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Thread: Jaunty unwanted shutdown with no warning

  1. #1
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    Exclamation Jaunty unwanted shutdown with no warning

    Hi, all,

    Ever since I've upgraded to jaunty, I've noticed an occasional but serious problem.

    Sometimes, Ubuntu will spontaneously shut itself down with no warning of any kind. I am not talking about a sudden loss of power. Ubuntu will switch to its normal shutdown screen, shut itself off normally, and power the system down. The problem is that it does this without me telling it to, and without any warning or countdown!

    Thus far, this problem has occurred only when I am using one of two programs: either gThumb or the game Anagramarama. One of these two programs has always been open and in the active window when these unexpected shutdowns occur. It seems like the computer will turn itself off about 50% of the time when I try to use gThumb, and every time I try to play Anagramarama. The shutdown doesn't happen immediately -- usually, the program in question has been open for about 20 minutes when the computer shuts down.

    Has anyone else seen this or a similar problem? Does anyone have any idea what could be happening? Is there a system log of some sort that I could check to see how the shutdown command was given?

    Thanks, everyone.

  2. #2
    credobyte is offline Iced Blended Vanilla Crème Ubuntu
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    Re: Jaunty unwanted shutdown with no warning

    Maybe your video card is not enough powerful and heats up to the maximum ( which could cause this mysterious shutdown ) ?

  3. #3
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    Re: Jaunty unwanted shutdown with no warning

    Thanks for the answer.

    I'm using an nVidia GeForce FX 5200 with 256 MB of video RAM. I'm pretty sure that it is a sufficient video card (but I'm not real knowledgeable on the subject, so I may be wrong).

    I would think that a video card problem would be more apparent on a more video-heavy application. Anagramarama is a lightweight time-waster desktop game, and all I use gThumb for is browsing my jpeg collection.

  4. #4
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    Re: Jaunty unwanted shutdown with no warning

    Long shot but..... Maybe a keyboard shortcut you didn't know about?

  5. #5
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    Re: Jaunty unwanted shutdown with no warning

    Quote Originally Posted by Hobgoblin View Post
    Long shot but..... Maybe a keyboard shortcut you didn't know about?
    Thanks, Hobgoblin. I don't think that's such a longshot, actually. I had considered it, since I control both of the offending programs from the keyboard. But I don't think so, for two reasons:

    One, there is no keyboard shortcut for "Shut Down" listed in System > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts. Does anyone know if there are any keyboard shortcuts configured anywhere else?

    Two, I seem to remember that, the very first time this had happened, I had stepped away from the computer for five minutes, and I heard the system beep as it shut down. I'm not 100% sure (since I didn't know I had a problem then), but that would indicate that the system shut down on its own without a keyboard command.

  6. #6
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    Re: Jaunty unwanted shutdown with no warning

    Have you checked out if the computer is overheating?

    You could monitor you computer temperature and see if that has something to do with it.
    When your thread it solved: go to thread tools > Mark this thread as solved
    for SIS 771/671 use xcompmgr to have transparent terminals. just load it at startup.

    And then they asked: what's a pbkac error?

  7. #7
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    Re: Jaunty unwanted shutdown with no warning

    Quote Originally Posted by mhgsys View Post
    Have you checked out if the computer is overheating?

    You could monitor you computer temperature and see if that has something to do with it.
    Is there a software way to monitor computer temperature? Or do I actually have to stick a thermometer inside the box?

    Would an overheat cause an orderly shutdown, or just a sudden crash?

  8. #8
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    Re: Jaunty unwanted shutdown with no warning

    lol, there is software for that;

    open a terminal and type:
    Code:
    sudo apt-get install computertemp
    after that right click a panel, click add to panel and select computer temperature monitor.

    ps:
    Could be both I guess, depending on the critical temperature option.
    I guess the bios shuts down if the mobo is overheating, If the bios doesn't do this The mobo could suddenly crash, and could burn out.
    Last edited by mhgsys; June 27th, 2009 at 06:33 PM.
    When your thread it solved: go to thread tools > Mark this thread as solved
    for SIS 771/671 use xcompmgr to have transparent terminals. just load it at startup.

    And then they asked: what's a pbkac error?

  9. #9
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    Re: Jaunty unwanted shutdown with no warning

    Quote Originally Posted by mhgsys View Post
    lol, there is software for that;
    "Yeah, I was joking," he said awkwardly, hiding the thermometer he just got out of the toolbox behind his back ...

    Thanks for the software recommendation. I'll install it and start monitoring.

  10. #10
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    Re: Jaunty unwanted shutdown with no warning

    By the way, what sort of temperature range should I be looking for? What is considered too high?

    PS: My CPU is an Athlon XP-M 3000+
    Last edited by gldearman; June 27th, 2009 at 06:37 PM.

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