Overheating and fan noise problem on a Toshiba Portege R830-13C

Question

I have an overheating and excessive fan noise problem with Ubuntu 11.10 on a brand new Toshiba Portege R830-13C laptop. The laptop is dual boot with Windows 7, where I don't have this problem at all, so I'm assuming it's an Ubuntu issue. Any ideas?

Answer 1

There is a known issue with the Active State Power Management (ASPM) in the kernel for Ubuntu 11.10 that effects some laptops - details in this Phoronix article .

You can edit your GRUB cofig file and add some parameters to try to solve the issue;

1. From a terminal (or after pressing Alt + F2) run:

   gksudo gedit /etc/default/grub
   

   and enter your password.

2. Find the line starting with GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT and append i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 i915.i915_enable_fbc=1 pcie_aspm=force quiet splash to its end. For example:

   GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 i915.i915_enable_fbc=1 pcie_aspm=force quiet splash"
   

   Save the file and close the editor.

3. Finally, start a terminal and run:

   sudo update-grub
   

   to update GRUB's configuration file (you will need to enter your password).

Warning

If pcie_aspm=force is set, hardware that does not support ASPM can cause the system to stop responding. Before setting pcie_aspm=force, ensure that all PCIe hardware on the system supports ASPM.