Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472 and today I am working on my Upstairs Workstaion. Let’s get started!
Twin Issues Both Alike in Annoyance
Over Black Friday this last November, I picked up a time travel sandbox game called No Time where our main character takes his totally-not-a-DeLorian with a totally-not-a-flux-capacitor on a journey through the history of Pine Island. My Upstairs Workstation struggled to keep up with rendering time portals when I drive [or fly] fast enough, but I made it through the main story [to date] without issue. Fun game, I can recommend it.
While hunting down a few more Steam achievements –however– I started getting sudden power cutoffs followed by the motherboard booting to an warning after a few seconds. It explained how an anti-surge mechanism tripped from a potentially faulty Power Supply Unit (PSU). I dusted it, and the problem went away for a couple weeks, but now it’s back.
While I have at least a couple projects I’ve actively worked on this week, it’s always bad news and top priority when the package manager breaks. I ignored the first issues over Mickey’s Public Domain Day release celebration post, but the second would otherwise get priority 1.
Pacman PGP Key Lockout
I want to install a power diagnostic tool for the PSU, but can’t with Pacman crippled. It took a couple sessions on different days, but I circled back around to a near-perfect description of my problem (but with a different list of keys), which you can read about on the EndeavourOS community forum. Link in Works Cited section [1]. I suspected at first that the keys expired over New Year’s – including one important to re-installing the keyring system, but I’m not curious or annoyed enough yet to find out for sure.
The solution that worked for me was found in a linked FAQ on another thread on the same forum: basically move Pacman’s keys to a backup in root’s home directory and follow a few steps for repopulating them.
Motherboard Crash
Having repaired Pacman, I installed Powertop, but couldn’t figure it out on my own. When I looked it up, I just got more confused. One source even recommended using some other laptop battery utility instead.
My suspect PSU is 650 Watts. Derpy has a PSU rated at 1,000 Watts, so an initial plan was to move that one over, but I also have a 500 Watt PSU that shipped with my sister’s computer, but wasn’t good enough for her system. The big power draws are CPU and GPU. My father and I looked up the ones I’m using, and they totaled in the 300 Watt range, so we installed my sister’s old supply.
A power supply transplant is the single most invasive procedure without needing to change thermal paste. Given the motherboard geometry with the heat sync towering over the CPU, the CPU power connector is tightly wedged into the corner of the case. I used a pair of needle nose pliers to extract it. Installing the new CPU power cord was even more of a hassle. The power cord barely reached as it was and the replacement PSU is a fraction of an inch shorter. Consequently, it took a shortcut across the top of the RAM on its way to the case’s cable management area.
While the PSU was out though, we took the opportunity to re-attach a plastic foot. Originally, it snapped into place, but we installed a screw/washer/nut to match another foot which had similarly undergone repair. At some point, I’d like to get a PSU tester to see what exactly it’s doing that trips my motherboard’s protection.
The new PSU solved the problem. Otherwise, I suspected we’d be looking at a dying graphics card or the possibility of the UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) giving an unstable voltage. Worst of all would have been the motherboard frying. All that was left was to refresh some encryption keys from Caddy, as I got that working again, but I still don’t have it fully figured out.
Takeaway
I’m thankful I had that spare part around. Otherwise, I’d be down a machine. In any case, I’ve already got a my month lined up. Hopefully we don’t get any more priority 1 side projects until those are cleared out.
Final Question
What side topics could you get excited about this year?
I look forward to discussing them in the comments below or on my Socials!
Work Cited
[1] points, et. al, “Cannot update due to key errors,” endeavouros.com, Feb. 14, 2023. [Online]. Available:https://forum.endeavouros.com/t/cannot-update-due-to-key-errors/37286 [Accessed Jan. 8, 2024].