mozilla-firefox-1.0.4 causes laptop temp to rise

[Steve Scrimpshire]

Hmmm. Does anyone else have this problem? Installed the latest firefox from the tarball from the mozilla site and every time I run it, my laptop temp rises to around 70C. top shows nothing abnormal about firefox's cpu usage or anything associated with firefox for that matter.

[scarecrow]

It does what?

[Phantom]

Seems funny to me also, either it is using the cpu or the HDD to much to cause that kind of heat, but otherwise I don't see how this could be possible.

 

It's true that under Linux my laptop seems to be hotter also then under windows, at least the fan is running more often.

 

Do you guys know a tool to read the temps ? I'm used to Mobilemeter under windows, so maybe something similar.

[Steve Scrimpshire]

gkrellm can read the sensors on my Toshiba Satellite.

 

As you can tell, I'm not a n00bie... :P

When I say it is Firefox causing this, I'm sure that is what it is. It would be pretty coincidental for it to be something else as I have the same background services/programs running as I always have and the only program version that has changed recently is Firefox.

This abnormal rise in temperature only happens when I run Firefox and there is no unusual HD activity or CPU/Mem usage shown by Firefox or its associated files. As soon as I close FF, the temp drops. The pages I'm surfing don't matter, because I can understand temperature rise coming from Java applets or Flash, because I've always had those things cause it. On this laptop, temps do tend to rise when there is HD activity for any length of time, like scp'ing a large file to or from the laptop, but as I said, there appears to be no excessive HD activity.

[daniewicz]

I don't own a laptop. Can a laptop CPU throttle down to a lower speed to save power? Could FF be interfering with this process?

[iphitus]

I don't own a laptop. Can a laptop CPU throttle down to a lower speed to save power? Could FF be interfering with this process?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Unless he's running it as root, which i doubt it.

 

Steve: Next time you're in top, see where the CPU usage is.

Cpu(s): 16.4% us, 3.3% sy, 0.0% ni, 78.1% id, 1.9% wa, 0.2% hi, 0.0% si

 

ill betcha its not in idle like the above one is.....

[coverup]

I don't own a laptop. Can a laptop CPU throttle down to a lower speed to save power? Could FF be interfering with this process?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Any activity most certainly causes CPU to run at a higher frequency, FF is no exception. My laptop uses cpudyn to boost frequency to a max 1600MHz when necessary. Usually, frequency surges for a relatively short period of time, then drops back to 600MHz. As a matter of fact, my laptop runs cooler than it used to run without cpudyn. I would check whether FF causes any abnormal network activity for whatever reason (eg, feedback quality agent).

[Steve Scrimpshire]

Ok. I have checked and watched more closely. Upon launching Firefox, it uses 55% cpu very briefly, then drops to around 0.7%. However, every time I click a link or navigate to a new page, etc, Xorg begins to use about 79% cpu and firefox-bin around 15%. This lasts until the new page is fully loaded. Very annoying.

 

This happens both with the tarball from mozilla.org and with the latest FF from Cooker, which has been hacked to show the version number at 1.0.4 because it has all the security fixes needed. Happened with 2005 LE (10.2 Official) and its latest xorg and with Cooker and its latest xorg.

 

Edit: Apparently, it was my theme (Brushed 0.9.9.2). Switched to Modern Pinball 1.0.3 and all seems well. Still have spikes in Xorg's cpu usage, but they are much smaller and cpu temp does not seem to suffer from it.

Edited May 22, 2005 by Steve Scrimpshire

[tyme]

if you haven't already, i suggested reporting your experiences to whomever makes that theme. perhaps they can fix it :)