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#1 2009-07-20 20:09:43

Leye
Member
From: Heidelberg, Germany
Registered: 2008-09-03
Posts: 96

Fan starts and stops periodically on new Eee

Hi,

unfortunately, there's an annoying flaw with my newly obtained Eee: It's all in all a very nice and useful netbook, and I love the fact that it's both light and quiet, it's barely hearable at all. If the fan starts though, I need earlaps.

The overall temperature is very high also, but I think this is normal with those new netbooks. Usually the temperature is about 60°C. I noticed that the temperature gets higher very easily, and after some time, the fan starts working and it's annoyingly loud. After some time, even with small applications running the fan would start, makes some noise, and quits afterwards until some minutes later it will start again and again and so on ...

Usually, I install everything that is mentioned in the Wiki that has something to do with power control, e.g. cpufreq, pm-utils, acpid but I still suffer from nuisance. I tried both ondemand and conservative governor, though the fan doesn't mind. I wouldn't mind working with low CPU speed if just the fan wouldn't start even when I just chat or browse the web.

If this procedure starts at one time, it's difficult that the fan would rest even if the temperature is low again. Once I want to play a video on YouTube or something similiar, the fan will overtune the video. I can't even imagine what I do that needs so much resources. If I observe the temperature in /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/TZ00/temperature, the temperature jumps some degrees higher just when I click some widgets (or write this text) ...

Has anyone an idea what I could do to get a little bit of silence? I can't imagine that this behaviour is normal, and I would appreciate any hints.

Sorry you probably notice that I'm a little bit annoyed of the fan. hmm

In the end, if nothing helps I'm thinking about buying a cooling pad for notebooks, if I get the chance ...

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#2 2009-07-20 23:08:00

R00KIE
Forum Fellow
From: Between a computer and a chair
Registered: 2008-09-14
Posts: 4,734

Re: Fan starts and stops periodically on new Eee

To start I would check /etc/conf.d/cpufreq and comment the minimum and maximum allowed frequencies (if not commented already).

Flash on linux is very demanding (read watching videos on youtube and similar pages), it can tax even a high end cpu as far as I know.

If you want to keep your netbook quiet you can try the powersave governor, it will keep the cpu at the minimum speed supported by your cpu, mind you that it will obviously have a performance penalty.


R00KIE
Tm90aGluZyB0byBzZWUgaGVyZSwgbW92ZSBhbG9uZy4K

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#3 2009-07-21 04:43:48

Devastator
Member
From: Poland
Registered: 2008-05-27
Posts: 179

Re: Fan starts and stops periodically on new Eee

I've recently bought an EEE too (1000HE), but I have not experienced any of your problems. Perhaps installing and configuring laptop-mode-tools and acpi-eeepc-generic may help? (like said here: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Asus_Eee_PC_1000HE)

edit: ROOKIE is right too.

Last edited by Devastator (2009-07-21 04:44:07)


Some applications are WYSIWYG, and some are WYSIWTF.

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#4 2009-07-21 23:19:35

Malstrond
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2009-06-03
Posts: 98

Re: Fan starts and stops periodically on new Eee

I found the granularity of BIOS-level fan control to be quite lacking too.
The kernel (eeepc-laptop module) provides fan control in /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon0 by default. There are several interfaces. Usage examples:
pwm1_enable shows if software-side fan control is enabled (1) or if the BIOS is handling the fan (0). Changing fan speed won't work if this is 0. (i.e. cat /sys/class/hwmon0/pwm1_enable reports 0 -> disabled; you could enable it with echo 1 > /sys/class/hwmon0/pwm1_enable).
pwm1 allows to change fan speed. The values range from 0 (fan off) to 255 (full speed, 12V).
fan1_input shows the current RPM if a fan is connected. You can only read from this interface. Its useful to check all of these in the each of the hwmon folders to find out if there is actually a fan connected to the fan controller (they often have more ports than mainboard manufacturers use).
There are various applications to utilize these in order to tweak fan control to your liking, a lightweight one is the fancontrol daemon. If you don't mind 'some' gnome dependencies, eee-control has an awesome fan control algorithm too (options -> smart fan control).

laptop-mode and acpi-eeepc-generic don't feature fan control.

