nohup is no help. Everything stops as soon as i log off. It's still there and using power, but it won't answer requests for pages, or generate any pages for me. Worth a shot thought, thanks for suggesting it.

Still not sure why it suddenly decides it wants so much power, before i log off it is using a couple of percent max (I think). Hopefully it's just linked to what's happening and screen will stop it.

screen is the way to go it seems.