runaway cpu when laptop lid is opened

[RobH]

Toshiba A305-S6905 dual core laptop, 3gb ram
PCLOS 2010.12

This laptop is left on most of the day and gets used mainly for web/email browsing. We close the lid when it is not in use to save battery power.  Sometimes (maybe one out of 10 times) when we lift the screen to use it, the laptop becomes slow to respond. gkrellm reports 90 - 100% cpu usage on one cpu, always on CPU1.

There is no pattern that I can see. Sometimes it hibernates with firefox active, sometimes with no app active.

Running top when this occurs shows that only X and gkrellm are getting high cpu usage, and the only way to get out of this is to reboot, which can take 5 or 6 minutes.

I swapped out the HD and loaded a fresh install of 2010.12 and the problem persisted.

This never happened on PCLOS 2009.2 Maybe this is something related to KDE v4 ??

[pags]

Are you fully updated (I presume you are, but I'll ask just the same)?

What kernel are you running?

Code: [Select]

uname -a
from a console (command line) can provide that information.

I found that 2.6.38.2-pclos1.bfs was causing excessive load one both CPUs of my laptop running XBMC (connected to a 1920x1080 LCD TV, lid closed in docking station).  Booting back into 2.6.37.2-pclos1.bfs calmed everything down, so I set that as the default:

[jpaglia@xbmclg ~]$ uname -a
Linux xbmclg.localdomain 2.6.37.2-pclos1.bfs #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon Feb 28 21:20:49 CST 2011 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
[jpaglia@xbmclg ~]$ ls /boot/vmlinuz* -lhS
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2.3M Mar 29 10:57 /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38.2-pclos1.bfs
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2.1M Feb 28 22:22 /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.37.2-pclos1.bfs
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2.0M Oct 21 23:48 /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.33.7-pclos6.bfs
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   27 Apr 17 13:54 /boot/vmlinuz -> vmlinuz-2.6.37.2-pclos1.bfs
[jpaglia@xbmclg ~]$

[RobH]

Yes, I stay updated, but have an older kernel than the one you mentioned.

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[everybody@localhost ~]$ uname -a
Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.33.7-pclos6.bfs #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Oct 21 22:42:28 CDT 2010 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
[everybody@localhost ~]$ ll /boot/vmlinuz*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      27 Oct 22 13:37 /boot/vmlinuz -> vmlinuz-2.6.33.7-pclos6.bfs
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2059312 Oct 21  2010 /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.33.7-pclos6.bfs
[everybody@localhost ~]$

Perhaps I should move up a kernel  version or two.