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My Laptop (running Ubuntu 20.04.3 with Gnome DE) is turning off by itself, like, I'm playing a game then the screen gets black and then there's text basically indicating its shutting down (I don't have silent nor splash in my grub settings), I have heard my hard drive clicking so I'm scared those two are correlated, I've ran SMART tests but they say everything is fine. So I want to find the logs of when the system decides it's good time to shut down but I don't know where and how to start.

Edit: The game I was playing was Minecraft Bedrock

xproot
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  • Look in /var/log/syslog first. – user535733 Sep 17 '21 at 00:12
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    I'll bet it overheated and shut down because you were playing games and they tend to generate a lot of heat. Does it feel hot to the touch when it dies? If so install Intel Power Clamp or something similar. Also tlp. See: https://askubuntu.com/questions/391474/stop-cpu-from-overheating/875872#875872 – WinEunuuchs2Unix Sep 17 '21 at 01:48
  • This could be a real possibility but my system hasn't crashed since and its at 196°F Also, the game wasn't that resource intensive, it was Minecraft Bedrock edition, editing to make this clear. Edit: it did overheat – xproot Sep 17 '21 at 02:43

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After a "sudden shutdown", aka "system crash", and reboot, the terminal command sudo journalctl -b -1 -e will show you the end of the previous boot's log's. If there is no hint there, suspect power/ overheating.

Read man journalctl to see how to extract information from the logs.

You can find how I make use of journalctl easier at https://askubuntu.com/users/25618/waltinator.

@Will59 Overheating is most likely caused by dust. Power down your system. Unblock your fans and vents, clean out the dust. Ensure air circulation. Dust that coats heat exchangers and chips is a good insulator, and bad for cooling. Don't disassemble your computer until you have downloaded the manufacturer's manual, and researched how-to-clean. Make this information available for when your computer isn't (paper, other computer) Don't use water.

waltinator
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  • Had to scroll a bit, but thermal just shut down as my temperature reached a critical level Sep 16 18:07:16 xproot-lappy kernel: thermal thermal_zone0: acpitz: critical temperature reached, shutting down – xproot Sep 17 '21 at 02:48
  • Hi, did you ever figure it out? I have been getting the exact same type of critical shutdown every few days lately... – Will59 Oct 14 '21 at 12:32
  • @Will59 see revised Answer. – waltinator Oct 14 '21 at 23:19
  • Thanks for the anwser. However I don't think that dust is my problem here. The issue mostly shows up when I launch Visual Studio Code after a clean bootup (big heavy project). Then the log shows that some device jumps to the critical temperature. However if I get past this issue (most of the time), I can run this PC for hours, with very heavy load and fan blowing strong. It just feels like the initial fan speed up is not fast enough (or initial CPU throttling). There was a BIOS update pushed a few weeks back, I'm wondering if it's linked... – Will59 Oct 15 '21 at 15:06
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    @Will59 (hopefully this doesn't bump) Sorry for the incredibly late reply but dunno, that computer broke down and I got a identical but a little newer model with a Intel Celeron 1000M instead of a Intel Celeron B800 and my temps were 35-40c idle compared to 60-80c idle (wtf?) – xproot Apr 15 '23 at 02:42