Ubuntu – thinkfan control doesn’t use the fan full potential when needed

fanlaptopoverheatingtemperature

I own a Thinkpad x201 and is overheating very fast because of the environmental temperature and eventually kills himself without notice (and it really grinds my gears).

Outside there are 34 degrees C while the computer rises its temperature at 80 with no important tasks and reaches (with 1 deg each second) to 100 degrees with a heavier task.

I followed a guideline to start the fan earlier so it will maintain constant temperature or when is at a critical temperature to use the maximum speed but it still sticks to the auto values.

The technical aspects

The resource that I used is located here : http://staff.science.uva.nl/~kholshei/thinkfan_guide/

I adjusted the values so that the fan would start on lower temperatures starting with 0 to 20 degrees for the level 0 and so on.

My configuration for /etc/thinlfan.conf is :

$ tail -n 15 /etc/thinkfan.conf

sensor /sys/devices/virtual/hwmon/hwmon0/temp1_input
sensor /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/temp4_input
sensor /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/temp2_input

(0, 0, 21)
(1, 20, 22)
(2, 21, 25)
(3, 24, 28)
(4, 26, 33)
(5, 30, 40)
(6, 36, 49)
(7, 44, 62)
(128, 60, 65)
(129, 63, 100000)

The last two values are experimental.

when I run:

$ sudo thinkfan -n

WARNING: Using default fan control in /proc/acpi/ibm/fan.

when I run:

$ echo level disengaged | sudo tee /proc/acpi/ibm/fan

The fan spins at aprox. 6500 RPM which is actually effective (the temperature drops slowly) but it holds on this level for approximately 5 seconds after it switches back to auto.

My question is : How can I manually set the fan speed to it's full potential in these hot days / How can I adjust the values so that the temperature won't raise so much ?

Today is the first time when I try this, so don't expect from me to have a clue of what can I try else than setting a cron job that would set the level on each second – which is an afoul idea.

And the last thing : I can't afford to stop working and the most important I prefer changing the fan once in a while rather than the processor.

Thanks for your help and understanding, if you need any other detail let me know.

Oh… here is my lsb_release:

$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 13.10
Release:        13.10
Codename:       saucy

…and uname:

$  uname -r      
3.11.0-23-generic

Best Answer

I used in my Lenovo Thinkpad x220 (this is an updated answer that related to systems with systemd

sudo -i

install thinkfan
```
apt install thinkfan
```

configure kernel module

echo "options thinkpad_acpi fan_control=1" > /etc/modprobe.d/thinkfan.conf

reload kernel module
```
modprobe thinkpad_acpi
```

configure default thinkfan configuration

sed -i 's|START=no|START=yes|' /etc/default/thinkfan
sed -i 's|DAEMON_ARGS="-q"|DAEMON_ARGS="-q -b 1 -s 15"|' /etc/default/thinkfan

Check your sensors

find /sys/devices -type f -name "temp*_input"

and this is the result in my Lenovo Thinkpad x220:

/sys/devices/virtual/hwmon/hwmon0/temp1_input
/sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/hwmon/hwmon2/temp3_input
/sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/hwmon/hwmon2/temp1_input
/sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/hwmon/hwmon2/temp2_input

write in /etc/thinkpad.conf based on the results above

tp_fan /proc/acpi/ibm/fan
hwmon /sys/devices/virtual/hwmon/hwmon0/temp1_input
hwmon /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/hwmon/hwmon2/temp3_input
hwmon /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/hwmon/hwmon2/temp1_input
hwmon /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/hwmon/hwmon2/temp2_input
(0,     0,      40)
(1,     32,     55)
(2,     54,     66)
(3,     65,     76)
(4,     75,     80)
(5,     78,     85)
(6,     82,     88)
(7,     85,     32767)

Enable the service so it will be started automatically at every boot and drop privileges.
```
systemctl enable thinkfan
exit
```
Reboot your notebook
```
systemctl enable thinkfan
```
After reboot, check the service
```
systemctl status thinkfan.service
```

the result will be like this:

● thinkfan.service - simple and lightweight fan control program
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/thinkfan.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Jum 2016-10-07 20:09:30 WIB; 28min ago
  Process: 2494 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/thinkfan (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 2496 (thinkfan)
   CGroup: /system.slice/thinkfan.service
           └─2496 /usr/sbin/thinkfan

Okt 07 20:09:30 thinkpad-x220 systemd[1]: Starting simple and lightweight fan control program...
Okt 07 20:09:30 thinkpad-x220 thinkfan[2494]: thinkfan 0.9.1 starting...
Okt 07 20:09:30 thinkpad-x220 thinkfan[2494]: Daemon PID: 2496
Okt 07 20:09:30 thinkpad-x220 systemd[1]: Started simple and lightweight fan control program.