The cpufreq utility has only a marginal impact, as it changes the FSB/CPU multiplier and the Atom has a measly TDP of 2,5W compared to the chipset's 6W - the fan is primarily need to cool the northbridge. Side note: There is an interface to control FSB clock rate: /sys/devices/platform/eeepc/cpufv. 2 is 100MHz, 1 is 133MHz, 0 is 140MHz. eee-control manage this too, it's the "Performance" setting. There also is a laptop-mode add-in to control it dependant on AC status.

Last edited by Malstrond (2009-07-21 23:29:33)

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#5 2009-07-22 17:55:29

Leye
Member
From: Heidelberg, Germany
Registered: 2008-09-03
Posts: 96

Re: Fan starts and stops periodically on new Eee

Hi,

I was writing a big "Thank you!" to R00KIE and Devastator when I discovered Malstrond's message this time. Nevertheless, there has been an improvement by now, and I'd like to thank all of you for your hints, and you Malstrond, too, because of the new information in your post.

I'm using the powersave-governor right now (and avoid Flash videos big_smile), and even if the improvement is just subjective, the netbook is much more quiet than before. I'm happy that you could help me with your hints.

I feel a lot more relieved, and from now on I needn't feel embarrassed in public if my netbook makes such a noise. big_smile

And @Malstrond: I didn't know of the packages you've mentioned, and I will try eee-control also. The effect can only be better. smile

All in all, thanks for your help! smile

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#6 2009-07-25 08:13:11

Leye
Member
From: Heidelberg, Germany
Registered: 2008-09-03
Posts: 96

Re: Fan starts and stops periodically on new Eee

@Malstrond, I've installed eee-control, unfortunately though, I cannot start it. The tray appears and claims it cannot communicate with eee-control-daemon. The terminal output is similiar, adding "The name org.eee.Eee was not provided by any .service files". Do you have an idea why I can't use it?

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#7 2009-08-02 15:40:01

Leye
Member
From: Heidelberg, Germany
Registered: 2008-09-03
Posts: 96

Re: Fan starts and stops periodically on new Eee

Sorry that I dig out this old topic. Unfortunately, the fan has started again going on my nerves. There was a small improvement, but overall I think Malstrong was right that the powersave governor only has a minimal effect.

From time to time the fan starts slowly even if I'm doing nothing resource-hungry. Once the temperature was 62°C, and the fan went crazy even though I let the Eee idle with just a Firefox download running. I'd appreciate all new hints that could help.

I'm still unable to use the eee-control-daemon. eee-control-daemon -V displays:

You are not using a supported Eee PC model. Continuing anyway with autodetection.
rfkill: testing /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill0
rfkill: found wifi
rfkill: testing /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill1
rfkill: found bluetooth
rfkill: testing /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill2
rfkill: found wifi
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/eee-control-daemon", line 124, in <module>
    eee_model = EeeControl.actions.EeeActions(bus, manu, model, acpi_base, brn_path, bt_path, wlan_path, hwkey_control)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/EeeControl/actions.py", line 150, in __init__
    if (self.model.extended_brightness and not
AttributeError: EeePcAutodetect instance has no attribute 'extended_brightness'

And eee-control-tray:

Fehler bei er Kommunikation mit eee-control-daemon: The name org.eee.Eee was not provided by any .service files

Google results to this error message are few. I wonder if anyone has a clue how this might run. Perhaps it's because I use an unsupported model (1008HA), there's nevertheless an autodetection. "The name org.eee.Eee was not provided by any .service files" might be a Dbus error?

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#8 2009-08-07 16:00:39

skualito
Member
Registered: 2008-11-19
Posts: 203

Re: Fan starts and stops periodically on new Eee

To have eee-control work on my girlfriend eeepc (1000HE) I had to start the daemon manually with

sudo /etc/rc.d/eee-control start

and then add it to the DAEMONS line in rc.conf.
Else I would get the same error as you do when starting the eee-control-tray.
You probably already did that anyway...

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#9 2009-08-08 00:38:59

iphitus
Forum Fellow
From: Melbourne, Australia
Registered: 2004-10-09
Posts: 4,927

Re: Fan starts and stops periodically on new Eee

The tray icon for eee-control is optional. I run eee-control purely for the fan control.

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#10 2009-08-11 09:39:44

Leye
Member
From: Heidelberg, Germany
Registered: 2008-09-03
Posts: 96

Re: Fan starts and stops periodically on new Eee

Oh I didn't know that. Thanks for your help, now I run the daemon without the tray, at last there's an improvement with the fan. smile

I'm really thankful that you helped me with this noise issue! Thanks Archlinux community! smile

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