Arch Linux

NaOH

Member

Registered: 2013-01-31

Posts: 23

Fan speed ramps up a few seconds after boot and doesn't stop afterward

Hi there, I am having the following issue in a fresh install of Arch on an Acer Swift 3 (i7-7500U, nVidia MX150 discrete graphics) :

First some facts:
· After 10-20 seconds of booting, the fan goes from not running to full speed.
· CPU frequency governor in powersave and the frequency reported by the kernel seems reasonable (not turbo-boosting).
· Bumblebee is disabling nvidia graphics on start. I have also tried disabling the display manager so I don't even boot into X11.
· CPU Temperatures are low since the fan is continuously running at almost full speed. Cannot read GPU temperatures (integrated or discrete).
· There is no fan PWM detected (on Windows10 you cannot control the fan speed either).
· Once the fan goes to full speed, there is no stopping it: even restarting and booting into windows 10 results in the fan continuously running. Only solution is to shutdown.

I really don't even know where to start to troubleshoot this! Since the fan is not even controllable through software, how is it that Linux is triggering this weird behavior? Is the kernel doing something wrong? The nvidia/bumblebee drivers? How can I disable them to see if the issue is coming from there? Since the problem triggers some time after boot, which log should I check to see if there is anything being reported?

Thanks for your time! I hope somebody can help me with this...

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 19,769

Re: Fan speed ramps up a few seconds after boot and doesn't stop afterward

Which fan?
Using htop check for run away processes.

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NaOH

Member

Registered: 2013-01-31

Posts: 23

Re: Fan speed ramps up a few seconds after boot and doesn't stop afterward

So, the issue is with bumblebee. Disabling bumblebee.d solves the fan problem, but then I am stuck running the discrete graphics all the time... I will research a bit more, maybe switching to the noveau drivers will help... I also tried powering down the GPU, but it fails.

If I find a solution I will post it here. Thanks!

PS: As far as I know this laptop has only one fan.

NaOH

Member

Registered: 2013-01-31

Posts: 23

Re: Fan speed ramps up a few seconds after boot and doesn't stop afterward

Update (before going to sleep): The problem is with bbswitch and I think is related to this issue. The solutions proposed there didn't work. I ended up uninstalling Bumblebee but then the Nvidia drivers wouldn't work. After trying to get it to work I managed to leave it in a unusable state, not even uninstalling the nvidia drivers and trying to use nouveau works... At this point I am really tired and I think I cannot do much more than re-install and hope for the best.. or just accept the fact that running linux on laptops sucks big time and running in inside a virtual machine...

If anybody has had any experience installing Arch in an Acer Swift please share!