How to keep your cpu cool and your fan quiet

[erikson]

but my fan is spinning the whole time. it never stops (neither on ac nor on battery).

You could still try

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modprobe fan

[SteveLeader]

Thanks for your answer, erikson!

I've already tried "modprobe fan", but it didn't change anything.

I looked very carefully at the start and i found out the following:
After the bootup the temperature of the CPU raises to 43°C (at 800MHz, with fullspeed it's over 50°C). But although the temperature stays at 43-44°C, the fan starts to spin after a few minutes. Then the temperature falls to 39°C, but, as I said, the fan never stops again.

What i found out too: after a reboot, the fan is even spinning while booting. So i thought, maybe there's another sensor, who gives the heat information. Because otherwise it wouldn't spin after a reboot. Is this possible?

[erikson]

What i found out too: after a reboot, the fan is even spinning while booting. So i thought, maybe there's another sensor, who gives the heat information. Because otherwise it wouldn't spin after a reboot. Is this possible?

I'm not familiar with Acer.

Anyway, fan spinning at a CPU temperature of 40°C is pretty weird (mine on an hp/compaq kicks in around 60°C).

I googled some and found a.o. following discussion, see in particular post # 5: http://www.notebookforums.com/thread180665.html

So yes, it's possible that other sensors (e.g. on graphics adapter) are involved in fan control - maybe that gives some hint in which direction to look for a solution. Good luck!

[SteveLeader]

Thank you very much!
So I'm pretty sure it's the grapic card's fault. Put the clock down would be easy in Win****, but maybe there is a soultion; I will see.
Thanks again!
Steve

[Aitch]

Hi Steve

Have seen notes about changing video driver from fglrx to ati xorg to reduce polling interrupts & found this ACPI info

http://acpi.sourceforge.net/documentation/thermal.html

Check ACPI settings in bios, and try different settings for differences in fan/other performance

I believe there is a bootup setting of

puppy ACPI=force

but don't know what it was suggested for

HTH

Aitch

[PaulBx1]

On my Dell computer, I could not get that pet package to work; however the procedure in the initial post works fine. It reduces the frequency of use of the fan although does not eliminate it altogether. I just wonder with this dual core machine what's going on (in standard Puppy 4.1) with the other core - i..e., is it sitting there running at the max freq, doing nothing at all?

[106498]

My /lib/modules/2.6.21.7/kernel/arch/i386/kernel/ appears to only have a file in it called apm.ko. Not sure what to do now...

[erikson]

My /lib/modules/2.6.21.7/kernel/arch/i386/kernel/ appears to only have a file in it called apm.ko. Not sure what to do now...

That's normal.

For kernel 2.6.21.7 the acpi modules (including processor.ko, fan.ko etcetera) are in
/lib/modules/2.6.21.7/kernel/drivers/acpi
and the cpufreq modules are in
/lib/modules/2.6.21.7/kernel/arch/i386/kernel/cpu/cpufreq

Actually there's no need to worry about where exactly the modules are, just leave them in place and modprobe is supposed to find them.

[106498]

Well that was silly of me. I didn't realise that modprobe was a command Anyway, modprobing speedstep_lib returns no errors. All the other ones do. Modprobing speedstep-centrino gives a weird on though

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FATAL: Error inserting speedstep_centrino (/lib/modules/2.6.21.7/kernel/arch/i386/kernel/cpu/cpufreq/speedstep-centrino.ko): Unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter (see dmesg)

Not sure what that means? A google search reported that many people have the same problem. For some changing the kernel version seems to fix it.

[technosaurus]

This is how I got my Quad core to room temperature with zero noise for no $$

Step 1.

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Unplug power

Step 2

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Thats it.  It even reduced the power consumption down to nothing

[Aitch]

"and for my next trick....."

Aitch

[erikson]

Not sure what that means? A google search reported that many people have the same problem. For some changing the kernel version seems to fix it.

For me it reports something else:

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1# modprobe speedstep-centrino
FATAL: Error inserting speedstep_centrino (/lib/modules/2.6.21.7/kernel/arch/i386/kernel/cpu/cpufreq/speedstep-centrino.ko): Device or resource busy
1#

To the best of my knowledge, speedstep-centrino is deprecated and the generic acpi-cpufreq can be used instead. It works like that on my laptop, which has a Centrino.

@technosaurus: I'm even smarter than you because I didn't spend any $$$ on a quad-core

[106498]

Modprobing acpi-cpufreq returned

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# modprobe acpi-cpufreq
WARNING: Error inserting processor (/lib/modules/2.6.21.7/kernel/drivers/acpi/processor.ko): No such device
FATAL: Error inserting acpi_cpufreq (/lib/modules/2.6.21.7/kernel/arch/i386/kernel/cpu/cpufreq/acpi-cpufreq.ko): Unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter (see dmesg)

Oh dear. I think I'm running out of stuff to modprobe here...

[Aitch]

106498

Maybe a system file error somewhere?

try booting with the pfix=purge parameter

Save your configuration somewhere just in case, though

Else check your ACPI settings in BIOS

Aitch

[JPsDad]

I am running Puppy4.12, Centrino with Pent.M 1.6. My rc.local looks like this:
#this file called from rc.local0
#you can edit this file
#When firewall is installed, will append lines to this file...
modprobe ac
modprobe battery
modprobe fan
modprobe thermal
modprobe cpufreq_userspace
modprobe speedstep_centrino
modprobe cpufreq_powersave
modprobe cpufreq_ondemand
modprobe cpufreq_conservative
echo conservative > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor

my CPU can run from 1.6MHz down to 0.6MHz. but I cannot see what it is doing. My fan seems to run continuously.
When I was running Mepis 6.0, it included KDE, with Ksensor, that displayed temp and freq. and they varied with CPU load.
Trouble was - much too long a boot time for a laptop.

How do we monitor with Puppy?

[linuxcbon]

conky is a monitor program.
See http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=23280

[macrocephalic]

Just did this on my MSI wind with the 1.6ghz atom processor in puppy 4.2 final. The GUI works - but it tries to modprobe the speedstep-centrino for the atom processor and it doesn't work (in the console doing that gives that 'device busy' error). Using just the acpi-cpufreq seems to work alright though so I've added the required lines to the rc.local file from the original post.

I'm yet to see how much difference this makes in battery time - but now that it's working I can play around with the governor more and see what I can do.

[ARAN]

We need somebody that can upload the new modules for the cpu scalling of the kernel 2.6.30.5 that is used in the new pup4.3 release.

in the folder "lib/modules/2.6.30.5/kernel/cpu/cpufreq" i can not find anything !

Without this cpu freq modules the CPU is running at maximum speed all the time. The heat can burn with the time the cpu down !

[aragon]

@ ARAN
you might calm down a little yourself. as answered in your other post, in my opinion everything is there. please search here:

cpufreq: /lib/modules/2.6.30.5/kernel/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/cpufreq
governors: /lib/modules/2.6.30.5/kernel/drivers/cpufreq

aragon

[aragon]

@ ARAN

as in the other thread:

@ ARAN
all i can do is apologize!

i've by mistake loaded 4.3 Beta 3 and they are all there. now that i look at 4.3-small in quemu, what should i say, can't find the modules any more, you're right.

maybe someone else should look at this, but seems to be a big bug.

so, again sorry.

aragon

edit:

now i'm a little wiser.

this is a problem for pup-430-small.iso. the regular one pup-430.iso does contain the modules in the zp430305.sfs. i don't know if it's a bug or by design but i will post it in the bugs-section.

aragon

aragon