Computer shutting down

[Vincent Trouilliez]

> On 08/31/2007 09:28 AM, Peter wrote:
> If I leave my computer whilst it is downloading it shuts down after an
> hour and I lose what I have been downloading - in this case Open office
> (a 32mb download). This has happened 5-6 times.This does not happen
> under windows so it must be something to do with Linux.  I have set
> Power management to never for putting the computer to sleep. Can anyone
> help please.
> Peter

If it doesn't happen on Windows, let's assume that your hardware is
not defective. In this case, if the computer is shut down at the
request of some program, maybe this has been logged somewhere.
Have a look at /var/log/messages, it collects logged data from various
sources in the system, the kernel of course, plus other stuff from
userland I think. So chances are that you might find a line or two that
pertain to the shutdown you experience.

You didn't say if you have a laptop or desktop computer. I remember
reading, not so long ago (no idea if that's still current though), that
some laptops under Ubuntu (probably Linux in general) had a
significatly reduced battery life compared to Windows. This was due to
I think the kernel, or some other bits (how vague is that ;-), not being
efficient enough at saving power. This could lead to the laptop
overheating, and obviously the motherboard would shut down the computer
to keep it from melting. So that's another possible cause of
unrequested shut-down.


HTH,

--
Vince