fc3 randomly freezing on a Dell Inspiron 5150

[Scott Ryan]

On Wednesday 09 February 2005 21:36, Scot L. Harris shaped the electrons to 
say:
> On Wed, 2005-02-09 at 14:31, Peter James Morgan wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I have a Dell Inspiron 5150 laptop that has been running FC1 for the
> > last year (or so). I took the plunge last weekend and did a clean
> > install on the machine with FC3. Very impressed by the smooth
> > installation, and initially very happy - especially with "yum update"
> > very neat!
> >
> > However, the machine is now "freezing" on a semi random basis,
> > particularly under heavy load. Though, I left it alone idling today and
> > when I came back it had again frozen. When it freezes under load, the
> > CPU fan can be heard at (I guess) 100% for a couple of minutes while it
> > is frozen, then shortly after the machine powers itself off. The last
> > couple of under load freeze were at the same time as the CPU fan
> > stepping up another "gear".
> >
> > The freeze happens when running under 2.6.10-1.760_FC3smp (the machine
> > is HT with a 3Ghz Intel processor) and also 2.6.10-1.760_FC3.
> >
> > With acpi=off, the machine appears to be stable.
> >
> > With FC1 I was able to run this laptop with acpi=on (only with
> > uniprocessor mode, didn't trust HT with 2.4), without any problems with
> > stability.
> >
> > Unfortunately, nothing of interest is being written to /var/log. Is
> > there a recommended mechanism of debugging this fault? Any pointers to
> > other things that I can configure (e.g., could the CPU speed stepping be
> > the source of the problem?)
>
> Is there anyway to determine what the temperature of the system is?
>
> >From the description it sounds like the fans may not be running when
>
> they should and the system overheats at which point it shuts it self
> down to protect itself.
>
> With acpi off if it is stable does the fan run all the time?
>
> Not sure but it seems like there should be some where to specify
> thresholds for when the fan runs.

I believe there is a plugin in gkrellm for dell laptops that 
can set these thresholds for you. i8k something or other.

-- 
Scott Ryan
Telkom Internet