If it's the battery, unplug it without delay and power it down.
Seriously. Don't play around with an overheating battery. It's dangerous.
Seriously. Don't play around with an overheating battery. It's dangerous.
-
After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.
The "Linux questions (and other stuff)" thread
- Thread starter MoodyBlues
- Start date
Thanks, EM. It's been powered down for two days...while I've been contemplating what to do next. The battery in it died years ago. (I have the nasty--and ongoing--habit of killing batteries by never unplugging my laptops.
) I'm thinking it's a fan issue, but I really just don't feel like dealing with it.I'm doing that 'pros vs cons' thing in my head: it's 7 years old, I use it, it's not worth the bother, but I do like it, I can live without it, but it's nice to have, it's not worth the expense of fixing it, but what if it's just a fan? And so on.
Dngrsone
Android Expert
Have you ever blown the dust out of it? It may be a simple solution to the problem.
I live in a high dust area, so I make a habit of blowing out my laptop monthly with low pressure air at work.
Of course, you may be right, and the fan is on its last legs, or already dead. Or it could be a dying battery or the hard drive heating up. Depends on where in the laptop the heat is coming from.
On HP laptops, when the fan goes, I usually find out when the graphics go bananas.
I live in a high dust area, so I make a habit of blowing out my laptop monthly with low pressure air at work.
Of course, you may be right, and the fan is on its last legs, or already dead. Or it could be a dying battery or the hard drive heating up. Depends on where in the laptop the heat is coming from.
On HP laptops, when the fan goes, I usually find out when the graphics go bananas.
Me, too...well, a high FUR area--courtesy of my six cats!
Good idea. I'll give that a try when (if?) I open it up.
The heat seems to be centered in the front, left part of the laptop, i.e., to my left of the touchpad. And it's HOT.
IIRC, all but one of my laptops have been HP, and I've never actually had a fan die in any of them. The graphics on the laptop in question are fine, as of the last time I checked (two days ago).On HP laptops, when the fan goes, I usually find out when the graphics go bananas.
Dngrsone
Android Expert
Just blow through the vents, both ways. That'll at least get the chunks out.
On my G72, the left front is where the hard drive resides. Same with the DV2000. There might not be anything you can do about that... since you are running Linux, it likely doesn't need defragmenting.
You could try a different drive, of course, but I have doubts as to whether this will really fix things for you.
On my G72, the left front is where the hard drive resides. Same with the DV2000. There might not be anything you can do about that... since you are running Linux, it likely doesn't need defragmenting.
You could try a different drive, of course, but I have doubts as to whether this will really fix things for you.
You haven't seen the fur balls in this house.
:laugh:The hard drive is less than two years old. I replaced it when the previous one died, and then used the clean canvas to try a bunch of [other] Linux distros. I settled on Bodhi, which is very lightweight yet lovely to look at, and it brought that laptop back to life.
If it's the hard drive dying, I'll be very surprised, considering its relative newness. I think that would be a record for me! And it hardly gets any use--the laptop I'm typing this on is my REAL laptop; that one is just for middle of the night puttering around when I'm wide awake [thank you wonderful insomnia... *sigh*].No, that's a window$ thing. :rofl:
Dngrsone
Android Expert
Well, hard drives generally don't exhibit incipient failure by heating up... they just get hot through use.
I didn't like the G72 because there was nothing, really between the hard drive and my leg, so I often had to get a small table or something to hold the machine off my lap, proper.
I didn't like the G72 because there was nothing, really between the hard drive and my leg, so I often had to get a small table or something to hold the machine off my lap, proper.
Actually it can be sign that a hard drive might be about to die is running abnormally hot. I've actually had that happen as well. Hard drive was literally running too hot to touch it, and then next day it started clicking. And another had two identical drives, one drive was running noticeably hotter, and eventually it did start giving read errors.
Dngrsone
Android Expert
I stand corrected, then.
... now that I think about it, I had problems with a particular series of drive in my HP laptop... I believe it was the Scorpio Blue series (Western Digital?). Anyway, the first drive failed, got it replaced under warranty, then the second on went almost immediately, and when the third drive went, I said to heel with it, took the loss and replaced the drive with a different manufacturer.
... maybe it was Seagate...
Yeah that third failure took out not only the laptop drive, but also my portable backup... I lost a year's worth of personal data in that one.
Interesting--in a scary sort of way. I'm as sure as I can be without taking the time to look that I put a Western Digital drive in there when the old one died. I have no recollection at all of what brand the old drive was, but it may have been WD as well. But "Scorpio Blue" doesn't ring a bell for me. I do recall that I wanted to put a 500GB drive in that laptop, but 320GB was the biggest it could take so I went with that.
