konsultor wrote:

> My notebook's CPU seems to halt when there is no user activity
> (keyboard or mouse).

Do you have enabled any suspend or hibernate configuration to come up after
user inactivity?

> The clock display stops, and doesn't catch up so
> the time falls behind so far that the ntp daemon sees a delta larger
> than allowed by the sanity check.

Can you see any activity under /var/log/messages or the system also stops
logging events?

> Tried to set the power management to "low latency" but there's an error
> message: "cannot restart pm-profiler daemon." I assume this means that
> PM is stuck in some power-saver level, and may be stopping the CPU.
> What package would be safe to reinstall with the goal of getting the pm
> daemon going again? Other suggestions most welcome.

It seems your system have problems with power management. You should have
more information on /var/log/messages and /var/log/warn.

Greetings,

--
Camaleón