Michel Dänzer wrote:
My assumption is that the sudden shutdowns are triggered by some kind of race condition when switching CPU speed. If powernowd switches less often than cpudyn, it may indeed be significantly less likely to trigger. Of course, cpudyn could be configured to switch less often to verify that theory.
From watching Gnome's cpu-frequency-monitor, it would appear that cpufreqd, in the configuration I had it, did not adjust my cpu frequency at all except when changing between AC and battery. The system would appear to be fixed at full CPU speed ('performance' profile), and occasionally shut down spontaneously anyway.
Now I'm using powernowd which switches the cpu frequently according to CPU load (these switches are visible in the Gnome applet).
Also, is it significant that the hardware clock gets reset (to 1904-01-01) after one of these shutdowns? Does this imply anything about where the fault is occurring?
/james