Can you post the output from gezley's suggestion? It might give you a hint as to what's going on.

Yes it is a good suggestion. But as I said I am trying it in safe mode for the mo as a way of eliminating/confirming possible KDE problem or setting. Next time it happens and I am around will give it a go.

BashTin.

Ok, so latest update. Just tried to shutdown again. This is the output from ps auf when the shutdown dialogue appears.

Also this was in safe mode so that makes no difference.

Suggestions??

And the output from the command I suggested was ... ?

I consider it impolite to demand other suggestions while riding roughshod over the suggestions already offered. Please pay me the courtesy of reading my earlier suggestion a little more carefully, and then come back for more suggestions if the output from that command does not throw light on your problem.

Quite right too. Apologies. Will try and get it right next time. Will report back on the next occurrence. Thanks for your patience. BashTin.

Overheating? Try to run any live CD distro and see what happens. My older notebook sometimes overheats and powers off after the same message you get.

I'm beginning to agree with gauchao here. I think this is hardware related.

No problem at all - I was tired last night after a long day's work.

Back again. Have not forgotten, just waiting for the inevitable to happen again. Thanks for the suggestions. emgee_1, gauchao & vtel57... yes that had occurred to me too, was just trying to elminate software issues first. However I have got my lm-sensors up and running and will check temps alongside any software issues.

So I had the shutdown dialogue pop up again. However, someone else was at my computer at the time and before I had chance to switch to vt I think he cancelled it (not sure, it was a bit quick and I did not have time to confirm or otherwise as I needed to switch to vt quickly). So this output may or may NOT contain evidence of the problem. Maybe you guys can just give it a look over and see if you can see anything obvious? If not will have to try again on the next occurrence.

From 'ps afx'
from 'sensors'
About the two ALARMS. The one at in3. I have no idea what this is but since installing lm-sensors a few days ago it has always showed this. And fan2. 0 rmp. I have two fans in my system, one case fan and one cpu fan. They are both running so assume this is some error. (and visually checked this was still the case straight after getting the shutdown dialogue).

And 'last x'
And finally 'last'
Ok that is it. Like I said though the evidence might not even be in here.

BashTin.

The sensors alarms can probably be ignored. The voltage is most likely not calibrated and the fan alarm is probably from an unused mobo fan connector.

By the way, if you prefer Fahrenheit rather than Celcius for the temps you can add the -f switch when you run sensors:

Well I'm going to mark this as solved. I am very embarrassed to have to confess this (but I guess everything is easy if you already know) but after the last time I realised that Ktorrent had just finished downloading. A quick dig soon found an option to shut down the computer after all downloads have completed, oops.

I have confirmed this is the culprit by doing some other quick downloads and the dialogue appears upon completion.

Interestingly enough 'last x' does not show anything even after letting the the shutdown complete. I tried several times but it does not show the culprit.

(note 'last x' lists nothing, hence the 'last' only command.

Any ideas why ktorrent is not shown as calling shutdown??

Well thanks for all the help and suggestions. Got there in the end.

Thanks again to all, BashTin.

I'm laughing, but not at you, BashTin; with you is more accurate. I've been here, done this before; as I'm sure most of us have from time to time. It's nothing to be embarrassed about. Operating systems are complicated things. There aren't many around who know everything about them.

I knew it was a "KDE thing". *wink-wink*

Take care!

~Eric