On Thu, 2010-08-05 at 08:31 +0100, Peter Alcibiades wrote:
Any ideas on this?
Its a socket 754 machine, something like a 2Ghz Athlon, 1G memory. Debian Squeeze. It has always worked just fine, and in almost all ways except this still does. What has just now started happening however is that the owner has started to read the papers online. Sometimes, it doesn't seem to matter which paper or which browser, there will be a page with 'the wrong kind' of graphics. Its not clear exactly what the wrong kind is, some are fine, others seem not to be. Gradually, the fan will start to speed up.
If you now start up gkrell, you can see that cpu temperature starts to rise quite rapidly to the high 50s, and the fan gets very loud indeed. I don't know how far it would go, because one of us closes the browser fairly soon when this happens, and eventually the temperature falls to below 50.
There are two separate issues here:
1. Why do some web pages require so much CPU capacity while others don't.
2. Why does the CPU run so hot when it is being worked.
In the first case this is down to poorly written content. Whenever the designer of a web page is allowed to write procedural steps they have the opportunity to write accidental infinite loops and lazy busy polling loops. Javascript and Java Applets both provide the ability to do this and I wonder if flash does to.
In the second case you need to establish what the maximum permissible temperature is and whether it is being approached. If so better cooling design is required, whether specifically from the CPU fan/cooler or the case design.
HTH, Steve.