Fedora 9 Laptop overheating

[grg183]

Hi all,

I'm trying out Fedora 9 preview (i386 DVD install) on an HP NX9110 Pentium 4 laptop and I've noticed that the cpu is running quite hot, the coolest temperature I've read is 63 degrees! (and max around 75 deg although I haven't tried any power hungry tasks). The strange thing is that there doesn't seem to be any process using up the cpu ....top/htop/ksysguard all indicate that the processor is mostly idle. I've noticed this both when running KDE and Gnome and even when logged out of any desktop, the temperature stays quite high.

To be fair, it is quite normal for this laptop to heat up but I've been running Fedora on it ever since I bought it (some 4 years ago) and it always ran much cooler, at least while idling.

Anyone having the same problem ?

[Demz]

how many services do you have running? try turning off ones you dont need

[forkbomb]

To be fair, it is quite normal for this laptop to heat up but I've been running Fedora on it ever since I bought it (some 4 years ago) and it always ran much cooler, at least while idling.

Dust...

Have you ever taken it apart to pull/blow out the dust? Laptops seem especially prone to getting totally clogged up with dust and other disgusting stuff. Find a service manual for it, take it apart, keep track of all the pieces, blow out the dust, then put it back together. I do this every 6 months or so whether I think my laptop really needs it or not.

If that 63 degrees is in Celsius, you can do serious damage to the machine. More if it runs at 70+ C for any period of time.

[grg183]

how many services do you have running? try turning off ones you dont need

Will try that when I get home. But I've only performed a 'basic' installation.


Dust...

yep, it's Celsius ...I was thinking about a clean up, however it hasn't been very long since the last cleanup and with Fedora 8 the day before I tried out Fedora 9, it was running at 'normal' temperatures. It typically runs at about 50 degrees C (the main reason for it running at temperatures higher than average is that it's a standard Pentuim 4 3.2Ghz (i.e. a standard desktop processor with no speedstepping has has been running at that temperature from day 1)

Will give it a clean up anyway ..just in case.

[forkbomb]

Will try that when I get home. But I've only performed a 'basic' installation.

That's the problem. :D The "basic installation" enables lots of unneeded services by default. Disabling some might help marginally, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

No guide up for F9 yet, but this may help:
http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-services-f8.html

[grg183]

ok ...so I gave the laptop a good cleanup ...there was only some mild dust on the heat exchanger but no air flow blockage ...I think I last cleaned it some 4 months ago. Screwed all back in place and booted up Fedora 9, temperature while idling: 64 degC ! :S

Now I've just installed powertop ...and to my astonishment:
"Wakeups-from-idle per second : 212989.8 interval: 10.0s"
76.5% of which are knotify4's fault

by comparison my new Acer laptop has only 170 wak-ups/s and my desktop 1020 wake-ups/s, *both running Fedora 8

*EDIT

[grg183]

UPDATE:

after some googling on the topic, I've disabled the sound notifications player.( System Settings > Notify > Player Settings > No Audio Output ) and the idling temperature dropped by about 8 degrees! :)

runnign powertop again however still shows the same (roughly) number of wake-ups /second :S ...but knotify is not in the top positions

any ideas?

[slbaur]

Now I've just installed powertop ...and to my astonishment:
"Wakeups-from-idle per second : 212989.8 interval: 10.0s"
76.5% of which are knotify4's fault

I've had all kinds of strange problems with knotify4 so far, including a fairly reliable SIGSEGV on exit, but also infinite looping at times. I haven't had time to dig into it further, because there's too much else broken at the moment, but you're not the only one.

This is on a Lenovo T60, btw.

-sb