Paul,
Thanks for the detailed reply! I'm not wed to the overheating
explanation, but here's why I suspect that is the cause:
1. Overheating was a problem with the original OS, Window XP Home
edition. The laptop was apparently returned to the store by more than
one customer because it would freeze. The co-worker I bought it from
realized the fan was not running once Windows booted, so bought it for a
deep discount, installed Ubuntu, and it ran fine for months. I bought it
from him (He shared the discount), installed FC4, and it ran fine for me
for months.
2. When I first power it up in FC5, it will run for an hour or so before
freezing. When I restart it after it has frozen, the time before the
next freeze is much less.
3. I hear the fan when it's running FC4. I don't hear the fan when it is
running FC5.
My solution so far has been to stick with with FC4. However, with FC6
imminent, FC4 is getting long in the tooth. I'm happy to entertain other
causes for the problem. I'd just like to find a solution.
Thanks!
Andrew Robinson
Paul Johnson wrote:
I have a desktop system that has begun to freeze in FC5, with the
video showing. I suspect overheating may not be the only possible
cause.
We used to use some utilities to manipulate the fan speed, but in the
last two years or so, I've not had to do it explicitly. The builtin
stuff does it well enough for me. On a newish Dell laptop, I have the
ACPI system and it works OK with the built in controls. If you google
for "acpi fan speed linux control" you find lots of people who post
about various ways they try to manipulate speed and heat settings. Be
cautious because a lot of the advice you see is outdated--the kernel
is rapidly changing in ACPI and many parts seem to work now that did
not work so well just a few months ago.
If you really believe it is heat, you could buy a laptop pad with a
powered fan to cool your system from below. That makes a big
difference in laptops around here.
In a laptop with acpi support, you can monitor the heat like so:
$ cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THM/*
In my system, I see
cooling mode: critical
state: ok
temperature: 40 C
critical (S5): 126 C
If you keep a terminal open and run that over and over, you can see if
the lock follows overheating.
There are some GUIs that can show you the temperature. gkrellm.
I'm looking for documentation on the cooling mode, because I think
that's what you want to fiddle.
Scan down this page
http://www.columbia.edu/~ariel/acpi/acpi_howto.txt
In there it says you can try to force the cooling_mode to make the fan
go on. You can also set trip points for temperature.
Oh, well. Good luck.
On 8/29/06, Andrew Robinson <awrobinson-ml@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I have recently installed FC5 along side of FC4 on my emachines laptop.
When booted into FC5, after running for a period of time, the laptop
suffers a hard freeze. No keys work. The mouse does not work. I cannot
ping the laptop from other PCs on my network. The only way to regain
control is to hold down the power button until the laptop powers off.
I strongly suspect this a heat issue. The friend I got the laptop from
originally bought it at a deep discount because it would freeze up on
several prior potential customers. He realized the fan was not running
after the laptop booted and concluded that the WinXP home edition
installed did not have a driver for the fan. He loaded Ubuntu and it
worked like a charm. I have been running FC4 for 4 or 5 months without
problem as well. The problem has apparently returned with FC5.
Anyone know what I need to do to get FC5 to run the fan on my laptop?
This is an area I am very ignorant in.
Thanks!
Andrew Robinson
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