Fan always working (high speed)
 

Hello!

I've installed Debian Wheezy on a Dell laptop and the fan just don't stop working. The CPU doesn't need to be cooled, but the fan keeps working at high speeds. I've searched in various forums threads (including on other websites), but have not found a similar situation: analyzing cpufreq-info command, I realized that the minimum frequency of operation is equal to the maximum, even in conservative or on demand settings. Could this be the cause?

Can anyone help me on solving this?

Thanks!

Felipe

Chill mat (sorry just discovered LMGTFY :D) or put a fan on it to see if it stops PCs fan? (then we should know if it's the OS)

On my Debian Nepomuk server (virtuoso\process) for file indexing runs on boot for a while (works hard) but then stops, did you try the system monitor or:

Great Google site, haha!
So, I think that the temperature is ok. It is at 39C on both cores right now, but the fan is crazy. On Windows this just doesn't happen. Something got to be wrong...

Yes, if it doesn't happen in windows then you must have some process that's out of control or fan control? My only thought is to use 'top' in a command line then hit shift r 2 times to sort CPU usage top to bottom and you should also do some as 'sudo top'

P.s: after looking at my top I think the list is sorted and R twice is frivolous except to pirates RR

An always running fan in a laptop can also be caused by the video-chip and its drivers. Which video hardware do you have and which drivers are you using?

evolution-alarm 99,50% of CPU use, and I don't even open it.

---------- Post added 10-19-13 at 11:51 PM ----------

Can you help me on retrieving that driver information?

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...on/+bug/543492 try killing the PID number in top, hit k to do so and see if fan stops after awhile then?

Killed it, and CPU usage went down. The thing is, I really don't know what's happening here. It looks like my notebook has come to life and chooses when to turn the fan on, because, right now sensors are saying that both cores equals to 39/40C, and it is still working. And some time ago sensors showed me 54C and the fan was "normal"... What is going on? :(

lspci | grep VGA:
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller (rev 09)

glxinfo | grep render:
direct rendering: Yes
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) Ivybridge Mobile
GL_NV_conditional_render, GL_ARB_ES2_compatibility,

Ivybridge CPUs and older kernels (like in Debian Stable) are not a good combination to begin with, those older kernels lack Intel's p-state driver for power-management on newer CPUs and the standard ondemand cpufreq-driver does not work correctly with them. The first thing I would try is to upgrade to a kernel >=3.10 and watch if that behavior still occurs.

I'm running a 3.10 kernel right now, and the problem persists... Sensors shows 45C on both cores... :(

Have you changed the governor to the p-state driver?

This is what I've found:

Starting with kernel 3.9, the new pstate power scaling driver is used automatically for modern Intel CPUs instead of the other drivers below. This driver takes priority over other drivers and in fact is inbuilt as opposed to being a module. This driver is currently automatically used for Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge type CPUs. If you encounter a problem while using this driver, add intel_pstate=disable to your kernel line. You can use the same user space utilities with this driver but cannot control it.

So, there's no change updating the kernel. Or did I miss something?

EDIT: Fresh installed Debian testing (jessie) with 3.10 kernel to test it.

Nope, since that has not fixed your problems the cause for that heat does seem to be something different. Sadly, I am out of clue now, but you can test if that behavior is caused by the GUI (or one of the GUI programs) or by the underlying system with disabling the GUI (or booting into single user mode) and have a look at the temperatures.