Monthly Archives: February 2007

Possible solution for CPU overheat?

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After reading through a slew of comments on a Launchpad bug report, I’m at least a step closer to solving the issue of my CPU temperature overheating.

First off, the bug only seems to happen on Ubuntu. I’m downloading a DVD image of Fedora Core 6 as I type this. I’d hate to move away from Ubuntu, but this bug is very serious, and greatly impacts the usability of my computer.

However, there may be a way to solve this without switching distros. I’ve added the following two lines to /etc/rc.local:

/etc/init.d/powernowd stop
sh -c ‘echo -n ondemand > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor’

Note, those are two lines, even if WordPress wraps the words.

After running those two command manually, my CPU seems to be in much better shape. The CPU still heats up, but as it approaches a dangerous temperature, it clocks down for a few seconds to allow itself to cool off, then clocks back up if needed. This is much better than my previous solution that locked the CPU to 600MHz whenever the temperature passed 90° C.

In no way to I guarantee this solution. It might help, it might make things worse, so don’t blame me if something breaks.

Fried

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So, this was ironic. I’ve been having trouble with Edgy ever since I installed it. In particular, my CPU will hang and get very hot, eventually causing my computer to automatically shut down. Following a conversation on IRC, I decided to see if a fresh install of Ubuntu would fix my problems. So, I downloaded and burnt an Edgy CD, then installed it. I keep /home on a separate partition, so I didn’t lose anything important. Once I got back into Edgy, I started rebuilding some of the packages that I had custom-built on my previous installation. After the CPU had been runnning at nearly full speed for a couple of hours, I remarked on IRC:

hey, this fresh install seems to have fixed my cpu problems *knock on wood*

I pressed enter. I saw the words appear on my screen. Then the entire screen went black, and I was greeted with:

CPU critical temperature reached (92° C) Shutting down…

So, I guess the moral here is, when you’ve solved a problem, don’t let your computer know you’ve fixed it.

Last.fm Charts 1.1

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Here’s a simple update for the Last.fm Music Charts widget:

The list of changes are as follows:

  • The Widget will now automatically link to your Last.fm profile.
  • The Audioscrobbler logo is no longer displayed.
  • Uses <p> tags rather than <center> for HTML.

You can download the file here:

http://collegegeek.org/files/lastfm-1.1.zip

I’ll probably make a few more modifications in the future, so check back later.  If there’s anything wrong or anything you want to see the plugin do, email me at the link in the sidebar.  Reasonable requests will lead to future versions.