I want to change a few settings on my laptop when I switch to battery power.

I created a new event in /etc/acpi/events/cust-battery and it looks like this:

event=battery
action=/home/skerit/power.sh

I put a simple command in the power.sh file:

echo This is a test >> /home/skerit/powertest

Now, when I tail this file it shows "This is a test" 4-5 times upon switching to battery power.

However, the system becomes totally unstable. It slows down significantly. I can't change anything in the terminal.

The terminal and certain parts of the screen (like the gnome system monitor applet) go blank from time to time.

What can be the cause of that? It's a simple echo that gets executed a few times!