[SOLVED] Fan control on Dell Latitude E6520

ajayphilip · 05-23-2016, 02:10 PM

This is a note of a working configuration for setting up fan control on a Dell Latitude E6520
For Slackware 14.1 x86_64 ( i.e. 64bit)

Build and install i8kutils, using slackbuilds.org

get dellfan from https://github.com/clopez/dellfan , run make and place the dellfan executable in /usr/sbin

edit the /etc/i8kmon.conf and change the settings at the bottom to:

Code:

set config(0)   {{0 0}  -1  60  -1  65}
set config(1)   {{0 1}  50  70  55  75}
set config(2)   {{0 2}  60  80  65  85}
set config(3)   {{0 2}  70 128  75 128}

The second fan is the only one that is controllable.

create /etc/rc.d/rc.i8k and set it as executable. The contents:

Code:

#!/bin//sh
#
# i8k: Fan control daemon
#
# description: This daemon monitors the temperatures 
#               and sets the fan speed. For E6520.
#              

DELLFAN=/usr/sbin/dellfan
EXEC="/usr/bin/i8kmon"
I8KCTL="/usr/bin/i8kctl"
PIDFILE="/var/run/i8kmon.pid"

case "$1" in
   'start')

      # Start the i8kmon program..
      echo "starting ${EXEC} --daemon --auto "
      "${EXEC}" --daemon --auto &
      echo "$!" > "${PIDFILE}"

      # Disabling SMM control of fans.

      echo "Disabling BIOS control of fan."
      "${DELLFAN}" 2 1

   ;;

   'stop')

      if [ -e "$PIDFILE" ] ; then 
         echo "Enabling BIOS control of fan."
         "${DELLFAN}" 1 0

         PID=`cat "${PIDFILE}"`
         rm -f "${PIDFILE}"
         echo "Terminating i8kmon"
         kill -TERM $PID

      else
         echo "$PIDFILE not found. Not stopping anything."
      fi

   ;;

   'restart')
      echo "restart not implemented"
   ;;

   'status')

      "${I8KCTL}"
      if [ -e "$PIDFILE" ] ; then 
         PID=`cat $PIDFILE`
         echo "PID of i8kmon is $PID"
      else 
         echo "i8kmon doesn't appear to be running. check ps -aux" 
      fi

   ;;

esac
# end of rc.i8k script

Edit /etc/rc.d/rc.M
Put the following line after starting HAL:

Code:

# Start fan control
if [ -x /etc/rc.d/rc.i8k ]; then
   /etc/rc.d/rc.i8k start
fi

edit /etc/rc.modules ( it's a symbolic link to rc.modules-3.10.17 or whichever is the kernel you're running )

Add after the end of enabling cpu scaling support:

Code:

modprobe i8k fan_mult=1

Without the fan_mult=1, the reported rpm's are abnormally high.
For speed 1 , the fan should read abourt 2000rpm, and at speed 2, it's in the 4000rpm range.

bassmadrigal · 05-23-2016, 02:33 PM

It would improve the look and readability if you enclosed the conf files in code tags.

Code:

[code]paste here[/code]

But thanks for sharing!