Dev1 Galaxy Forum / Fan control on laptops

Re: Fan control on laptops

dummy@example.com (Micronaut) — Wed, 06 May 2020 21:56:55 +0000

Installing hwinfo, I got a complete dump of detectable characteristics for this laptop. There is one thing that has the characters "fan" associated with it:

02: None 00.0: 10107 System
  [Created at sys.63]
  Unique ID: rdCR.n_7QNeEnh23
  Hardware Class: system
  Model: "System"
  Formfactor: "laptop"
  Driver Info #0:
    Driver Status: thermal,fan are not active
    Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe thermal; modprobe fan"
  Config Status: cfg=new, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown

Is this hardware info that might be useful for determining how to actually detect and control the fan? It is it just a status report on the kernel module that would manage the fan if it could be found?

Re: Fan control on laptops

dummy@example.com (Micronaut) — Mon, 04 May 2020 19:24:47 +0000

Yeah, I found that very quickly. If you can't detect the sensors and controls, it just barfs when you try to run it. Things have to be identified before Fancontrol can manage them.

Re: Fan control on laptops

dummy@example.com (Head_on_a_Stick) — Mon, 04 May 2020 11:24:57 +0000

https://pkginfo.devuan.org/stage/ascii/ … 4.0-4.html

Fan control on laptops

dummy@example.com (Micronaut) — Mon, 04 May 2020 02:48:39 +0000

In addition to the backlight problem, I have found that fan sensors are just not detected on my laptops. One is an Acer Aspire 5733Z, the other is a Gateway NV57H63. Yes, both are pretty old. This is the great thing about Linux, ancient hardware is still usable! Of the two, the one that this is really a concern for is the Acer. The BIOS control of the CPU fan is really stupid. Instead of gradually adjusting the fan speed to find a constant level that keeps the cores at a decent temperature, it ramps up to what sounds like full speed, then cuts back to a slow idle, then ramps quickly up again when the core temp rises, resulting in constantly changing noise that gets very annoying after a while. The Gateway BIOS is much smarter and adjusts slowly, or maybe the fan is a better design and makes much less noise.

Is there possibly some special utility I haven't heard of to find those fan sensors and controls? It seems odd that so many other obscure things, like proprietary cameras, are found and have drivers, but the CPU fans cannot be found.