I've been dealing with a problem for the past few days that might require a look. I have an SELinux-enabled Arch desktop system with 5.14.9hardened1-1. For reasons unknown to me as of this time, the laptop I'm using is fine when sensors does its reporting during daily use, with an acpitz and k10temp of 53/57 respectively. However, I have needed to get into a Live USB for system maintenance tasks owing to a botched PAM upgrade which has left me unable to log in.

This - the Live USB, not the upgrade - is causing temp to hit 65/68 before I've even gone past the autologin, and it shows no signs of stopping or fan cooling. I've used different systems (my Kali USB with a different kernel, which I have on hand for work purposes) therefore this can't be an issue related to a particular kernel module version. I've used a vanilla Arch USB as well with same problem, so I feel comfortable in striking SELinux off the list of suspects. I've tried installing and enabling thermald in the Live environment, and that doesn't work either.


What could be causing this? I'd greatly appreciate and welcome any ideas.

Hold on, I've done a quick check for MCE heating events via journalctl and none came up. So then I decided to install cpupower instead and after a quick set to the powersave governor the time to wear khaki pants has passed with a much more tolerable 51/46.

My question now instead of "is my thermal paste wearing off", becomes "why is this happening on Live USBs when it didn't before?"

Since this hasn't recurred, I'm marking as solved for now.