Hi folks

Looking for pointers on this

I 've just upgraded my unraid system from a threadeipper 2950 to a 3960X on a ROG Zenith II Extreme Alpha motherboard.

No changes to drives or USB boot stick. Everything went very smoothly and all services and functionality is as before.

However, I've noticed that my system is now going into sleep mode overnight. Whenever I get to my desk in the morning, it's sleeping. A tap on the keyboard will wake it up.

I'd prefer to not have the system sleeping as it runs some home automation VMs and Dockers.

Here's the log after I wake it up;

Last action was at 4.40am, until I woke it around 8.43.

I had a good look around the MB bios but don't see anything obvious in any power settings. I don't have anything sleep related in my unraid setup either.

Any tips on where to look? I'm still on 6.12.13. I'd panned to update to current after this hardware change, but would like to get this issue solved before doing so.

Thanks for looking.

Edited June 24, 20251 yr by meep

Stock Unraid doesn't sleep, do you have the S3 Sleep plugin installed?

No, not installed and never previously installed.

I was thinking of installing it and setting it to 'never sleep', if that's even a thing, but thought I'd ask first.

Are you sure the server is sleeping rather than just the screen blanking out?

Yes, very sure. Fans switch off, server cannot be reached on network but a tap of the spacebar brings it back to life.

I'll see what happens tonight. I had a script that deleted system logs overnight as they were filling up on my old server and causing it to crash.

I've disabled that script as the logging issue is no longer happening on this newer machine. So tomorrow I hope to at least have more logs of what's happening on the build up to the sleep event.

40 minutes ago, meep said:

I'll see what happens tonight. I had a script that deleted system logs overnight as they were filling up on my old server and causing it to crash.

I've disabled that script as the logging issue is no longer happening on this newer machine. So tomorrow I hope to at least have more logs of what's happening on the build up to the sleep event.

Make sure nothing's touching the power button on the mobo

Look at the power switch on the case. Does it have a light behind it? Do you have a pet that might be attracted to that light and paw at it? Does a quick push of the power switch power-off the server or put it in the sleep mode?

Will check power contacts for sure, though the system has logged the same entry at 4.40 for the past 2 nights, then nothing more I til I wake it up, so unlikely to be a freak contact. Won't rule it out though.

Just now, Frank1940 said:

Look at the power switch on the case. Does it have a light behind it? Do you have a pet that might be attracted to that light and paw at it? Does a quick push of the power switch power-off the server or put it in the sleep mode?

No pets, it's in my office. Though I will check what happens on a short power button press to see if that replicates the status I find the system in. Thanks

3 minutes ago, meep said:

No pets, it's in my office. Though I will check what happens on a short power button press to see if that replicates the status I find the system in. Thanks

The manual shows one on the mobo too

Could your CMOS battery be bad? Check and see if that MB has BIOS settings for sleep intervals. (I imagine you pull the power plug when you upgrade the CPU...)

2 minutes ago, Michael_P said:

The manual shows one on the mobo too

Yes indeed. It's conveniently placed but there's nothing brushing against it.

I just checked and a short press of the power button will cause a full shutdown. (Spacebar will not reactivate it, so it's not asleep like the overnight issue I'm experiencing).

I'll have another look through Bios now that I'm restarting to see if I've missed anything, otherwise will let it do its thing overnight tonight with full logs in place and see what's what tomorrow.

So I have an update;

Came to my desk this morning and my server was still chugging away, not asleep. I checked the system log and it's clean as a whistle.

While I don't have a definitive action I took to effect this change, I did encounter a significant problem since I last posted that's more than likely related if not the root cause: a failing boot thumb drive.

Through the various restarts I conducted yesterday to check BIOS settings etc., I started experiencing GUI lockups of increasing rapidity a couple of minutes after restart. Checking the logs, I noticed reports of USB access issues leading to errors with device SDA, my boot drive.

I tried swapping it around between ports, changing between efi and non efi boot etc., to no avail. I bit the bullet and transferred to a new boot drive (my 4th in 16 years, not bad going). Boot up was noticeably snappier and the USB errors stopped immediately.

It looks like my USB boot drive had been on its way out. I was possibly missing the errors as they were getting lost in log spamming from another failing unassigned device in my older system, and I'd implemented a user script to clear syslogs overnight to prevent the system crashing from full logs.

I'm not sure how the failing USB caused the system to go to sleep overnight, and maybe its unrelated. I'll keep everything as is for a few days for observation before I attempt an upgrade to 7.1.x. As this system has had a complete heart & lung transplant (MB, CPU, RAM, GPU, Case, Cooling, Some drive swaps) I would expect little niggles here and there so will remain on high alert.

Fingers crossed.

Thanks for all the input.

72 hours with no sleeps. Considered fixed. Likely cause was a failing USB boot drive.