Hello. I started a thread a while back because I was experiencing hard crashes (complete shutdown with no warning) when running MATLAB. I've since found out that the problem is not specific to MATLAB at all and occurs whenever my laptop is under heavy load while off A/C (had it happen while running Wine or Chromium). I've turned off all power management options in the BIOS (and tried setting everything to maximum performance) and I tried fiddling with the settings in xfce4-power-manager as well, but none of it seems relevant to my issue since it's mainly power saving through display behavior from what I could tell. I'm not sure what else could be causing issues on battery power only.
I've tried with a different battery and had the exact same problem, so I'm betting on it being down to some change in power management when switching to battery power, but not sure how to get any further. I've tried running strace and it outputs a very long list of the following:
poll([{fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=4, events=POLLIN}, {fd=5, events=POLLIN}], 3, 10) = 0 (Timeout)
recvmsg(3, {msg_namelen=0}, 0) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
I don't know if that's helpful at all. I've tried searching online but didn't find any solution, many people seemed to have the exact opposite problem (crashes when ON A/C). I'd greatly appreciate any ideas of possible fixes, I have zero issues while on A/C. Thanks.
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Laptop crashes when off A/C
Re: Laptop crashes when off A/C
Hey Wizard, thanks for the reply!
I didn't have the problem on Windows on this laptop (it was awfully slow however even on a fresh install), so I assumed it was most likely firmware rather than the machine itself, or maybe some issue between BIOS and Linux specifically. I did try without hyperthreading but it didn't seem to make a difference. I just tried disabling multicore processing as well, and so far it didn't crash (and the speed difference wasn't as bad as I expected). I've concluded that the problem was "fixed" quite a few times already though, sometimes it runs fine for 30+ minutes and then shuts off, so I'll report back after giving it some more time under load, I suspect it will still crack under pressure.
You're definitely right about it not being the end of the world, but being able to work while on the road would be nice! If it means taking a slight hit in speed that's certainly preferable to losing all working files out of nowhere. I'll report back after giving it some more time on battery with multicore disabled.
I didn't have the problem on Windows on this laptop (it was awfully slow however even on a fresh install), so I assumed it was most likely firmware rather than the machine itself, or maybe some issue between BIOS and Linux specifically. I did try without hyperthreading but it didn't seem to make a difference. I just tried disabling multicore processing as well, and so far it didn't crash (and the speed difference wasn't as bad as I expected). I've concluded that the problem was "fixed" quite a few times already though, sometimes it runs fine for 30+ minutes and then shuts off, so I'll report back after giving it some more time under load, I suspect it will still crack under pressure.
You're definitely right about it not being the end of the world, but being able to work while on the road would be nice! If it means taking a slight hit in speed that's certainly preferable to losing all working files out of nowhere. I'll report back after giving it some more time on battery with multicore disabled.
Re: Laptop crashes when off A/C
It wouldn't be if you're only running one app. Don't be at all surprised, however, if multi-tasking takes a big performance hit.pistacie wrote:...the speed difference wasn't as bad as I expected...
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pendrachken
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Re: Laptop crashes when off A/C
If I had to hazard a guess, with the info given so far, this is a thermal issue.
Check in the BIOS / EFI setup utility to make sure that there isn't an option for "silent", "quiet", "passive", or "fanless" modes that engage when the laptop is on battery power.
A good check for thermal shutdown would be to run a script that reads the CPU / GPU temps every couple seconds and dumps them to a file and syncs the disks, then load the CPU as hard as possible until you get a lockup / shutdown. Then it should just be a matter tailing the log file to see if you are near thermal shutdown limits for your particular CPU. If it gets smoking hot you know something in the cooling / scaling isn't working correctly on battery and narrows the field of what to look for down considerably.
Check in the BIOS / EFI setup utility to make sure that there isn't an option for "silent", "quiet", "passive", or "fanless" modes that engage when the laptop is on battery power.
A good check for thermal shutdown would be to run a script that reads the CPU / GPU temps every couple seconds and dumps them to a file and syncs the disks, then load the CPU as hard as possible until you get a lockup / shutdown. Then it should just be a matter tailing the log file to see if you are near thermal shutdown limits for your particular CPU. If it gets smoking hot you know something in the cooling / scaling isn't working correctly on battery and narrows the field of what to look for down considerably.
fortune -o
Your love life will be... interesting.
How did it know?
The U.S. uses the metric system too, we have tenths, hundredths and thousandths of inches
Your love life will be... interesting.
How did it know?The U.S. uses the metric system too, we have tenths, hundredths and thousandths of inches
Re: Laptop crashes when off A/C
Thanks for all the help and sorry for replying so late. When running on one core only, the laptop doesn't crash at all and while the performance hit isn't ideal, it's not to the point of being a dealbreaker for me. The processor is an i7-2640M.
I've set up a temperature display in my panel and it doesn't seem like it's running much cooler when using a single core. Furthermore there's no other options in the BIOS, it's very barebones and I tried every combination of power management settings. Since the single-core performance is fine for my purposes I'll go ahead with your solution wizard, thanks!
I've set up a temperature display in my panel and it doesn't seem like it's running much cooler when using a single core. Furthermore there's no other options in the BIOS, it's very barebones and I tried every combination of power management settings. Since the single-core performance is fine for my purposes I'll go ahead with your solution wizard, thanks!