I have a dual boot FC2/XP Home Toshiba A60 laptop which will suddenly crash without warning when I'm using FC2 (never with Windows). I've tried a number of different kernels, and have had the same problem... and my installation is completely up-to-date according to up2date. When I say "crash", I mean complete power off, immediately... no hanging, no warning, nothing. The only thing I can think of is that there is a major ACPI problem... I'm plugged into the mains supply most of the time, but still get the crashes - so it's not a flat battery. Does anyone else have this problem, or have any idea how to go about solving it? I'm sure it's nothing I'm doing which causes the problem, as it seems to happen just randomly. When I reboot after such a crash, the ventilation fan runs constantly and furiously for a looooong time (don't know if this is standard, or not).

The problem happens with: 2.6.9-1.3_FC2, 2.6.8-1.521, 2.6.5-1.358, in my experience. In other words, all the kernels I've had!

put echo "force_on:1" > proc/acpi/fan/FAN1/state in rc.local to turn the fan on if you don't want a sudden shut down due to overheating.

Best regards,
Dick.

Coo, thanks Dick. I hope that works. Is there any more user-friendly way to adjust ACPI settings? A nice GUI, or something? Having a look at /proc/acpi makes me wonder what I can do with the rest of the behind-the-scenes hardware settings.

Thanks.

No matter, just found klaptop_acpi_helper ... I guess that's the best I'm going to get, huh?

Don't worry, it will work, without it the fan will not turn on and your Toshiba will shut down if the cpu gets too hot.
As a second security I also let the cpu frequency downscale to 1400 MHz when it reaches a temperature of 65 C , using p4-clockmod and CPUspeed:

put echo "1399965" > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_min_freq in your rc.local to set the lowest frequency at 1400MHz.

In your cpuspeed.conf:

VMAJOR=1
VMINOR=1
OPTS="-i 1"
DRIVER="p4-clockmod"
OPTS="-p 90 100 -t /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THZN/temperature 64"

Now it runs always full speed unless the cpu temperature reaches 65 degrees Celcius, in that case it slows down en speed up again if the temperature lowers below 64 degrees C.
(Never see this by the way, it's just extra safety to protect the cpu when it gots stuck at 100% cpu load)

Don't know about klaptop_acpi_helper ......

Dick.

Well, I'm as surprised as you, Dick, but my laptop crashed again, even with the suggestions you made (I keep checking periodically that the fan is set to on, and it is.) Very strange.

What BIOS version are you running on you A60?
The latest version (1.80) solved some temperature and Fan issues.

Yep, 1.80. I also noticed that my screen doesn't turn off when I close the lid of the laptop. I really hope the people at Fedora are going to make this ACPI stuff a lot easier!

Hmm, I updated the BIOS via my Windows installation... I am assuming that the BIOS is independent of operating system, and that this wouldn't be the cause of my Fedora problems?

Yes, updating the BIOS via windows is alright, I'm afraid that Fedora is a develop it yourself OS concerning notebooks...........by the way, running FC3 here and the only problem a have so far is that the kernel 2.6.9.1 won't power off my notebook, kernel 2.6.8.1 does.

But now I think of it, I did'nt found a way yet to set the screen brightness.

Oh well, gives us something to experiment.........

Regards,

Dick.

hi,
same problem using SuSe 9.1 and 9.2 on Toshiba Satellite 1135-S1554 with bios 1.7.
In windows everythink is ok. The problem shows only when battery powered and could be solved by starting system with acpi=off added to kernel options.

Bednar

Hello,
I have similar problem with my hp pavilion zt1170, running slackware 10.0, 2.4 kernel. The system crashes without any obvious reason. It mostly happens when the cpu is heavy used, for instance during kernel compilation (yep, I have to get off-powered to compile it!). Correct me if I'm wrong, but I suppose that acpi only works if batteries are *not* powered, yes? But putting acpi=off during boot time makes no difference, it still crashes. I also can't find anything about fans in the /proc structure... Maybe I should recompile the kernel without acpi at all? Oh, and, the worst of all, it used to work on windows...

ACPI Works both when powered via AC/DC and when using batteried. It is a power management feature.

The best thing to do is compile the kernel WITH ACPI enabled, then you can just force the fan on and it will cool down for you. The reason the Tosh crashes is due to overheating, its not really a crash as such its a safety shut off. The reason it worked in windows is that the Tosh has ACPI drivers which are fully compatible with windows, but like most companies, they decided not to develop linux drivers as it costs them money! But the funny thing is they won't even release the details of the bios ACPI so linux kernel developers can do it for free.