after installing red hat 9 on a gateway m350 laptop the fans run constantly. they should shut off and only run when needed. is there something that i'm missing?

any ideas?

thanks,
Brent

Step 1.

Uninstall and completely purge your laptop of all redhat related software and settings by formatting hard drive.

Step 2.

Install REAL linux distro that actually acknowledges the existance of ACPI and APM and fan control settings, like Suse or Mandrake.

Fan should now work fine or at least have a control to adjust it in kde.

plorchids, I have asked a similar question before. My desktop Sony does the same thing, the main fan does not shut down after the O/S has loaded. I believe this is a Linux issue. It does the same thing in Mandrake 9.2, 10 beta, CE, Mandrake Live, Knoppix, SuSE... I have tried firmware boards with no results... I would think there would be a way to configure Linux to shut down the fans that do not need to be running...

thanks for both of the replies....much appreciated.

i had assumed already that it was a kernel issue.

out of the two, suse and mandrake, which is the easiest to install and configure out of the box? i don't want to waste a lot of time on this. what i am attempting to do is replace windows completely with linux. but if i can't get every thing working properly, it's not going to happen.

i am technical enough but i don't want to have a test machine for home use, that's what work computers are for!!!

anyway, thanks again for the replies.

Brent

i did as you suggested and installed suse. same issue.

just would like to know if this is something that i am going to have to deal with or if there is actually an answer to this issue.

Brent

looks like it's just me talking now.

well, i wanted to let you know that installing suse has solved the problem.

i just didn't wait long enough to see if it was actually working or now.

the fans are off as i type this message and they just came on..........looks like it works to me. now i just have to make sure i can get this to look the way i want it.

thanks again for all the help.

Hehe. I knew some good acpi code would fix it...

And, as. Healing Bear?
Desktop fans, "NEVER" shut off. Unless you installed a little switch on them yourselves. Some systems decide to vary the rpm of the fan for different heat loads, but usualy they're just plain on a humming away.

THANKS Caeda!!!

I have an Acer Aspire laptop and have the same problem. I suppose it's better that it's running than not - I can FEEL that the computer is a lot cooler But I was thinking of changing over from Windows to Linux and I just can't afford the battery power that a constantly running fan would use. The battery only lasts a few hours with good power management. I dread to think what it'd be like.

I am a newbie to Linux. I didn't know anything about it until yesterday but I have managed to partition my drive etc. and I have a dual boot system. So although I have Fedora Core 1 up and running (and it seems to be running much more smoothly than XP - I'm very impressed), I don't really understand how it works.

Is there a quick fix for good power management under Fedora?

Thanks