Laptop temperature steadily rising with Puppy

[shankargopal]

I use a Dell Inspiron 5100 laptop which is quite old. These laptops are badly designed and have a tendency to overheat - I've already had to replace the heatsink once after nearly destroying the motherboard.

After the heatsink replacement all was fine, but I've noticed an odd tendency over the last few weeks - the average temperature when running Puppy is steadily rising. I use the i8kmon daemon to control the fans (a great program, can post it as a dotpet if anyone using Dell laptop wants it) and whereas temperatures usually ran around 38 - 42 degrees earlier, now they are generally as high as 47 - 50. With my i8kmon settings this means the fan is always running, and most the time running at double speed (after crossing 50). There has been a gradual rise also from an average of 44 a week ago to about 47 now.

I run Enlightenment DR 17, use OpenOffice, Firefox and Seamonkey together most of the time. I thought it might be E17, so ran in JWM for some time only to find that the average temperature is the same (recorded and checked). Closing open programmes makes little difference. And, finally, it's not a hardware problem, because I used Windows (ugh) for a while to check things out, and the average temperature was 39 - higher than after the heatsink replacement, when it was 37, but far lower than Puppy.

Anyone have any idea what is going on?

[raffy]

Arent daemons like that - they bring the heat.

I notice that when I run apache in Puppy, the otherwise cool machine becomes hot (apache is the httpd daemon).

[Pizzasgood]

Try running a clean Puppy (boot with the puppy pfix=ram option). It may be that as you install more stuff, the harddrive gets accessed more and heats up, or that you've started more background processes. A clean ram-only session should help clarify if that's the issue.

Otherwise, I can't think of why Puppy would increase the heat over time. I could see over time in a continuous session, but not in successive runs. I'd say either it's a software accumulation or a physical problem (dust bunny infestation?).

I don't have much experience with laptops yet though. Only had one for 26 hours now, and only used it a couple hours last night.

[WhoDo]

Anyone have any idea what is going on?

Are you running Puppy from the CD only? I had a problem with my HP Compaq nc6220 laptop that the CD drive caused the machine to overheat. I found a BIOS setup switch to have the fan running the whole time, even when connected to mains power, but there is still an enormous amount of heat generated by running from the CD. Go figure.

Hope that helps

[Brian C]

I would say that that temperature is normal for that model. My old job had several of those computers, and Windows always reported the temperature as being in the 50s.

Are the fans running? Puppy Linux version 2.13 and later should turn the fans on automatically without you having to deal with i8kutils. As long as the fans run, you should be fine.

[Rhino]

As for a totally low tech solution, I have had problems with my laptop overheating in the past as well, and after reading many posts found out that using canned air to clean out the laptop worked wonders. I was initially very skeptical about this, not thinking it would make that much of a difference, but lo and behold it really did and my laptop runs much better with routine cleaning. I don't really put it anywhere that dusty, but it sure pulls it in from somewhere.

Good Luck.

[Brian C]

Canned air can be helpful of the fans/heatsink are covered with dust. Just be sure to turn the laptop off and let it cool for a few minutes before letting the air loose (compressed air is flamable!)

The best way to clean out a laptop is to open it up. Especially if you have pets. That hair gets in the tighest places, inside a laptop. The 5100 is a bear to open, and make sure you label all of your screws.

While you're cleaning your laptop out, you could wash the keyboard if you want to. Just put 1 TBS vinegar per cup of water in a sink and slosh the keyboard around. Cycle the water a couple of times until the crud stops coming off. Allow ~24 hours to dry before reconnecting to the computer. I've done/seen this done dozens of times, and it works well on laptop keyboards. Desktop keyboards too, but you have to keep the circuits away from the water. However, I have seen a single keyboard (out of dozens) break from this treatment (and it was probably because he used the keyboard without allowing ample time to dry), so I take no responsability for any broken equipment that results from this cleaning.

[shankargopal]

Wow, thanks for all the really helpful suggestions. Pizzasgood, I suspect it isn't software accumulation, because I have been doing a lot of de facto clean booting recently as part of my experiments with compiling enlightenment software; doesn't seem to make much difference.

By the way, Brian C, why would 2.13 and later automatically turn on the fans? Thought that was a BIOS function excepting where it is specifically software driven. But in any case I had installed i8kmon because I've already had this laptop die very badly with previous overheating, when it used to run around 55 - 60 and then eventually stopped starting at all. Replacing the heatsink fixed that but I started using i8kutils in order to make sure the fans turn on early (currently they start at 43) so that the risk of that happening again could be avoided. And yes, the fans do run.

Nope, WhoDo, running either from USB flash or from frugal install (doesn't seem to make a difference either way).

As for dust, haven't yet tried canned air, but tried blowing very hard . I also at one point tried to make a makeshift filter over the air intake by using tissue paper, but that only increased the heat further (presumably because air was not being taken in). Should try canned air, just not sure where to get it (live in New Delhi).

But do feel that maybe it is dust... I tried for instance throttling the CPU yesterday, and that had an effect, but very sloooowly. So now it strikes me that maybe Puppy always ran somewhat hotter than Windows, but what seems to be happening now is that the cooling efficiency of the fans has come down. If it does turn out to be dust, I apologise in advance for potentially wasting the time of the ever-helpful Puppian brigade .

[Brian C]

I don't know why Puppy 2.13 (It may have actually been 2.12, I'm not sure) turns the fans on automatically, but most Linux distrobutions on older Dell laptops required i8kutils to operate the fans. Without this program they wouldn't opearte properly, if at all. When Puppy 2.13 came out, the fans in all Dell laptops I booted with Puppy worked fine. I'm not sure what the change was, but a change there was.

[shankargopal]

Well, I did discover that 2.13 (or 2.12 - whichever one introduced the zdrv file) came with the i8k module, which earlier Puppies did not. Maybe that is why it works automatically.