Simple solution

1) Run this command to list types of available thermal_zone devices:
ls -1 /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone*/type | xargs -I % sh -c "echo % ; cat %"
You should get output similar to this:

/sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/type
acpitz
/sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone1/type
acpitz
/sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone2/type
x86_pkg_temp

2) Find out which one you need, for CPU it should have type similar to x86_pkg_temp. In my example, if I want to use x86_pkg_temp I will pick /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone2/.

3) Specify it in "Temperature Monitor" settings, make sure it is slash-terminated (enclosed with "/" at the end, just like in my example):

Done, it should work as intended now.

More details and alternative solution

Started using LUbuntu desktop today and found myself looking on same problem.
After poking around and cracking open source code of /plugins/thermal/thermal.c I found some solutions. First of all, parameter "Sensor" in options refers to location of it as directory. Looking on sources it can detect 3 types of sensor directories in automatic mode, and looks for them in /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/, /sys/class/thermal/ and /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon[i]/, functions to look for those are called here:

static void
check_sensors( thermal *th )
{
    // FIXME: scan in opposite order
    find_sensors(th, PROC_THERMAL_DIRECTORY, NULL, proc_get_temperature, proc_get_critical);
    find_sensors(th, SYSFS_THERMAL_DIRECTORY, SYSFS_THERMAL_SUBDIR_PREFIX, sysfs_get_temperature, sysfs_get_critical);
    if (th->numsensors == 0)
        find_hwmon_sensors(th);
    g_info("thermal: Found %d sensors", th->numsensors);
}

Now, looking on what happens when you set config, we see this:

if(th->sensor == NULL) th->auto_sensor = TRUE;
    if(th->auto_sensor) check_sensors(th);
    else if (strncmp(th->sensor, "/sys/", 5) != 0)
        add_sensor(th, th->sensor, th->sensor, proc_get_temperature, proc_get_critical);
    else if (strncmp(th->sensor, "/sys/class/hwmon/", 17) != 0)
        add_sensor(th, th->sensor, th->sensor, sysfs_get_temperature, sysfs_get_critical);
    else
        add_sensor(th, th->sensor, th->sensor, hwmon_get_temperature, hwmon_get_critical);

From what I understood, th->sensor is set to what you specify in "Sensor" input field in options.
First there is check if auto_sensor is set, and if it is not, it will do series of other checks.
Breaking down this part, if your sensor path does not inlude /sys/ in it, it will use proc_get functions, which is outdated acpi type sensor that is not used in new versions of Ubuntu. Otherwise, if your path includes /sys/class/hwmon it will use hwmon functions, and finally if it is other type of /sys/*, it will use sysfs type of sensor.
Based on that we can conclude that easiest way would be to specify sensor located in /sys/class/thermal/, for example /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone1. If we would go with /sys/class/hwmon/, it would not pick right sensor anyway, because there is no way to specify exact temp[i]_input to be used, and if we would use non /sys/ directory, it would assume we using outdated acpi/thermal_zone, which is not ideal as well. You could create script that will create fake sensor directory in your home folder with 2 files, trip_points and temperature. trip_points would look like this and does not matter much:

critical (S5): 110 C
passive: 105 C: tc1=2 tc2=10 tsp=100 devices=0xdf72e380
active[0]: 48 C: devices=0xc157fec0

temperature would be one to be read for current temperature and should look like this:

temperature: 49 C

Finally, you would need script to update those files from actual sensor you want to use and schedule it to run each N seconds. This solution would allow using /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon1 kind of sensors and manually read value to be used by LXpanel thermal indicator. You could also use this method to make this thermal indicator display other kind of indicators, but that seems like waste of effort, considering you could just use another indicator instead. I will update with sample script to do it later, if it will be required\I will make one for myself.

Ubuntu – Thinkfan on Thinkpad T410 – thinkpad_acpi doesn’t seem to support fan_control

I was using the instructions here: http://x220.mcdonnelltech.com/ubuntu/ and was thus missing the driver option expermental=1 in my /etc/modprobe.d/thinkfan.conf file - which seems to be needed to get this working as expected.

Do the following:

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/thinkfan.conf

There should be a line

options thinkpad_acpi fan_control=1

change it to

options thinkpad_acpi experimental=1 fan_control=1

Reboot your computer so the changes take effect.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Correct Sensor Location for Temperature Monitor in LXPanel on Lubuntu

Simple solution

More details and alternative solution

Ubuntu – Thinkfan on Thinkpad T410 – thinkpad_acpi doesn’t seem to support fan_control

Related Question