When booting my Fedora 42 installation from the LUKS encrypted drive, the first stop is to wait for me to enter my LUKS pass phrase. When waiting for the user pass phrase, the computer seems to be running on all cylinders with fans blazing.
It has happened on more than one occasion, that the PC boots when placed in my backpack … and it runs VERY hot … and I don’t mean luke warm or cozy. I mean too hot handle and so hot i am seriously concerned about the risk of a fire.
I contacted HP, they tell me it is a software problem and should be directed at the OS.
I am no software engineer, but this should attract some attention, me thinks!
FYI: Fedora 42 on an HP ZBook Fury 16 G10 … it is a powerful beast and it requires a 230W AC power supply.
It is not so much that the PC boots – I think that is probably because I fail to shut it down correctly, or have accepted that the OS installs updates and reboots.
Whatever the reason it boots, the import issue is, that the boot sequence heats up to dangerous levels if left to wait for the LUKS pass phrase. I suspect it has to do with no CPU throttling during the boot sequence, or some such issue.
There are 2 conditions where a laptop should never be placed in a closed space such as a backpack.
suspended – the system is still powered on even though in an idle state and blocking airflow may cause it to overheat.
Any other condition where the system is powered on – such as the example given by the OP – partially booted, waiting to complete the boot, and the user closes the lid.
It is up to the user to always ensure the laptop is in a safe condition when placing it in a backpack or any other confine space. Even placing it on a soft surface such as on top of a blanket or towel (or in a lap) can block airflow through the bottom of the laptop and cause overheating when powered on.
This appears to be user error in not ensuring the machine is properly powered off.
The idea of multiple (redundant) safety measures is hardly unknown – people are going to stick their laptops in their bags … Basically, I am saying the seat belt doesn’t work and you are telling me the car isn’t designed to crash, so it’s a user error.
Hi, I imagine Jeff wanted to point out an important aspect: in the first post he wrote that your laptop is very powerful, and that fact implies a proportionally high power consumption. It seems quite logical to want to avoid putting a suspended laptop into a backpack without any possibility of cooling. Draw your own conclusions. Jeff’s suggestions are well-meaning and intuitive. If you are not interested in them…
And you are now suggesting, that because my car is a Ford Mustang with a powerful engine, I should be even more carefyl not to crash it into a wall. I know! ..but there’s a problem with the seatbelt and sooner or later someone will crash … and their backpack will catch fire. (I shall abandon the car-crash simili now)
Look. I know this is FOSS and no one is obligated by contract to solve anyones problems – feel free to ignore my post. I am not here to complain or bitch about things not being exactly how I would like them to be. Having been a Linux user for 25 years, I very much appreciate the amazing FOSS community and all the hard work it makes freely available. I try to contribute where i can.
So at the risk of being repetitive: When booting Fedora into a LUKS drive, inattentive fools like me are at risk of injury, due to the computer running exceeding hot, whilst simply waiting for a user input…
‘inattentive fool’ is difficult to avoid 100% of the time … is it possible to fix the boot/heat problem instead, i wonder?
First, thank you for a laugh, and sorry for your Fedora overheating issue
I suspend my laptops and put them in my bag all the time. No problem. I would think most business people and students put their laptops in their bag every day.
This is not the first thread about fans spinning up in the past few weeks.
Hopefully, someone will leave their laptop running and see what happens on the LUKS screen.
Your BIOS should shut-down or throttle the CPU as it gets too hot - but that does not mean it will.
Can you post here, in preformatted text, the results from running inxi -Fzxx you may need to install it with sudo dnf install inxi this will allow us to see some more details about your PC.
You may also consider filing a bug report at bugzilla.redhat.com as there is the potential that you have discovered a serious risk. Lithium Ion batteries cause many house fires every year.
I doubt that it has anything to do with nvidia. The fact that luks was not yet unlocked means the kernel had not fully loaded everything and very few of the drivers would have been active.
Since nvidia is not loaded until the kernel has at least mostly booted it is doubtful.
I have tried to let it sit in my back, in the BIOS setup … same thing happens.
So I am beginning to think there is perhaps no software solution to this issue at all – the laptop sat at idle simply runs hot enough to be hazardous … I would have thought, the laptop (BIOS?) would shut down if getting too hot : the old AMD Athlons would catch fire without a cooler but that was fixed (a.f.a.i.k).
So perhaps Jeff V and maurom are correct in the sense, that the only solution here is not to crash the car
Fedora 43 Workstation (ws) on an HP ProBook 4540s: Intel i5 3210M, 8GB RAM, SSD.
Fedora 43 Workstation (ws) on an Acer TravelMate 6293: Intel Core 2 Duo P8400, 4GB RAM, SSD.
Fedora 43 Workstation (ws) on an Intel NUC 12 Pro: i5 1240P, 16GB RAM, NVMe + SATA3.
The NUC is obviously a mini-PC, but regarding the LUKS2 passphrase, it is also completely silent and doesn’t get hot (obviously I can’t close the lid).
Check if there is an option in UEFI/BIOS for “Boot Performance Mode” or similarly worded. This toggles if the CPU is ramped up to maximum performance during boot, until the kernel takes over and controls the CPU power states. If there is not such an option exposed, then it is set by default and there’s nothing you can do about it. In any case this is a firmware issue and completely unrelated to Fedora. If the option is not there to turn it off, the only thing you can do is avoid leaving it in a pre fully booted state and complain to the OEM for enabling the toggle in the firmware interface (although I would not hold my breath on the later unless you have an enterprise contract with a vendor who can pull some strings with the OEM).
)