IBM Netfinity 5500 M20 - ACPI or other FAN

bence8810 · 06-30-2007, 12:55 AM

Hi

I am running Debian Etch on my IBM Netfinity 5500 M20. If you know this server, its quite big, and in my case in the verge of being thrown out of my house by my wife (if she can lift it) unless I quiet it down.

Out house is quite cool, so there is really no need for the fans to spin at 100% all the time, which they actually do from as soon as I boot the machine. The server has 6HDDs, all SCSI 10k RPM, so that already creates a lot of noise, but if I could turn the FANs down a little, which it has 4 of, that would help a lot.

I don't see ACPI in /proc/ and I am wondering if this machine supports it at all. If not, what other chances do I have to control the fans? This server is pretty intelligent, has all FANs as HotPlug-able, when I unplug a FAN from power, a small light will indicate which FAN is missing, etc, so I think the Main Board should support this basic fan-speed control feature.

Any help is appreciated,

Thanks

Ben

tjyorkshire · 07-01-2007, 10:49 AM

hey,
I've got an IBM netfinity 5100. The fan on this, too, is a really noisy bugger. Ive tried to slow the thing down but have had not much luck.... Seeing as you have a cool house, and the netfinity has a whole host of other cooling fans within it, im sure it would be ok if you just bought another generic fan.... As long as it was the right voltage etc... it should be ok... i would have tried this myself by now but i don't really have a great need for the server to be running (yet)

bence8810 · 07-01-2007, 02:45 PM

Hi

Yes, it is quite noisy, but I just cannot believe it would be impossible to slow the FANs down.

I have now attempted to do a few things. I installed APMD and rebooted, but it says No APM bios found. When I try to shut it down, it wouldnt stop, just says on the screen, System Halted. You need to press the power button to turn it off.

I also tried ACPI, but when I boot, it says Bios is too old, therefore ACPI is disabled. I entered acpi=force in the grub menu.lst, but then the system would not boot, it complains a about some SCSI devices. When I remove the acpi=force, it starts beautifully.

So, I dont know how to proceed, without APM or ACPI how am I going to take control of the fans?

Thanks for any help,

Ben