[64studio-users] Laptop freezes when fan starts on 64studio 2.0

[Philippe Macaire]

Hi Daniel,

I've tried what you suggested, with a "top" terminal tracking
processes, and another terminal with tail -f /var/log/syslog.

I think you've had an excellent intuition! On this second window I saw
in real-time what happened:
Nov 15 22:13:06 64studio kernel: ipw2100: Fatal interrupt. Scheduling
firmware restart.

Basically it's my Wireless Network Interface that seems to mess
everything up. The fan starting to blow like crazy is only a
"side-effect" of the lock.

I tried to work with it turned off (there's a hardware switch in front
of my laptop) and I worked fine for an hour and a half without any
problem.

I've checked the firmware version and I think I have the latest one.
So I'm afraid I'll have to do without my Internet connection... A
pity, considering that most of the documentation is only available
online.


Thanks for your precious help.


Cheers :-)
Philippe.


On Nov 15, 2007 1:20 PM, Daniel James <daniel at 64studio.com> wrote:
> Hi Philippe,
>
> > I can't be absolutely sure the fan start is the problem (it could
> > actually be an effect of a 100% CPU lock
>
> I think that's more likely than the fan itself being the cause. There
> are a couple of things you can do to track this down:
>
> 1. As root, look in /var/log/syslog for an entry at the exact time of
> the lock-up - probably the last thing before the line 'localhost syslogd
> 1.4.1#18: restart.'
>
> 2. Run 'top' in a terminal, hit shift-P to sort by CPU usage, and when
> the freeze happens, if you are lucky you will catch the process which is
> the cause at the top of the list.
>
> Cheers!
>
> Daniel
>