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**askrieger** · Sep 30, 2006, 06:30 PM

Re: laptop shuts down randomly

Please define "shut down". Does the machine turn itself off following the standard shut down procedure? Does the the system simply stop responding to mouse and/or keyboard inputs? Does the screen go black? What happens?

I would suggest taking a look at the logs in the /var/log/ directory. I would suspect that your upgrade changed a setting somewhere that puts your computer into an impossible state at some point. The system usually complains in a log when that happens. Which log has the message depends on what happened. "/var/log/dmesg" is where I would expect a problem with acpi to show up. If so it will be in the last few lines before the shut down.

**djura** · Oct 01, 2006, 01:34 AM

Re: laptop shuts down randomly

When I say "shut down", I mean real shutdown :-). The machine just turns itself off, like when you pull out the power cord. It doesn't go through standard shutdown, just turns off.
As for the logs, I did try to find something, but no luck. I looked at all files at /var/log, but couldn't find anything strange. Or maybe I just didn't look at the right place.
On the other hand, since shutdown happens at a split of a second, I doubt the system has time to write anything to log. Maybe some other log files contain events that lead to shutdown, but as I said, I just don't know where to look.

**djura** · Oct 01, 2006, 03:59 AM

Re: laptop shuts down randomly

OK, it happenned again. Now I'm reading logs form WIndows, these are loga after shutdown. These are several last lines from:
/var/log/messages

Code:

Oct 1 09:07:40 vlada-laptop pppd[5012]: local IP address 10.10.11.30
Oct 1 09:07:40 vlada-laptop pppd[5012]: remote IP address 10.10.10.1
Oct 1 09:10:30 vlada-laptop gconfd (vlada-5101): starting (version 2.14.0), pid 5101 user 'vlada'
Oct 1 09:10:30 vlada-laptop gconfd (vlada-5101): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory" to a read-only configuration source at position 0
Oct 1 09:10:30 vlada-laptop gconfd (vlada-5101): Resolved address "xml:readwrite:/home/vlada/.gconf" to a writable configuration source at position 1
Oct 1 09:10:30 vlada-laptop gconfd (vlada-5101): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults" to a read-only configuration source at position 2
Oct 1 09:10:30 vlada-laptop gconfd (vlada-5101): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/var/lib/gconf/debian.defaults" to a read-only configuration source at position 3
Oct 1 09:10:30 vlada-laptop gconfd (vlada-5101): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/var/lib/gconf/defaults" to a read-only configuration source at position 4
Oct 1 09:12:17 vlada-laptop exiting on signal 15
Oct 1 09:12:18 vlada-laptop syslogd 1.4.1#17ubuntu7: restart.
Oct 1 09:32:18 vlada-laptop -- MARK --

and from /var/log/syslog

Code:

Oct 1 09:37:32 vlada-laptop dhclient: No DHCPOFFERS received.
Oct 1 09:37:32 vlada-laptop dhclient: No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.
Oct 1 09:39:01 vlada-laptop /USR/SBIN/CRON[5524]: (root) CMD ( [ -d /var/lib/php4 ] && find /var/lib/php4/ -type f -cmin +$(/usr/lib/php4/maxlifetime) -print0 | xargs -r -0 rm)

I'm not sure about this last line in syslog,seems like it's executing some script, maybe it is causing the shutdown?
And also, what is this "exiting on signal 15" mentioned in message?

**cottonwood** · Oct 01, 2006, 05:09 PM

Re: laptop shuts down randomly

is your machine overheating? i had a toshiba laptop sometime ago that when running linux, would over heat sometimes and the machine would shut itself down.

**askrieger** · Oct 01, 2006, 09:12 PM

Re: laptop shuts down randomly

In general, signals are one of the ways that the kernel communicates with a process. Signal 15 requests that the receiving process "terminate". It is a somewhat more gentle command than signal 9, "kill", in that a terminated process can exit in an orderly fashion. When a process receives a signall 9, it just stops without cleaning up after itself.

But, I don't think that the SIGTERM (say that to someone and they'll think you're a Linux guru) is your problem. That just indicates that some process finished doing what it was supposed to do, was told to exit, and it did. You'll note that something else happened one second later.

I think that your problem occurs somewhat later, no earlier than 09:39 (if that's the last entry in your syslog). A program called "Cron", which performs system administration tasks according to a schedule, was doing something to your PHP4 system. I'm sorry, but I'm not sure exactly what it was trying to do, because I don't use the PHP language. The line of Bash code in your syslog tests whether you have a directory called /var/lib/php4. If so it tries to find a file in that directory that was changed less recently than a time specified in another file, and then removes this presumably obsolete file. I have no idea why, but it seems like a reasonable thing to do which should not shut down your system. So, all we know is that the system was still working at 09:39 and one second.

**djura** · Oct 02, 2006, 05:38 AM

Re: laptop shuts down randomly

@cottonwood

I don't think that the problem is overheating, because sometimes machine works for hours without any problems, and sometime it shuts down only minutes after I turn it on.

Is there any way I could find out CPU temperature on Linux? I think I saw some command for that on the Internet, but can't find it now.

