@marcan I unracked one and moved it to the bench. Plugged it in, booted fine. WTF?
It took me a shockingly long time to figure out that I'd racked them and installed Ethernet and KVM cables (test lab...) but had totally failed to finish the *power* cables on Friday before leaving.
But they were able to pull enough current over the *Ethernet* cable somehow to power the BMC, which controlled the front panel LEDs, so the power switch actually "worked".
@laird I bet it was the KVM cables. There's no way for Ethernet to power anything other than via PoE (which needs explicit hardware on the receiving end), but HDMI/VGA cables have a convenient 5 volt pin. It's supposed to be from the machine to the monitor, but I wouldn't at all be surprised if some random KVMs get that backwards and backfeed power into the hosts...