OUCH! That hurts...
Yeah, I have nothing against 'the cloud' as a means of ADDITIONAL safety, I'm just not in the 'store everything in the cloud!' camp. I've believed in, and used, off-site storage for as long as I've been involved in computing. Back in the day, that meant physically taking backup disks home with me from work--one copy stayed at work, one copy went home. So if the store burned down, at the very least we'd still have our data!
Yes, definitely!
Yay!
Okay, I'll state right off I'm extremely biased--I'm a Kubuntu lover through and through. It's Ubuntu, but with KDE as its desktop environment. If you install Kubuntu, you can also have Ubuntu--with its GNOME or Unity or whatever desktop environments they have now--and switch freely between them. And vice versa. You can install Ubuntu and then add the Kubuntu components, or install Ubuntu and add the KDE components. (This is Linux--so there are always MANY choices and MANY ways of doing things.)
I'm also a big fan of Bodhi Linux. It's very lightweight but not crippled; its desktop environment is Enlightenment but, as with all things *nix, you can install whatever you like. Bodhi is a great choice for older and/or not very powerful hardware.
Finally, keep in mind that you can download the ISO files for any distributions you're interested in, and then boot up from those files. This will not in any way affect your hard drive. You can explore each distro and get a feel for which you prefer, THEN if you decide to commit to one you can choose its install option. Only then will you need to deal with your hard drive and how to partition it. If/when you get to that point, if you need help just post!
Alright, I'll have a look then.
I currently have Ubuntu on a DVD to help root my phone and I've already had a quick go.
Considering it was running off a slow DVD, it was very quick! And I found its pretty similar to OSX (and I've been using a mac for the last week, so it didn't feel too strange)
I'll come back after some more playing about on that DVD and after a look at the kde stuff
I currently have Ubuntu on a DVD to help root my phone and I've already had a quick go.
Considering it was running off a slow DVD, it was very quick! And I found its pretty similar to OSX (and I've been using a mac for the last week, so it didn't feel too strange)
I'll come back after some more playing about on that DVD and after a look at the kde stuff
Dngrsone
Android Expert
Linux Magazine used to make a "Six-pack" DVD which had the major flavors of Ubuntu on it-- Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Mythbuntu, and Ubuntu Rescue... but the last issue they did, as far as I know was Natty-- 11.10.
Ubuntu is 13.04 currently. It could be that 12.04 and up were too massive to fit several versions onto a DVD... or maybe no one was interested.
Anyway, I thought was a nice way to play with the different desktops without messing around with a bunch of CDs.
Ubuntu is 13.04 currently. It could be that 12.04 and up were too massive to fit several versions onto a DVD... or maybe no one was interested.
Anyway, I thought was a nice way to play with the different desktops without messing around with a bunch of CDs.
sfbloodbrother
Extreme Android User
I haven't used a CD for any Linux Distro. Everything is USB.
Okay, so this is weird. The 'hot' laptop had a nice rest (several days shutdown/unplugged), and when I fired it up last night it was fine. (The hot spot was definitely where the hard drive is. I finally worked up enough enthusiasm to at least determine that!) It's been running since, and it's still fine. I should say "fine" because we don't really know yet if it is fine.
Dngrsone
Android Expert
Well, at least it is still usable.
Quick question, off the slightly more stupid variety, because I should know the answer... I have the ability to tether my laptop to my phone, but I have to issue a terminal command in order to do so. What I would like to do its create a launcher that will issue the appropriate CLI command and then bring up a Firefox window with the "tether" profile.
I figure this would be best done with a short bash script, something along the lines of this:
I can't for the life of me remember how to terminate this sniper of code...
Quick question, off the slightly more stupid variety, because I should know the answer... I have the ability to tether my laptop to my phone, but I have to issue a terminal command in order to do so. What I would like to do its create a launcher that will issue the appropriate CLI command and then bring up a Firefox window with the "tether" profile.
I figure this would be best done with a short bash script, something along the lines of this:
Code:
#bin bash
klink
firefox -no-remote -P TetherI can't for the life of me remember how to terminate this sniper of code...
So far, so good!
Nope. There are no stupid questions.
You don't really need to terminate it, because once you close FF it'll terminate on its own. (Note that I'm doing this on almost no sleep...so if I'm missing something, let me know!)
Also, be sure you have the first line correct; it should be:
Code:
#!/bin/bash