Ok, now I can better confirm what I said yesterday. Kubuntu Edgy, kernel 2.6.17-10-generic, on an Abit KV7 board (VIA KT600 chipset) with AwardBIOS 6.00PG, and an AMD Sempron 2400+ processor.
Enabling the option "Shutdown When CPU Fan Fail" in the BIOS ("Health" page) results in the system's boot process failing at early stages with the "Critical temperature reached, shutting down (121C)" message. The system then apparently tried to power off, but fails even at that, and just keeps printing that message (at least if you make usplash go away). The BIOS CPU temperature settings I wrote about in the previous posting don't seem to be related; anyway, the CPU temperature that both the BIOS and lm-sensors report is much lower than the set limits. As I mentioned in the other posting, the same problem also occurs with the Kubuntu Dapper Live CD (even though, contrary to my Edgy installation, the Dapper CD does succeed in powering off the machine, after the boot process is interrupted). -- "critical temperature reached" with kernel 2.6.15-22-386 https://launchpad.net/bugs/44805 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs