[PLUG] Hot computer

[John Jason Jordan]

On Wed, 8 Dec 2010 22:21:38 -0800
Bill Barry <bill at billbarry.org> dijo:

>On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 9:07 PM, John Jason Jordan
><johnxj at comcast.net>wrote:
>
>>
>> Something is eating my CPUs, but top and the GUI are lying to me. I
>> need suggestions for other ways to find the culprit.
>>
>
>This might do the trick.
> http://www.lesswatts.org/projects/powertop/

I installed powertop, but the features don't work. For example, it says
to disable the unused wireless with "ifconfig wlan0 down," so I do so,
tell powertop to refresh, and it still says to disable unused wireless.
Ditto for all its other recommendations. 

>It could still be a problem with your video drivers. Video chips can
>heat up things quite quickly and if you have it  running a laptop
>monitor and an external monitor it will heat up even quicker. Does it
>still think you have an external monitor for some reason?

That sounds suspicious. I don't recall exactly when the hot computer
syndrome first appeared, but it was after my presentation on December
2. However, both the GUI and xrandr tell me that the only monitor is
the laptop monitor.

At the moment I have both CPUs throttled to 800 MHz with the Gnome
panel widgets. But Gnome System Manager says one is running at 100% and
the other at 80%. Yet the computer remains cool. And top says that top
is taking 95-100% and everything else is taking a total of not more
than 10%. Who is lying?

Note to other comments:

It can't be dust bunnies or a failing fan because neither would cause
the CPUs to run at close to the max all the time. The only thing that
can make the CPUs run intensively is a running process.