My laptop crashed - maybe heat? - How can I get logs or warned?

yeah, likely there is an addon for your GUI for monitoring the heat of your laptop or desktop. Likely need the lm-sensors package as part of that. And it wouldn't hurt to clean out the fans and make sure the machine can breath well.

I've not toyed with this myself. If there is a command line for it, then a script could be made to tap the sensor once and a while and record the data to a file so you can view it after a crash and see what had been going on.

Install rsyslog, then you can check /var/log/syslog. Before I got a really good cpu cooler, I had occasional shutdowns caused by heat. I now have a corsair h55 cooler. While the sensors command shows the cpu staying cool, their can sometimes be a lot of heat coming from the radiator. Good in winter, not so good in summer. Note that the cooler requires a fairly wide, tall case. I've been using cooler master haf 912 cases for the last year or two.

For a laptop, cleaning the system is paramount. Take it apart if needed, to clean properly.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

In /var/log I curently have the following *.log files (skipping numerical duplicates):

- alternatives.log

- apport.log

- auth.log

- boot.log

- bootstrap.log

- dmesg

- dpkg.log

- fontconfig.log

- gpu-manager.log

- jockey.log

- kern.log

- lastlog

- mail.log

- pm-powersave.log

- prime-offload.log

- prime-supported.log

- syslog

- Xorg.0.log

I just installed rsyslog using: $ sudo apt-get install rsyslog

It didn't immediately put a log file in there, and, running the command didn't work. It doesn't seem to have a manpage.

Googling, I find this page, where the "r" apparently stands for "rocket":

I'm surprised the temperature fluctuates as much as it does given the laptop is in the same spot indoors all the time.

Here is the laptop temperature after sitting idly all night: $ sensors acpitz-virtual-0 Adapter: Virtual device

thinkpad-isa-0000 Adapter: ISA adapter fan1: 3115 RPM

coretemp-isa-0000 Adapter: ISA adapter

That page, to me, was almost useless, as it didn't give me a tutorial of how to use rsyslog.

Apparently people have had the same problem with rsyslog:

That article implies the "r" is for "remote" (not "rocket").

It is the cpu that heats it up. The cpu uses a lot of energy when working, esp older cpus. But 90 deg is extreme, and suggest that there is some cooling problem in your laptop. Heat sink? fan? cooling slots plugged?

I keep it elevated in the back on a quarter-inch block of wood, so, it's even more open than it would be.

But, I think you guys are right that heat is what is killing the laptop.

What I need is a command that *warns* me when the temperature gets close so that I can prepare to shut down running programs to save data.

This pretty much tells me the temperature (those are single quotes in the awk) # alias temp='sensors | grep "Core 0:" |awk '{print $3}''

What I need to look up is how to do the "if" so that it spits out a warning when the temperature gets close to a set point (such as 84 degrees).

What you need is to fix the cooling problems. Once your laptop starts to crash duw to heat, it will get worse and worse, as the atoms in the silicon sart to diffuse out of the areas where they are supposed to be, creating shorts, etc.

sensord will tell your system. man sensord

$ sensord The program 'sensord' is currently not installed.

$ sudo apt-get install sensord Processing triggers for man-db (2.6.7.1-1ubuntu1) ... Processing triggers for ureadahead (0.100.0-16) ... Setting up libdbi1:amd64 (0.9.0-1) ... Setting up librrd4 (1.4.7-2ubuntu5) ... Setting up sensord (1:3.3.4-2ubuntu1) ... * Starting sensor daemon sensord [ OK ] Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.19-0ubuntu6.6) ... Processing triggers for ureadahead (0.100.0-16) ...

$ man sensord Sensord is a daemon that can be used to periodically log sensor readings from hardware health-monitoring chips to syslog(3) or a round-robin database (RRD) and to alert when a sensor alarm is signalled; for example, if a fan fails, a temperature limit is exceeded, etc.

Unfortunately, none of the examples in the manpage pertain to temperature alarms, so, I'll google further (is it just me or are manpages almost useless for actually getting something done that you want to get done for others also?).

I suspect "sensord" is the wrong command for the very common need of setting a temperature alarm, because I googled for how to set a temperature alarm, and *none* of the references even listed 'sensord', let alone gave an example of how to set up a sensord temperature alarm.

etc.

Not one of the references above used sensord, so, I'm pretty sure sensord is not the right solution (even if its manpages were useful).

This seems to be the right solution, but I have to try it first:

$ sudo apt-get install lm-sensors $ sudo sensors-detect $ service kmod start $ sudo apt-get install ksensors

DRAT! $ sudo apt-get install ksensors Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Package ksensors is not available, but is referred to by another package. This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or is only available from another source

E: Package 'ksensors' has no installation candidate