Ubuntu auto shutdown due to high CPU temperature

I use a laptop with Ubuntu 8.10 installed at work. While running the some high process, the CPU temperature get really high and its automatically shutdown the system. This thing happen every 2 or 3 days and its really annoying. The syslog showed the following error message:

ACPI: Critical trip point
Critical temperature reached (100 C), shutting down.

I know it is a safety feature, but really, I can’t afford to keep having the system shutdown while my system doing something important. My system fans are working but for whatever reason my CPU temp exceeds the critical threshold of 99C. On some systems you can see what your threshold is within the BIOS and even edit it but not on this one. So what’s a frustrated developer supposed to do? Well, it turns out you can tell you system to ignore the high temp threshold and to just keep on chugging along. NOTE: This isn’t the best advice I ever gave, if you do this then fry your CPU don’t come bitching to me.

sudo vi /etc/modprobe.d/options

Go to the last line of the file and add:
options thermal nocrt=1

Save the file.

Once you have this option set you need to reconfigure the kernel to pick up these changes, enter the following command:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure linux-image-$(uname -r)

This will update your kernel and then tell you to restart when it is done. Once you restart the system, type the following command the verfiy:

cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/*/*

It should display something similar like below.

<setting not supported>
<polling disabled>
state:                   ok
temperature:             52 C
critical (S5):           99 C <disabled>

Now your system won’t restart when the critical heat point is passed. Again, don’t blame me if you hurt your machine by doing this.