thinkpad t40, fan never shuts off

blamothe · Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2004 8:17 am Post subject: thinkpad t40, fan never shuts off

i have a thinkpad t40, and one of the reasons that i bought it was that it was centrino, which ment it ran cooler, which also meant that the annoyingly loud fan won't run as much. when i installed linux on the thing, the fan constantly runs, but when it was in windows, it never did. i think this is an acpi issure, but i have no idea how to use acpi. is there any way i can get this fan to shut off when it doesn't need to run, and have the same behavior as it does in windows? thanks

ozonator · Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2004 2:06 pm Post subject:

I'm not an ACPI expert either, but one thing that comes to mind: have you enabled cpu frequency scaling support in your kernel? And, do you use something like cpudyn to throttle the cpu when it's idle? If your cpu is running at full speed all the time, chances are what's happening is that your cpu is staying hot enough that the fan needs to be on constantly; if it slows when your system is idle, it will run much cooler, and likely require less help from the fan.

metalac · Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2004 3:51 pm Post subject:

In kernel config there is also a FAN option. This is what makes fan not run all the time on my Sony laptop. If that doesn't help try getting the latest acpi patch from http://acpi.sf.net.
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Diorf · n00b Joined: 05 Jun 2003 Posts: 52 Location: Paris

you could try to use apm instead of acpi. On my T40p I use acpi and when I am on battery power the fan never comes in use.

I use cpufreqd to control the cpu speed and my laptop runs smoothly and I can still make it sleep and hibernation from the bios also work.

Use the SpeedStep Centrino to control the cpu frequency and add the powersave and performance governor.

You can then use /proc/cpufreq to view the current state of the processor and control it's frequency scaling

blamothe · Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2004 6:52 am Post subject:

i tried cpudyn and cpufreqd, loaded them each, one at a time, at runlevel default, then i tried to reboot and start x and let the computer sit there doing nothing. each time, the fan would come on after about 4 or 5 minutes. how do you use SpeedStep Centrino to control the cpu frequency (i am assuming this is in cpufreqd.conf). also, there was no entry: /proc/cpufreq. this could be because i am using 2.6.0. is there any other place that this could be, and if this fails, are there any other suggestions on how to get this fan to shut off? thanks.

ozonator · Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2004 1:35 pm Post subject:

blamothe · Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2004 5:27 pm Post subject:

all this has helped alot, and the speed has droped considerably (from 1.4 ghz to 598 mhz), but the fan still doesn't shut off. since the cpu is running so slow, i don't think thats whats keeping the fan on like that, but i am not sure what is. does anyone have any other ideas?

Hypnos · Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2004 6:31 pm Post subject:

I have the ACPI fan functionality as the module "fan", and this seems to work quite nicely on my machine.

You should check out the ACPI mailing lists -- they're quite friendly and helpful.

(Of course, before that, please read the docs on their website :wink:

)
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NiXZe · Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2004 10:17 am Post subject:

Nothing in /proc/acpi/fan on a IBM ThinkPad T40p :<
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Hypnos · Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2004 10:44 am Post subject:

Maybe disable/unload "thermal"? Apart from that, you might have a buggy ACPI BIOS, which is a whole 'nother can of worms ... there are HOWTOs here on the forums and on the ACPI website.
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blamothe · Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2004 11:50 pm Post subject:

i've looked and looked, and still nothing. i've enabled cpufreq support, compiled everything in along with every acpi module, and used both cpufreq and cpudyn, which both work fine at scaling the cpu frequency by the way, but the fan still never stops. i sometimes notice that the fan stays on when the processor is running at 600 mhz and the temperature is 86 degrees F. there has got to be some way to fix this, or some driver/module that i am just not enabling that i should. under windows, the fan almost never comes on, so i don't think that its a hardware issue, i just think that some linux driver isn't being loaded properly, but i just don't know which one. also, when i run

Hypnos · Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2004 12:12 am Post subject:

Opening the can of worms:

HOWTO: Fix Common ACPI Problems (DSDT, ECDT, etc.)
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=122145
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NiXZe · Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2004 5:10 pm Post subject:

in the computer the coling fan is on a big cooling block that is "connected" with booth the CPU and the graphics chip and as everybody know both these generate a loot of heat... so the fact that fan is always on is no problem for me.

however the emptyness off /proc/acpi/fan disturbs me.
And Hypnos thanks for your hints but unloading thermal don't help and yes the ACPI BIOS is buggy (name one machine that don't have a buggy ACPI BIOS in some way)

so for the HOWTO just now runing it and i've got some errors...

asubedi · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 26 Mar 2003 Posts: 105

I am running sony vaio and my fan is running constantly... Didn't use to behave like this when I was using 2.4