[CentOS] CentOS 7 + Dell Latitude E6420 laptop = thermalshutdown

Thu Sep 10 04:14:50 UTC 2015
deoren <centos-list at whyaskwhy.org>

> On 6/23/2015 7:22 AM, johan.vermeulen7 at telenet.be wrote:
> > Hello All,
> >
> > installing these laptops went ok, but indeed, they shutdown on logon.
> > When coming back up, I get a bios warning about temperature.
> > On my first attempt on installing Nvidia driver, I wrecked the laptop.
> > To be continued.
> >
> > greetings, Johan
>
>
> Hi,
>
> Thanks for your feedback. I can't say I'm "happy" that someone else is
> having the same problem, but I'm relieved that it's not just something
> odd with the setup I am using.
>
> Any luck? I'm hoping to have a chance to look more into this myself in
> the next few weeks once some other projects calm down. Ironically my
> next step was going to be going after an updated video card driver.
>
> Hello Deoren,
>
> adding elrepo and installing kmod-nvidia seems to have solved the issue.
> I hope this works for you as wel.
>
> greetings, Johan

Thanks for the feedback. I'm a little late getting around to it, but I
got a chance yesterday to look at this again and followed the steps to
enable the ELRepo repository and installed the `kmod-nvidia` package.

Once I did so, I was given a warning that there was a conflict with
libglamoregl and to see the wiki page for more details. I looked on the
site and found this page:

  http://elrepo.org/tiki/kmod-nvidia

which covered not only that issue (basically run `yum remove
xorg-x11-glamor`) but also emphasized that 'kmod-nvidia' might not work
for some older chipsets and that the 'nvidia-detect' package should be
installed and run to check for compatibility.

I did so and got this output:

  kmod-nvidia
  Optimus hardware detected: An Intel display controller was detected
  Either disable the Intel display controller in the BIOS
  or use the bumblebee driver to suport Optimus hardware


Now that the 'kmod-nvidia' driver was installed I rebooted the laptop to
load it upon boot. Since I had rebooted, I checked my BIOS settings and
sure enough I had the 'Enable Optimus' box selected. Figuring myself
clever (ha), I disabled the option and attempted to boot the laptop. I
got a blinking cursor against a black background and the password prompt
to decrypt the disk and finish booting was never given.

Since Ctrl+Alt+Del didn't appear to work, I held the power button and
forced the laptop off. I then re-enabled the option and when the laptop
next booted I got the password prompt to decrypt the disk and the laptop
got to the point where Gnome should have loaded, but the system went no
further. My notes are unclear at this point whether I was referring to
the login window not displaying or whether it did and just logging into
the desktop environment didn't work.

I then installed the 'bumblebee' package and I was able to login without
locking up the system.

I then wiped the laptop, disabled the Optimus support in BIOS and did a
clean installation making sure to use the same settings for the new
installation as the old.

The system booted up and I logged into KDE with no issues and the laptop
remained powered on. Presumably the Optimus option was the issue all along.

In summary:

* If I have the Optimus option enabled I need to enable the ELRepo
repository and install the kmod-nvidia (presumably) and bumblebee packages.

* If I have the Optimus option disabled it appears that I don't need to
do anything else other than install CentOS 7 normally and use it.

Thanks again for your help with this.