installed ubuntu on my laptop, powernow works fine, problem is that the fans haven't turned on since i installed linux. now don't tell me that linux is that much more superior that when i've got Firefox up and VLC playing videos that it doesn't need a fan! i'm quite happy with my drop in battery usage, but it'd be useless if the proc burned up

tips?

Is ACPI properly configured? Seems strange you have battery functions enabled and not fan functions. What steps did you follow to configure the additional power management functions and was fan control still turned on within the kernel? Also, what make + model of laptop do you have incase someone else has the same machine and can offer suggestions or point you in the right direction.

i haven't done any configuration really. ubuntu detected most/all of it on it's first boot.

make and model is an averatec 3150.

ACPI seems to be working fine (even sleep and hibernate are working fine)

It is quite possible that running firefox and playing videos is not enough to turn on the fans.

Try installing "Yacpi" or similar program to see how hot your processor gets. If it heats too much, then you might have a fan problem. Overheating should not be a problem, because the machine will at most halt or do a reboot. I believe that most laptop BIOSes turn on the fan whenever processor gets too hot and/or when the machine has crashed. As 99% of laptops are "Designed for Windows XX" they have to be able to survive OS lockups and such.

You can check your processor's clockrate by doing (in a terminal) a "cat /proc/cpuinfo". If "powernowd" is working correctly, clockrate should vary, depending on system load. Try it while starting OpenOffice and while idle - you'll see the difference.

Also try converting some cd's to mp3's or something that requires heavy calculations. If the fan turns on, then Linux simply takes less resources.

well powernowd works.... it upped from 400 mhz to 1.4 ghz but still no fan....

also i was installing the latest ubuntu update while doing that (includes a new kernel!)

hrmm well while poking around looking at various stuff in the /proc/acpi directory i found this in the thermal_zone/THRM directory:

$cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THRM/temperature
temperature 0 C

$cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THRM/trip_points
critical (s5): 110 C
Passive: 90 C: tc1=2 tc2=4 tsp=30 devices=0xcf7eec40




well now... does that mean it's not getting any temperature readigns? at which point this means that it's not turning on the fans at all cause as far as it knows it's never getting hot enough too...

this is generally not a good thing.

any ideas?

edit: another thing how would i go about changing those trip points?

well now.. it would seem that this latest update fixed it... for after the restart, the fan is now working fine....

still wondering about trip points.. it's idleing at 79c at 400 mhz. even for an athlon xp-m that's pretty hot and i'd like the fan to be on still.

hrmm... well it's sitting at 79 (hasn't changed at all no matter what i do) however... the fan does come on at times. i'm guessing the bios controls it.

well now to go poking in there for threshold levels

Same problem on laptop with Athlon 1700XP. My GOVERNOR in etc/sysconfig/cpufreq was commented and when I have uncommented it and set to "powersave" the temperature og cpu drop down to 46 C (before it was 74 C). Cpu fan starts to work slower but never turned off. It is a very big problem. But I am stil not able to control fan speed - /proc/acpi/fan/ is empty and /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/thrm/trip_points look:
critical (s5): 100 C
Passive: 97 C: tc1=4 tc2=3 tsp=40 devices=0xddeeef40.
I dunno how to change any values in this file.
Every ACPI module is loaded: processor, fan, thermal, ac, battery, video.
How to stop this FAN?

i suspect in my case that there isn't any temp monitoring (there's none in the BIOS and i don't remember spedfan seeing anything when i windows was running on it) Fan does come on at times now.