Fan control on HP Pavillion dv7 1199el
 

I recently bought a new laptop and I'm now trying it out as a linux host for virtual development machines (mostly one at a time) in virtualbox.
this is my first try with linux as a desktop @ work, so far everything is working (almost) out of the box but I'm a bit concerned with fan speed management.

I installed several system monitors and they agree in reporting these temperatures (idle host and idle VM, cpu load about 20%):
cpu - mobo (2 sensors) -> ~33°C
what I understand should be the gpu -> ~45°C
and that's ok with me.

my worries start when cpu load raises:
sensors report constantly increasing temperatures going in the 45°C (cpu) - 60°C (gpu) range, with +7°C spikes
and that's with just 60% cpu load peaks, 30-40% bottoms for a few seconds (30-60 tops)

I can see something is happening with fan speeds, since before installing NVIDIA drivers gpu temperature got in the 80°C range in a few minutes while idle (that's dangerous btw..) but still, fan noise doesn't change noticeably, while at pc boot I can clearly hear the fan can spin much faster.

luckily I'm working on low load procedures at the time, but I don't know how much this will last..
I'd like the fan control to be more "aggressive" but I didn't manage to find any setting around (followed a couple guides)
For example I tried with lmsensors and ksensors but they seem to fail detecting any fan controller device and BIOS has just a "fan always on" option (which is enabled).
Any hints?

Distro is Kubuntu 9.04 + NVIDIA drivers

I had this. I tortured myself for a month with a 64 bit HP 6715s which gave nutty temp readings and no graduation (In my case the fan stayed on 100%). The 4 fans are actually 4 speeds.

I grabbed a fedora kernel and cobbled it for my system and all the problems vanished. I had used Slamd64(=Slackware) but this caused the problems.

They are fixed now on slamd64 current which has a 2.6.29 kernel. Otherwise, grab a fedora kernel config and cobble it for your needs.