Running KDE 4.6.2 on Arch Linux.
I usually leave the computer running overnight to let large downloads finish. Except, every night after about an hour and a half, everything stops and becomes unresponsive.
None of the logs show anything at all - they too just stop, nothing reported at all until I power it off and back on again.

The screensaver is disabled, the screen is set to lock only if the laptop is closed - which it isn't - and the power settings aren't set to do anything with the display.

I'm at a complete loss for why this is happening.
Help, please?

You might take a look at /etc/anacrontab and /etc/crontab. You may have something scheduled to run every night.

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Steve Stites

Neither exists, though cron.d/daily/hourly/monthly/weekly directories do.
Daily lists 'logrotate' 'man-db' and 'shadow', hourly only contains 'adjtime'. All others are empty.
As far as I'm aware, these entries have been here without causing issue since before this began to happen. Last change to the system was a kernel update to 2.6.38.4

Not sure what you're using to download, but have you tried shutting down X (the GUI) and letting the downloads run in text mode?

If it works, it might mean you have a GUI related problem, or the cessation of activity is related to the X server or some module it loads or something it uses to run.

At least, this is what I'd try first in your situation. Stopping the GUI eliminates a lot of memory use and processor time being used to... well, run the GUI

Also, I once had this type of behaviour with a bad DRAM chip - you SURE your hardware is 100% fine??