Solved Forever At Last: Overheating Laptops

If you follow this blog, you may remember I've been dealing with my computer suddenly shutting down on me, and I've had a hell of a time figuring out the cause. It turns out the problem was very simple. It was not a driver problem, it was a simple matter of the computer overheating. Certain drivers and kernels were able to mitigate the issue, but I've finally solved it once and for all. This is how I did it.

I live with a guy that is an engineer. He was on the forefront of solving these kinds of problems in the '80's, and also designed a lot of heat sinks for Dell. Since I had searched the internet high and low for a solution to my computer's problem, I have to admit I did not have much faith that he would be able to help me fix it, but I was totally wrong. I took my computer apart, and he took one look at the fan and said "That thing is filthy. Get some rubbing alcohol and qtips, and clean it out." So I grabbed some 91% isopropol, some qtips, and a vacuum cleaner. I started removing the dust from the fan blades and soon realized that there was so much dust and crap stuck in the fan that it was about an inch deeper than I thought, and after it was cleaned I could stick a qtip in between the blades and hit the bottom, where before I thought that the dust was part of the fan blades. I swabbed out dust, stuck a vacuum cleaner right on top of the fan and sucked out tons of crap, and repeated until it was all gone. Then I turned on the computer, wrote a temperature monitor script, and ran as many programs as I could as once. The processor has not gotten above 50 degrees Celsius since. Prior to that, the CPU was running at about 75 even when it was idling, and the computer would overheat after any of the 6 sensors went above 91. Problem solved. So next time your laptop overheats, just look at the fan from the inside and do what I just said. You will extend the lifetime of your computer by years.

anon@linuxpc:~$ sensors
acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +16.0°C  (crit = +108.0°C)
temp2:        +37.0°C  (crit = +105.0°C)
temp3:        +46.0°C  (crit = +108.0°C)
temp4:        +45.0°C  (crit = +105.0°C)
temp5:        +20.1°C  (crit = +108.0°C)
temp6:        +30.0°C  (crit = +110.0°C)

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 0:       +47.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 1:       +45.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)

OpenVPN-- Creating a Secure Portal to a Private Network With NO Port Forwarding!

If the title of this post got your attention, you are probably well on your way to building your own insane digital empire. OpenVPN is key here, and it's awesome, free, and open source (of course!). Us *nuxers are pretty familiar with Virtual Private Networks and the security and convenience that they provide. Many of us have several different VPN's (at least I do) running on different servers across the globe. This allows one to have multiple virtual identities, and in turn to keep the prying eyes of the NSA just that much more confused when they try to track us down. It also obviously allows you to be on the same private, secure, and (virtually) local network as another machine you may with to access.

Of course, out of all the networks in you arsenal, the one that you ought to be most concerned about is your home network. Now, if I had the money, I would set my Verizon Cable Modem on fire, purchase a secure modem to replace it, and another access point, a network bridge (to allow incoming connections to my home server but not the rest of my home network) a Raspberry PI with two Gigabit ethernet ports (running IPCop) to act as a firewall, and God knows what else. THEN I could safely run yet another ovpn network from my home. But I really don't want to deal with all of that... which is why I use openvpn to begin with.

Okay, let's back up a bit: So, I have a server at home, and it is acting as maybe a  media server, home-security system control panel, and maybe some other stuff that you do NOT want accessible from the outside world. But what if I want to be able to access this server when I'm on the road? Well, I could open up a port on my crappy spyware-infested Verizon router, but that would not be very secure because it only has a stateful firewall, and these days you need a firewall capable of doing application-level-inspection if you are going to allow outside access to a secure network (like the one at home). So that idea is out...

Today I discovered a solution. I simply connected my home server as a client to one of my remote VPS server's VPN's. I had to tweak the server configuration to not route all of my home servers traffic through the VPN, because that would make my home server useless while I am at home. Then I configured the IPTables on the home server to allow access to http, ssh, ect over the VPN... and eureka! The server is now accessible, remotely, via my remote VPN, and there are no open ports on my home network! Fucking right.