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Date:      Fri, 22 Sep 2006 07:08:04 -0700
From:      David Wolfskill <david@catwhisker.org>
To:        acpi@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Avoiding "WARNING: system temperature too high, shutting down soon!"?
Message-ID:  <20060922140804.GA12665@bunrab.catwhisker.org>
In-Reply-To: <20060916234642.GC698@bunrab.catwhisker.org>
References:  <20060916234642.GC698@bunrab.catwhisker.org>

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On Sat, Sep 16, 2006 at 04:46:42PM -0700, David Wolfskill wrote:
> I could use some help:  I seem to overheat my laptop; I'd like to get
> some idea of how to avoid the overheating, preferably while still
> getting the work done.
> ...

I received several useful suggestions, and I have the problem mitigated
while I await word from places that advertise that they will do laptop
repairs.

Eric Anderson pointed out "If the speed is off by 20%, you'd still hear
the pitch difference, but the cooling would be inadequate for a P4M."
This has encouraged me to actually get the problem resolved.  :-}

Pawel Worach suggested that using a sysctl to use passive cooling to
throttle the CPU at or above a certain temperature, but wasn't sure that
it worked on FreeBSD-STABLE.  (I think it may:

g1-18(6.2-P)[1] sysctl -a | grep PSV
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._PSV: -1
g1-18(6.2-P)[2]=20

but haven't needed to do that yet.)

Alexandre "Sunny" Kovalenko discussed the issues at some length, and
provided a patch to powerd(8) to cap the CPU frequency at or above a
certain temperature.  As with the "passive cooling," I have not yet
needed that, so I haven't tested it.

If there's interest in the patch to powerd(8), I could test it & submit
a PR -- but I'd rather not if there's not much interest.

What I did to mitigate the problem was to (finally) open up the laptop
(by popping off the panel that has the power button -- this requires no
tools on the Inspiron 8200 -- and blow out the dust that had accumulated
on the heat exchanger fins with "canned air."

The motherboard fan still makes the occasional "grinding" noise when
it's under load for a while, and that's what I need to fix.  I found a
source for new fans for about $40, but the actual replacement appears to
require access to the underside of the motherboard, which requires
rather more disassembly of the machine than I really have appropriate
facilities for -- thus the queries to the repair folks.

And the "mitigation" done so far has permitted the machine to go through
a daily regimen of:

* Updating the local mirror of the CVS repository.

* Updating RELENG_6 sources.

* STABLE (RELENG_6) "make buildworld" & friends

* portupgrade -a

* Updating HEAD sources.

* CURRENT (HEAD) "make buildworld" & friends

* plus the usual new port installs & use of the machine

without further problems.


One thing I found that I thought was a bit odd:  I ran a script to poll
the current CPU frequency & the temperature every 10 seconds (& report
the same, along with the date) to stdout.  I started running that while
I ran "make buildworld" and found that the temperature consistently ran
about 10C lower with the lid closed.  (I have the BIOS set for the
machine to remain active when the lid is closed so I can start a "make
buildworld," then put the machine in the car, commute to work, and have
it do productive work during that time.

Thanks again for all your help!

Peace,
david
--=20
David H. Wolfskill				david@catwhisker.org
Believe SORBS at your own risk: 63.193.123.122 has been static since Aug 19=
99.

See http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/publickey.gpg for my public key.

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