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My laptop has started crashing (i.e. it will shut down) two or three times a day. Any suggestions on how to troubleshoot this?

In case this helps:

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tharpa@localhost:/var/mail$ lscpu
Architecture:          x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order:            Little Endian
CPU(s):                8
On-line CPU(s) list:   0-7
Thread(s) per core:    2
Core(s) per socket:    4
Socket(s):             1
NUMA node(s):          1
Vendor ID:             GenuineIntel
CPU family:            6
Model:                 42
Model name:            Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2670QM CPU @ 2.20GHz
Stepping:              7
CPU MHz:               2859.424
CPU max MHz:           3100.0000
CPU min MHz:           800.0000
BogoMIPS:              4390.13
Virtualization:        VT-x
L1d cache:             32K
L1i cache:             32K
L2 cache:              256K
L3 cache:              6144K
NUMA node0 CPU(s):     0-7
Flags:                 fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc cpuid aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx lahf_lm epb pti ssbd ibrs ibpb stibp tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid xsaveopt dtherm ida arat pln pts flush_l1d

How old is your laptop, and how old is the battery? Does it also do that if you disconnect the battery and run it on AC power ?
Best would be to post to run the following command as root and then attach the resulting /tmp/journal.log here, and also mention at what point in time the shutdown happened.

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journalctl -ab-1 > /tmp/journal.log

(this command It will show the complete logs of the previous boot)

The laptop is 7 years old. I do not think I've had to replace the battery, so it's probably the same age. I use the laptop as a desktop, leaving it plugged in. But as an experiment, I just removed the battery, but kept it plugged in, but it still crashed.

I attached the log per your instructions. It crashed at less than 17:36. I can force a crash by running a restore for Deja Dup. (Deja Dup does not seem to produce logs - there appears to be an environmental variable for creating them, but no documentation for where they go.) However, it has crashed at other times. But it is possible that the crashes were being caused by scheduled runs of Deja Dup. I had run it on a scheduled job successfully for some years, so I'm not sure why that would be causing a crash now. I can avoid using Deja Dup and see how long it takes until I crash again.

The last line of the log:

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May 05 17:30:46 archlabs kernel: thermal thermal_zone2: critical temperature reached (110 C), shutting down

So it does seem to be overheating.

Nice, at least linux can recognise it's running too hot. I was given my sisters HP, it hadn't been online in years, so I set windows update going over night... It was crashed in the morning...wouldn't reboot... Googlefu told me it was over heated, to look above the keyboard (on that model) and sure enough the plastic was warped. I pulled it down, the CPU heat radiator was blocked full of dust. But the damage was done, they had a nasty habit of warping the board/busting solder joins etc. It never worked again.

Maybe have a look at youtube see if there's any how to's for cleaning the fans/radiators.

Thanks. When it started overheating a few years ago, there was no dust causing it. The cooling pad treated the symptom, though. When I get a few minutes, I'll pop the cover to see if it's any different this time.

Might pay to load up a program that monitors the temperatures. If it overheats quickly then it's likely paste between the cpu/gpu and it's cooler, if it's slower it's probably an air flow problem. Or in strange cases it might be failing ram/hdd etc making the system work super hard..... Sadly we get sold these laptops as desktop/work station equivalents, but they just can't be. Keeping stuff cool in a tight space is hard yakka.