about this box?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Intel’s Atom C2000 chips are bricking products, and it’s ... by dhess on Monday February 06, 2017 @11:14PM (#13586954)
Last Friday, my OpenBSD firewall, which runs on a SYS-5018A-FTN4, mysteriously crashed. I chalked it up to an alpha particle or something and rebooted. About 12 hours later, it failed again. This time I did some more digging. On the console was the following message:

  NMI ... going to debugger
  Stopped at    acpicpu_idle+0x22d:     nop
  ddb{0}>
I googled it and found one similar report on the OpenBSD misc mailing list from September 2016 [1]. Interestingly, the person who reported the bug was running the same Supermicro board as I was. The report didn't get anywhere other than a vague suggestion that it might be heat related. These boxes run very cool and I didn't think that was likely. I thought it might be a RAM issue and that it was probably just a coincidence that the other person had the same hardware as I, but now I'm inclined to think that both of us have experienced the issue described in TFA.

Seems like I'll be looking for new firewall hardware.

[1] https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg149348.html

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Intel’s Atom C2000 chips are bricking products, and it’s ... by kingosticks on Tuesday February 07, 2017 @10:38AM (#13589993)
If you were able to reboot the box then you did not hit this issue. When you hit this issue your chip is dead.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Intel’s Atom C2000 chips are bricking products, and it’s ... by yuhong on Tuesday February 07, 2017 @12:51AM (#13587389)
This may be completely unrelated though.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Intel’s Atom C2000 chips are bricking products, and it’s ... by voltagex_ on Monday February 06, 2017 @10:04PM (#13586619)
Ah crap. I guess the reseller selling me old-new stock of an Avoton system http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/tower/721/SC721TQ... isn't really going to care. Shipping the product back would be ~150+AUD. Can't buy this one in Australia unfortuately.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Intel’s Atom C2000 chips are bricking products, and it’s ... by seltzered_ on Monday February 06, 2017 @07:34PM (#13585822)
Yeah, these avoton-based boards seemed popular in the freeNAS / diy home server community for being cheap and low power while supporting ecc ram. Even the official freeNAS mini server used (and still used when I checked last year) a supermicro board with an avoton CPU.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Intel’s Atom C2000 chips are bricking products, and it’s ... by Namidairo on Monday February 06, 2017 @11:35PM (#13587050)
Websites seem to suggest it's running the C2750, so it does appear to be affected.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Intel’s Atom C2000 chips are bricking products, and it’s ... by stock_toaster on Tuesday February 07, 2017 @12:21AM (#13587271)
Confirmed. I have a FreeNAS mini, and it has a C2750 in it.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Intel’s Atom C2000 chips are bricking products, and it’s ... by haikuginger on Monday February 06, 2017 @06:45PM (#13585497)
The Avoton? Shame, really, it seems like a great board otherwise.
[ Parent | on HN ]