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#1 2021-06-10 21:59:52

mike_nzk
Member
Registered: 2012-07-24
Posts: 14

[SOLVED]Fan spins constantly after several suspend-wake cycles on Thin

After a recent upgrade, a weird bug started to appear. After several suspend-wake cycles, the fan of my ThinkPad suddenly started to spin at an unreasonably high rate immediately after the laptop was waked up, and wouldn't stop after that. It was definitely unreasonable because the laptop was cold at the time of being waked up.

I spent some time digging into the problem, and it seemed that the root cause was no valid value was present in the thermal sensors file /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal. For example, after a fresh restart, the fan was calm, and the content of /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal might read:

temperatures:	33 -128 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

But when the fan started to spin constantly in high speed, the content of /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal was:

temperatures:	-128 -128 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

So it appears there might be something wrong related to ThinkPad sensors in the new kernel. After downgrading to a several month old 5.9.14 kernel (I update my computer very infrequently), the problem hasn't reappeared for more than half a month, and /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal still has valid values after more than 30 suspend-wake cycles.

Though the problem looks fixed, I'd still want to report this bug in case someone else has the same problem. Perhaps I also need to report it to kernel developers, but I don't know how to do that. Any suggestions are welcome.

Last edited by mike_nzk (2022-08-18 21:06:31)

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#2 2021-06-13 21:23:27

Tesla23
Member
Registered: 2015-09-17
Posts: 12

Re: [SOLVED]Fan spins constantly after several suspend-wake cycles on Thin

Are you upgrading the entire system? /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal is depreciated, so if you have software that isn't up to date it might be using the old configuration.

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#3 2021-06-15 21:31:14

mike_nzk
Member
Registered: 2012-07-24
Posts: 14

Re: [SOLVED]Fan spins constantly after several suspend-wake cycles on Thin

Tesla23 wrote:

Are you upgrading the entire system? /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal is depreciated, so if you have software that isn't up to date it might be using the old configuration.

Definitely yes. And as far as I understand, the old and new way should have the same values. For example, now running `sensors` gives the identical output (I'm using the old kernel, though):

$ cat /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal
temperatures:	33 -128 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 66 0 0 0 0 0

$ sensors
......(omitted)
thinkpad-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
fan1:           0 RPM
temp1:        +33.0°C  
temp2:            N/A  
temp3:         +0.0°C  
temp4:         +0.0°C  
temp5:         +0.0°C  
temp6:         +0.0°C  
temp7:         +0.0°C  
temp8:         +0.0°C  
temp9:         +0.0°C  
temp10:        +0.0°C  
temp11:       +66.0°C  
temp12:        +0.0°C  
temp13:        +0.0°C  
temp14:        +0.0°C  
temp15:        +0.0°C  
temp16:        +0.0°C  
......(omitted)

So I think the problem should lie on the readings of sensors, not the way of configuration.

Last edited by mike_nzk (2021-06-15 21:38:12)

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#4 2022-01-05 21:55:32

mike_nzk
Member
Registered: 2012-07-24
Posts: 14

Re: [SOLVED]Fan spins constantly after several suspend-wake cycles on Thin

mike_nzk wrote:

After a recent upgrade, a weird bug started to appear. After several suspend-wake cycles, the fan of my ThinkPad suddenly started to spin at an unreasonably high rate immediately after the laptop was waked up, and wouldn't stop after that. It was definitely unreasonable because the laptop was cold at the time of being waked up.

I spent some time digging into the problem, and it seemed that the root cause was no valid value was present in the thermal sensors file /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal. For example, after a fresh restart, the fan was calm, and the content of /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal might read:

temperatures:	33 -128 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

But when the fan started to spin constantly in high speed, the content of /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal was:

temperatures:	-128 -128 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

So it appears there might be something wrong related to ThinkPad sensors in the new kernel. After downgrading to a several month old 5.9.14 kernel (I update my computer very infrequently), the problem hasn't reappeared for more than half a month, and /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal still has valid values after more than 30 suspend-wake cycles.

Though the problem looks fixed, I'd still want to report this bug in case someone else has the same problem. Perhaps I also need to report it to kernel developers, but I don't know how to do that. Any suggestions are welcome.

This problem still exists as of Jan 5 2022.

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#5 2022-08-18 21:00:55

mike_nzk
Member
Registered: 2012-07-24
Posts: 14

Re: [SOLVED]Fan spins constantly after several suspend-wake cycles on Thin

This problem hasn't resurfaced so far after a system update on Jul 22. It appears the bug is fixed some time early this year.

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