Arch Linux

floke

Member

Registered: 2007-09-04

Posts: 266

[SOLVED] Compiling (sometimes) makes laptop hotter than the sun!

Well, maybe not that hot - but very hot anyway.
But the thing is this: compiling from aur runs with a temp (watch acpi -v) of 64' - whereas compiling with abs or the new and groovy pacbuilder can make it reach the ungodly heights of 95-100'.

Scorchio!

Any thoughts?

Last edited by floke (2008-07-10 05:48:13)

dyscoria

Member

Registered: 2008-01-10

Posts: 1,007

Re: [SOLVED] Compiling (sometimes) makes laptop hotter than the sun!

Try CPU scaling: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Cpufrequtils

Use the userspace governor and set a fixed frequency below the maximum when compiling.

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floke

Member

Registered: 2007-09-04

Posts: 266

Re: [SOLVED] Compiling (sometimes) makes laptop hotter than the sun!

Just tried that: Reduced from 2GHz max to 1.33, and set to powersave from ondemand mode.

Then went to compile vlc, and nearly cooked my pc at a roasting 100 degrees!

dyscoria

Member

Registered: 2008-01-10

Posts: 1,007

Re: [SOLVED] Compiling (sometimes) makes laptop hotter than the sun!

Well if you've set the governor to powersave and it's still overheating then the cpu isn't being scaled. Powersave fixes the frequency to minimum IIRC.

What's the output of this (might not be exactly the same path, as I have cpu0 and cpu1):

cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_driver
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_cur_freq

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flack 2.0.6: menu-driven BASH script to easily tag FLAC files (AUR)
knock-once 1.2: BASH script to easily create/send one-time sequences for knockd (forum/AUR)

Denacke

Member

Registered: 2008-04-09

Posts: 106

Re: [SOLVED] Compiling (sometimes) makes laptop hotter than the sun!

Those are some unhealthy temperatures!

You might also want to try to remove any dust that might be making it difficult for you cooling devices to cool. That solved a lot of heath problems with my laptop.

kclive18

Member

From: Columbus, Ohio, USA

Registered: 2008-05-08

Posts: 219

Re: [SOLVED] Compiling (sometimes) makes laptop hotter than the sun!

I would carefully open your laptop and clean out dust.  I would even suggest (this may be a bit dangerous) to apply some thermal paste to the processor inside your laptop; that helps better with transferring the heat out of the laptop's case.

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Registered: 2006-11-26

Posts: 5,819

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Re: [SOLVED] Compiling (sometimes) makes laptop hotter than the sun!

I concur.

Other than that, if your laptop is recent enough, it will shutdown by itself when it reaches critical temperatures (I had my AMD Turion64 do that). Not sure if you need ACPI properly enabled for that though, I think you do.

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floke

Member

Registered: 2007-09-04

Posts: 266

Re: [SOLVED] Compiling (sometimes) makes laptop hotter than the sun!

The laptop is probably a bit dusty since it sits on the sofa the whole time - but I can rule this out, since I've been compiling stuff in Gentoo for several hours at a stretch and it never toodled above 64. Yet if I try to compile on this Arch box then - bam!
Maybe I should turn cpufreq off or something? It's all mighty peculiar.

** EDIT: Looks like it was me - I had the cpufreq daemon as 'cpufreqd' rather than 'cpufreq', so we shall see if things get better **

** Confirm - all fixed! **

Last edited by floke (2008-07-10 05:48:38)