I noticed that /var/log/syslog and var/log/kern.log were enormous and they were filled with the same error hundreds of times a second:
ACPI Exception: AE_NOT_FOUND, while evaluating GPE method [_L6F]
I looked around and found this is a known problem with ASRock Z170M boards and obviously applies to my H110M as well.
There is a good description of the fault at https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=117481 but to be honest the solution was a bit over my head.
I kept looking and found suggestions that upgrading my kernel to 4.4 would solve the problem. I used mint update to install 4.4.0-22 but that made no difference at all to the problem. This makes me wonder if this will be fixed in Mint18, or if it will require an update from ASRock.
The easiest to follow posting on the topic I found was in an amazon review:
I entered the terminal commands then deleted the offending log files and sure enough they stopped regrowing.Linux users be warned, there is a constant ACPI interrupt that continuously spams your syslog. For me, the log was growing approximately 1 mB/s and pegged a core at 100% usage. Search gpe6f acpi error for more information. It seems to be a problem with skylake motherboards, but other manufacturers have fixed the issue with a BIOS update, ASROCK has not.
A band-aide fix is to disable gpe6F interrupts. For ubuntu, open up a terminal and runThis has to be done at every boot, or you can add it to /etc/rc.local to execute automatically at startup.Code: Select all
sudo -s echo "disable" > /sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe6F
Now to make it permanent:
Code: Select all
sudo -s gedit /etc/rc.local
Code: Select all
echo "disable" > /sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe6F