Arch Linux

JackBob

Member

Registered: 2014-07-25

Posts: 8

Something is disabling thinkfan?

I can enable thinkfan with

echo enable |  sudo tee /proc/acpi/ibm/fan && echo level auto | sudo tee /proc/acpi/ibm/fan

This turns on thinkfan as expected:

~ $ cat /proc/acpi/ibm/fan
status:		enabled
speed:		3230
level:		auto

However, after about five seconds, the fan slows down and thinkfan is now disabled:

~ $ cat /proc/acpi/ibm/fan
status:		disabled
speed:		0
level:		0

I'm not sure how long this has been happening. I know that thinkfan was working when I set it up. The fan's quiet when it's at low speed, and I hardly ever run anything cpu intensive, so it could have been a long time.

Thanks for any help.

jasonwryan

Anarchist

From: .nz

Registered: 2009-05-09

Posts: 30,426

Website

Re: Something is disabling thinkfan?

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Th … an_Control

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JackBob

Member

Registered: 2014-07-25

Posts: 8

Re: Something is disabling thinkfan?

I read through that article when I set up thinkfan. None of its advice seems to apply to this situation.

~ $ thinkfan -n

/var/run/thinkfan.pid already exists. Either thinkfan is already running, 
or it was killed by SIGKILL. If you're sure thinkfan is not running, 
delete /var/run/thinkfan.pid manually.

jasonwryan

Anarchist

From: .nz

Registered: 2009-05-09

Posts: 30,426

Website

Re: Something is disabling thinkfan?

So what is in your conf file? What does the journal report? Is the module loaded? etc...

Please make some effort to help yourself.

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Arch + dwm   •   Mercurial repos  •   Surfraw

Registered Linux User #482438

JackBob

Member

Registered: 2014-07-25

Posts: 8

Re: Something is disabling thinkfan?

The conf file is just the default:

~ $ cat /etc/thinkfan.conf 
(0,	0,	55)
(1,	48,	60)
(2,	50,	61)
(3,	52,	63)
(4,	56,	65)
(5,	59,	66)
(7,	63,	32767)

The module is loaded:

~ $ lsmod | grep "thinkpad_acpi"
thinkpad_acpi          77824  1
nvram                  16384  1 thinkpad_acpi
snd                    65536  9 snd_hda_intel,snd_hwdep,snd_hda_codec_conexant,snd_hda_codec,snd_timer,thinkpad_acpi,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_generic,snd_pcm
rfkill                 20480  4 thinkpad_acpi,cfg80211
video                  36864  2 thinkpad_acpi,i915
led_class              16384  4 sdhci,input_leds,thinkpad_acpi,iwldvm

The following is in the systemd journal, recorded every time I turn on the computer:

May 12 23:07:45 T420 thinkfan[25383]: thinkfan 0.9.1 starting...
May 12 23:13:22 T420 thinkfan[315]: 
May 12 23:13:22 T420 thinkfan[315]: Cleaning up and resetting fan control.

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 78,888

Re: Something is disabling thinkfan?

ps aux | grep thinkfan
stat /var/run/thinkfan.pid

What makes you believe thikfan would be disabled? The fan is.
Is the CPU temperature hot?
Does the fan start when you put the system under constant load? (eg. w/ cpuburn)

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