I have a Dell PowerEdge 2950 (Dual Intel Xeons @ 2.5GHz, 32GB DDR2, An old 80GB SATA3 drive [RAID controller died]) and it randomly halts while booting, I'm using Ubuntu server which seems to show more progress during startup, however the same issue happens with CentOS and Debian. I ran both CPUs at full load for 5 minutes and seen no random halting or any issues (albeit it got quite warm), as well as running an extensive memory test which was successful. The recovery mode version of the kernel does work, and it allows me to drop to a root shell etc.
Ubuntu server (16.04) loads the kernel and even starts starting services, and then just halts for no reason.
Debian dosen't even start to load services, etc. when booting just says /dev/sda is clean and halts, even lack of cursor blink.
CentOS installer don't work in general.
There are no error messages, it just does this randomly HOWEVER I was able to get into debian and ubuntu's recovery mode. The point of halting changes for every boot, also there are NO errors in console.
Link to /var/log/dpkg.log: https://pastebin.com/YUqVUp9m
Link to /var/log/lastlog: It was empty
Link to /var/log/faillog: It was empty
Link to /var/log/bootstrap.log: https://pastebin.com/CmrHf2MY
Output of dmesg
: https://pastebin.com/a9rnuKg0
Output of journalctl
: https://pastebin.com/7zrhmdfG
ALL OF THESE LOGS WERE RECOVERED IN RECOVERY MODE
When I refer to halt I mean a complete halt of the CPU's operations. ie. No input or output to console, serial port, etc. and even a lack of response to keyboard input such as Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+C.
Also I ran the DELL diagnostics tool (Linux version wouldn't work but the MS-DOS version did) and it reported everything was fine
It started working after I took out the CMOS battery to check its voltage (2.95V, so good). I put the battery back in and messed around with the BIOS some. What exactly I did that fixed this problem, I don't know. Sorry, I can't provide a conclusive answer. I wish I could, but the problem automagically solved itself. I will attempt to break it again and then I can tell you guys a conclusive reason and hopefully help anyone else with this issue