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#1 2012-10-19 23:32:37

jcook818
Member
Registered: 2012-10-19
Posts: 7

Thinkpad + thinkfan: cannot control fan from /proc/acpi/ibm/fan

Hey there,

First time Arch user so please be patient and thanks for reading. smile

Just got a brand new Thinkpad Edge E430 and have been working on getting Arch set up on it. I followed all the directions on the Wiki and in other areas of the forum to get thinkpad_acpi and thinkfan installed and working. Now thinkfan is running, and "says" it is changing the speed of the fan, but in reality it is not making a difference in the actual fan speed.

When I run 'cat /proc/acpi/ibm/fan' it gives the following:

status:		enabled
speed:		0
level:		1
commands:	level <level> (<level> is 0-7, auto, disengaged, full-speed)
commands:	enable, disable
commands:	watchdog <timeout> (<timeout> is 0 (off), 1-120 (seconds))

So level 1 apparently is 0 rpm, which incidentally is exactly the same as level 0. tongue Note that there is also no airflow/noise change whatsoever when the level in that file "changes" between 0 and 1, which it does periodically as thinkfan does its thing. Furthermore, trying to manually set the fan level does not work. Even setting it as level 7 still comes up with 0 RPM in this file, and no change in airflow/noise.

The strange thing is that the fan seems to be on at a low level permanently... but my laptop is still heating up higher than my thinkpad.conf should allow without kicking the fan up a notch in speed.

I hope that all made sense. I looked through the wiki to see if there might be another daemon controlling the fan instead of thinkfan but I wasn't able to find anything conclusive. Your help is greatly appreciated. If you need any additional logs then feel free to let me know. Thanks!


----

'/etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf' :

options thinkpad_acpi fan_control=1

output of 'sensors' :

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Physical id 0:  +54.0°C  (high = +87.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 0:         +54.0°C  (high = +87.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 1:         +43.0°C  (high = +87.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)

acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +29.8°C  (crit = +100.0°C)

thinkpad-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
fan1:           0 RPM

'/etc/thinkfan.conf' :

#sensor /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal (0, 10, 15, 2, 10, 5, 0, 3, 0, 3)
sensor /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/temp1_input
sensor /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/temp2_input
sensor /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/temp3_input
sensor /sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp
(0, 0, 47)
(1, 46, 59)
(2, 54, 65)
(3, 58, 69)
(4, 62, 72)
(5, 65, 74)
(7, 68, 32767)

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#2 2012-10-20 00:45:49

cfr
Member
From: Cymru
Registered: 2011-11-27
Posts: 7,130

Re: Thinkpad + thinkfan: cannot control fan from /proc/acpi/ibm/fan

Just curious but did you run into a problem such that you need to use thinkfan to control the fan?


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#3 2012-10-20 00:59:16

jcook818
Member
Registered: 2012-10-19
Posts: 7

Re: Thinkpad + thinkfan: cannot control fan from /proc/acpi/ibm/fan

I didn't, but I read on the wikipage for this model as I was installing it, and it was in the list of suggested things to do.

At any rate, the manual setting of fan speeds through /proc/acpi/ibm/fan doesn't work, regardless of it thinkfan is running/installed or not.

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#4 2012-10-20 01:25:38

jcook818
Member
Registered: 2012-10-19
Posts: 7

Re: Thinkpad + thinkfan: cannot control fan from /proc/acpi/ibm/fan

Sometimes the fan does this weird thing where it speeds up really really quick for like a quarter of a second then goes back to normal speed. But I wish I could see where that was coming from >_>

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#5 2012-10-20 02:01:47

cfr
Member
From: Cymru
Registered: 2011-11-27
Posts: 7,130

Re: Thinkpad + thinkfan: cannot control fan from /proc/acpi/ibm/fan

OK. Personally, I would tend to see if the automatic stuff works well enough first and only try to configure it manually if necessary. On the other hand, that wiki page is fairly up to date and written by somebody who seems to know a good deal more about what he's doing than I do, so I'd say it probably should work. There is, however, the question of whether you have exactly the same model with the same version of the BIOS.

But hopefully WonderWoofy will look in on this since he wrote the wiki page and has the same machine. As I've never even attempted to use thinkfan, I'm unlikely to be much help. (The fan seems to be managed reasonably well automatically on my machine - I use thinkpad_acpi but I don't use the thinkfan option for userspace control.)

I certainly don't think setting the speeds manually will work without thinkfan. As I understand it, thinkfan=1 is necessary to enable any form of userspace control. For example, mine currently says:

$ cat /proc/acpi/ibm/fan 
status:         enabled
speed:          558
level:          auto

because the fan is being automatically controlled. So I can't manually write other values to it because I don't use thinkfan=1.

Is the daemon getting started correctly?


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#6 2012-10-20 02:26:05

WonderWoofy
Member
From: Los Gatos, CA
Registered: 2012-05-19
Posts: 8,414

Re: Thinkpad + thinkfan: cannot control fan from /proc/acpi/ibm/fan

Okay, I wrote that page, and the only reason I put it there was because it seemed like useful information, since there are many reports of fans in the edge series pulsing.  Maybe not in Linux, but I am not sure.... 

So anyway, I really don't think you need that.  You may safely skip it.  If you want to control it from /proc, I think you have to enable it first or something, if I remember correctly.  I played around with it a bit, but I can't remember what I had to do exactly to get it working.


Edit:  Okay I read the whole thread now, and I see you've already figured out that was my work.  So I will check it out to see what I may have missed on that wiki page.  I'll get back to you in a bit.

Last edited by WonderWoofy (2012-10-20 02:28:04)

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#7 2012-10-20 02:28:33

jcook818
Member
Registered: 2012-10-19
Posts: 7

Re: Thinkpad + thinkfan: cannot control fan from /proc/acpi/ibm/fan

It is getting started with no errors.

However I just removed it from systemd and got rid of its configs as well, and after reboot my fan appears to be working normally again. /proc/acpi/ibm/fan never lists a fan speed (even when running Minecraft full-blow and with the fan blowin') but that's not super important for me at the moment, because at least it is working! I'll leave it like this for now then.


Thank you smile

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#8 2012-10-20 02:34:53

WonderWoofy
Member
From: Los Gatos, CA
Registered: 2012-05-19
Posts: 8,414

Re: Thinkpad + thinkfan: cannot control fan from /proc/acpi/ibm/fan

Yeah, I can't seem to get it working either.  I wrote this page back when we were using a 3.4.something, I think.  So maybe there has been an update to the thinkpad_acpi module that borked the fan control for our models.  Because I had this working quite easily the first time I tried. 

But since you have it working now, I would probably recommend just letting it decide for itself.  Probably safer that way.  Glad to hear its all good.

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