(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

I am leaving my laptop (intel i5/ 4gb ram/ Toshiba Qosmio x505/18.4inch laptop with puppy-slacko-5.7 frugal) on all the time. We don't shut it down at all, as this machine acts as a wi-fi sharepoint to my tenant (who is a university student). Laptop's battery is dead, long ago. Usually we do not experience power outages. Question is - is it ok to leave the machine on power without giving it a break? Windows gets sluggish 2 days; so in the past,we used to power off the machine in the night on weekends.

I did not see any issue so far with puppy; the machine was ON for 20 days without any problem so far, except for 2 times shutdown while I was experimenting initially. We all doing our works on this machine as usual. Screen goes blank, if idle for sometime, comes back to life on touching any key - and that is normal.

Question is - is it ok to leave the machine on power without giving it a break? Any view on this?

I'll probably be contradicted on this, but I'd say it depends on how you're running Puppy. Is it a frugal or full install? I let my computer run until the power fails or something else happens that seems to require a reboot. I often go without rebooting for months. But I run Puppy from a multisession DVD with 3GB of usable RAM and no hard disk drive at all.

I leave the shop computer running on the weekends.
It probably hurts more shutting down and rebooting every day
depending on your needs.

I'd leave it be.

On a side-note. The user may want to shutdown his screen only to save power/or the screen itself as the default puppy settings actually run a blank screensaver after a time and does not put the screen in standby mode or shut it off. To set the timing for shutdown of the screen, include the following line just before the end of the server layout section in the xorg.conf file found in /etc/x11:
Option "OffTime" "minutes" where in place of minutes you select a digit eg. 5. The screen will power on when pressing a key or touching the mouse.

I have been told, rightly or wrongly, that if you leave the laptop on and plugged into the mains, it will ruin the battery.
You can run it continuously from the mains, but take the battery out first.
JB

mekalu2k4 wrote: Laptop's battery is dead, long ago.

infromthepound wrote:You can run it continuously from the mains, but take the battery out first.

I agree with the advice to remove the battery - even though it has already died. Lithium ion batteries contain charge limiting circuitry to minimise fire risk and it is sometimes this circuitry that goes faulty rather than the actual cells. If the battery isn't taking / holding charge then it is safer to leave it out of the machine.

If the internal protection circuitry is the part that has failed then it is always possible that it could fail further and create a short that loads the power supply. I had a battery that never charged the cells but the area near the pins got real hot.

infromthepound wrote:You can run it continuously from the mains, but take the battery out first.

greengeek wrote: I agree with the advice to remove the battery - even though it has already died..........never charged the cells but the area near the pins got real hot.

Yes. We always left the machine on mains, then later realized that we destroyed it! But did not know that it is the source of heat. After reading your posts, my wife shut the machine down and removed the battery.

After using it for 5 hours we realized that the machine was not warm
Earlier it used to get a little bit warmer, but not really noticeable. now, even that is not there.

thanks guyz!

Hello all,
Sorry, did (could) not check the forum, as I was away on vacation with my family all these days, just returned as kids need to go to their respective schools; their terms beginning next week.

Ok, all these days I left my Toshiba Qosmio 18.4 inch/X505-Q886/ i686- Intl i5 M450/ nVidia/ 4gb RAM/ 500gb HDD/ machine running. OS: Puppy 5.7 slako. Leaving the machine ON was required as I have one student renting my place and gets internet from this machine using wi-fi hotspot. Just kept a small table fan on to it to prevent any overheating.

Yesterday, when I came back the machine was fine - except some fine dust on it! I checked my emails, browsed a bit and then rested. This morning I thought it might be better to give it a bit rest and start again. Shut it down for 1hr and then started. It came up normally, but could not connect to internet at all. I tried with a live puppy version on a USB (which I kept as backup a few months ago), the machine worked fine, internet is fine was.

Cannot understand what went wrong. Did not have patience (Grrrr!) to post on this forum and pester everyone etc. So, formatted the HDD with grub, used universal installer within the live usb puppy and installed a fresh copy again.

Now all is normal. using the same machine again. I just wanted to share this with you guys. Someone may have academic interest. I have No complaints......