Ubuntu overheating solution

My Tecra 9000 began shutting down after several minutes for no apparent reason. I hoped an operating system upgrade would stop the unexpected shutdowns, so I installed Kubuntu Gutsy Gibbon – or tried to. In the middle of the process, the system would report an overheating CPU and quit. I couldn’t get through an install until I put an icepack under the laptop until the process completed.

Once I had the system installed, I went searching for answers – and found one that worked. As root (using the sudo command) edit the /etc/modules file and add the following kernel modules on their own lines, then reboot:
battery
ac
thermal
processor
acpi-cpufreq
cpufreq-userspace

Since adding those kernel modules my system has remained stable.

BackTrack technical tip

I installed the BackTrack Linux distro on a USB pen drive. When I attempted to boot, I got much of the way through the boot process before I saw the error message:

Fatal error occurred - LiveData not found. Searching for BT directory.

The problem is that the USB drive is formatted with the vfat filesystem, which renames the BT directory to bt. I tried everything I could think of to rename it without reformatting the drive, with no luck. You must use a filesystem other than FAT or FAT32 – which means that you can’t have any Windows apps share the same device. I use some of the PortableApps suite, so that’s a deal-breaker for me.

Topics that don’t come up often, part 1

Do plankton reproduce sexually or asexually?