**askrieger** · Oct 02, 2006, 05:59 PM

Re: laptop shuts down randomly

There is a program called "ksensors" whcih will read any temperature sensors that are available. It is a KDE frontend for a program called "lm-sensors". Lm-sensors will install the "libsensors3" package. I believe you also need the "sensord" package to generate a sensors log.

**restlesslylistless** · Jul 16, 2009, 09:09 AM

Re: laptop shuts down randomly

Bumped because I am having a similar problem.

Currently, my computer boots perfectly fine, but after 10 minutes, give or take, it will just die, just like in this situation. It won't overheat or anything, but it will just automatically force shutdown. This problem started after my last real reboot.

I don't know if any of the following is relevant, but:
-I recently began using ADSL which forces me to use

Code:

$ sudo pppoeconf

to input a username and password for my account. Everytime I want to use this connection, I have to redo the pppoe. After that first restart, instead of the elan0 connected icon, I'm getting the green globe icon saying I have an unmanaged elan0. This is the case even without my ethernet cable connected.
-I changed settings on Deluge to allow 12 connections at a time rather than 3. My computer was pretty hot until the restart.
-I also recently installed eva from Synaptic, which didn't work, and also Audacity and added a folder to help my internal mic work, but neither worked. Audacity works, but since my mic doesn't, it can't record anything from that input.
-I heard that this could be faulty RAM and I could do a memtest, but even a memtest doesn't finish before the computer shuts itself down.

Anyway, this is a very big problem so if anybody could help ASAP, that'd be fantastic.

**dibl** · Jul 16, 2009, 09:40 AM

Re: laptop shuts down randomly

That is an indication of a serious problem.

I would say the networking thing -- ppoe and elan0 -- is totally unrelated to the shutdown problem. At least I think it is -- it's not clear how it could be related. So I would not look there for a solution to the shutdown problem.

You may not feel the heat, because it is very concentrated within the CPU, but it can get hot fast. The kind of time-defined shutdown that you are describing sounds more like a thermal shutdown than anything else. A memory problem is normally intermittent and unpredictable. I suppose some indirect thermal effect could also trigger something like a memory problem -- I have seen (long ago) a PC that would warm up and that would cause a cold solder joint in the PSU to open, and then shut down the PC. But that second kind (the indirect thing) would happen with any OS and regardless of what you were doing.

If it is a CPU overheating when running Linux, then (assuming the CPU has embedded thermal sensor(s)), you can install the lm-sensors package, then afterward run

Code:

sudo sensors-detect

, which will write extra lines in /etc/modules to set the modules to be loaded on boot. Then you'll have to restart the system, and then when you are logged in again you can run Ksensors and observe the temps for whatever sensors are enabled.

**restlesslylistless** · Jul 20, 2009, 11:22 PM

Re: laptop shuts down randomly

Still a no go. I managed to install it and run the sensors-detect, but it shut itself off right after that.

**askrieger** · Jul 23, 2009, 12:02 AM

Re: laptop shuts down randomly

Have you tried looking at your logs (as I suggested to the person who originally started this thread)? If so, what do they say?

**restlesslylistless** · Jul 29, 2009, 11:19 PM

Re: laptop shuts down randomly

Apologies for my absense. My back-up PC's had its own issues. Good grief I know.

I looked into /var/log, but it's just a folder. I'm not sure what you wanted me to look at. I've noticed something else, though. It seems that every time I open Firefox, the computer will also automatically shut off. If it's via Firefox, the computer doesn't even wait the ten minutes. I could have just booted it, but once I load Firefox, it will automatically crash. Could Firefox overheat my laptop? Oh, I restore previous when I opened it.

**restlesslylistless** · Aug 06, 2009, 09:29 AM

Re: laptop shuts down randomly

I've now noticed something else, that probably could explain what's going on. When I shut the computer off the last time it was working, the battery monitor was having issues. It kept telling me my battery needed to be charged, but est for a full was growing from 1: 0: 2 to about 17523: 0: 4 and then kept going with the percentage charged static. After I turned it off and the ensuing ten minute struggle, the monitor keeps doing that as long as the battery wasn't fully charged while powered down.

**GreyGeek** · Aug 06, 2009, 09:48 AM

Re: laptop shuts down randomly

Uh oh.

Shades of Deja vous, all over again.

My previous laptop was a Gateway m675prr. My battery was dropping from a "full charge" to around 15-20% and then just shutting down. I turned off the laptop, removed the battery, and turned it back on. The problem went away. The battery replacement cost $87 but Gateway sent the wrong one, even though I gave them the right replacement number. They refused to reimburse me so I bought another from an Internet battery store for $149. My son is now using that laptop. I've suggested to him that if that Lithium-ion battery goes south just take it out and run it without the battery. Runs a lot cooler when I did that. I was running the ReiserFS at the time and a sudden power out wouldn't give it any problems at at all. It would just replay its journal at boot up, which usually took no more than 10 seconds, and all would be well again. With the ReiserFS I never lost any data, and that after pulling the plug in emergencies several times. EXT3 still has shades of EXT2 in that it has to run fsck every so many boots, but other than that annoyance it seems to be working fine.

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