Make laptop fan come on at certain temp [solved]

[liro]

I'll keep this question to the point as I usually waffle on too much :

How can I make the CPU fan on my IBM Thinkpad X31 come on only when the CPU reaches a certain temperature?

I'm specifically interested in making it come on at a certain temp rather than adjusting the fan speed (I know about the IBM fan speed control and other similar programs).

In Windows I use a program called TPFanControl, which has a smart mode that works well on my laptop. Ideally I'd like to find something similarly easy-to-install-and-use for Linux, but I'd settle on just being able to adjust the temp values manually.

Thanks for any help.

[Semme]

Ideally (me thinks..), you'll need a cron directed script to monitor /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THM/temperature.

Perhaps if SFR sees this and has time to spare, he'll craft you one. He's resolved many a request..

[Burn_IT]

Snap for my T43p.
I'm not so worried about the temp in Puppy as it is quite cool compared with Windows (less resources used so CPU doesn't work so hard).

First step is to use frequency scaling and give it quite a low figure for the lower frequency. I use 33%. That allows it to scale down.

I also discovered the Windows update from Lenovo that does the same thing and that has reduced my windows temps by 10 degrees C

[Semme]

Frequency scaling? << Yeah! Keep fergit'n bout dis..

[liro]

Thanks for the replies. My issue is that I don't want to the fan to be running so frequently. I've achieved this in Windows with the TPFanControl program, and just want to find a way of doing the same in Linux. I already use the CPU frequency scaling tool, but whatever settings I use don't seem to make any difference with regard to how often the fan runs.

There's a program (Thinkpad Fan Control) mentioned here: thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_control_fan_speed ...that could possibly be useful, but after a year or so of using Puppy I've rarely got a non-PET-installed program to work and I don't know how to install/run it correctly.

Is there no simple way of doing what I want to do on Puppy? (like just adjusting some values in some file somewhere, or something...)

[Burn_IT]

can you post the full url for that wiki and I'll have a look at it when I've got a minute.

[Karl Godt]

https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentatio ... d-acpi.txt
Reading that it seems that you need to

Code: Select all

modprobe -v --first-time thinkpad-acpi

to load it if not loaded , see also menu > system > bootmanager

and to load the temperature driver for your chip/cpu .

Puppy's autoloading of platform:coretemp does not work, due to limitations of /sbin/pup_event_backend_modprobe ,

and to

Code: Select all

find /sys -name "temp*input" -print -exec cat {} \;
find /sys -name "*fan*" -print -exec ls {} \;

to find evtl files that contain values

and something like

read TEMP </sys/*/driver/temp1_input
if [ "$TEMP" -gt 99 ] ; then
echo 'some_value' > /sys/*/fan/start_me
echo "some_other_value" > /sys/*/fan/rounds_per_minute
fi

[Semme]

Perhaps if..

"Is there no simple way of doing what I want to do on Puppy?"

[liro]

can you post the full url for that wiki and I'll have a look at it when I've got a minute.

Cheers Burn_IT. The full address is the one I wrote (thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_control_fan_speed) but the site seems to be loading extreming slowly at the moment (was working fine earlier).

and something like

read TEMP </sys/*/driver/temp1_input
if [ "$TEMP" -gt 99 ] ; then
echo 'some_value' > /sys/*/fan/start_me
echo "some_other_value" > /sys/*/fan/rounds_per_minute
fi

Thanks Karl, but I'll be honest, I can't really follow what you've written due to my severe Linux-retardation.

Perhaps if..

"Is there no simple way of doing what I want to do on Puppy?"

Yeah Semme, I'm looking for something thicko-proof, ideally .

[liro]

As well as the "Simple Thinkpad Control" program described here, I found a couple of other things ("fanctrld" & "tp-fan") that might work on this fan control scripts page: www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Fan_control_scripts

Does anyone know how I can install any of these programs/scripts on Puppy?

Thanks!

[trio]

MAYBE this can help

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... =813150141

[liro]

MAYBE this can help

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... =813150141

Hi trio,

I actually already have that program installed, but as mentioned I'm looking to be able to control at what CPU temperature the fan comes on, rather than control the fan speed.

However, I notice in that thread you wrote: "The usual acpi makes the fan to go on at 70 C point, so to test I apply this fan to go on at 45 C..."

...and was wondering if you could you tell me how you made the fan turn on at that temp? Thanks.

[trio]

Hi,

It's been a long while since I played with puppy. There is actually a way which I did, I forgot how. sorry

[liro]

Hi,

It's been a long while since I played with puppy. There is actually a way which I did, I forgot how. sorry

No worries, trio, thanks anyway for your help.

The fan starts up at quite a low temp, which is kind of annoying. With the TPFanControl program in Windows it comes on at about 65 C. I've been trying to find a way of getting it to do this in Linux Puppy, but can't get my head around it.

If anyone else knows how it can be done, please let me know!

[liro]

Eventually found something that I've managed to get working... Probably not the most elegant of solutions, but it works and does more or less what I want, so I can't complain.

Just needed to add "options thinkpad-acpi experimental=1 fan_control=1" to a .conf file in /etc/modprobe.d, then make this script start on boot up: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Code/fan-enable-safe