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Laptop fan running too often
Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2012 9:14 pm
by ww.ellis
Hi All,
I've got a Dell Latitude D630 with Mint 12 KDE (see below for complete specs). The laptop's CPU fan seems to be going nearly all the time, for no good reason. There is no heavy CPU load or read/write that I can tell from System Monitor. Right now the fan is on and I have two firefox tabs open and the terminal. I even opened up the case and cleaned out dust.
Running "sensors" gives the following (from right now, but this is typical):
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acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1: +45.5°C (crit = +99.0°C)
coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 0: +43.0°C (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 1: +46.0°C (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Any ideas of how to stop the fan? Or, is this indicative of some problem? It seems like if I could just set the fan to kick on at 55 C, it would be fine.
Is there something else I should test/post that would be helpful? I poked around the BIOS and didn't see an obvious way to control the fans, and I installed fancontrol and ran pwmconfig, but apparently I don't have any pwm-compatibility.
Thanks!
PS. I'm a relative newbie, so don't take anything for granted! But I'm brave enough to tinker around a fair bit, so don't be shy.
Edited to include the output of "inxi -Fc 0":
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System: Host workcomputer Kernel 3.0.0-12-generic x86_64 (64 bit) Desktop KDE 4.7.4 Distro Linux Mint 12 KDE
Machine: System Dell (portable) product Latitude D630
Mobo Dell model 0dt781 Bios Dell version A17 date 01/04/2010
CPU: Dual core Intel Core2 Duo CPU T7250 (-MCP-) cache 2048 KB flags (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 ssse3 vmx)
Clock Speeds: (1) 800.00 MHz (2) 800.00 MHz
Graphics: Card: Intel Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (primary)
X.Org 1.10.4 drivers intel unloaded: vesa,fbdev Resolution 1920x1080@60.0hz
GLX Renderer Mesa DRI Intel 965GM GLX Version 2.1 Mesa 7.11
Audio: Card Intel 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller driver HDA Intel Sound: ALSA v: 1.0.24
Network: Card-1 Broadcom NetXtreme BCM5755M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express driver tg3
IF: eth0 state: down speed: 65535 Mbps duplex: full mac: 00:18:8b:db:e7:46
Card-2 Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG [Golan] Network Connection driver iwl3945
IF: wlan0 state: up mac: 00:1f:3c:a1:84:bc
Drives: HDD Total Size: 80.0GB (28.4% used) 1: /dev/sda ST980811AS 80.0GB
Partition: ID:/ size: 9.2G used: 7.1G (81%) fs: ext4 ID:/boot size: 461M used: 40M (10%) fs: ext4
ID:swap-1 size: 4.00GB used: 0.03GB (1%) fs: swap
Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 45.5C mobo: N/A
Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info: Processes 156 Uptime 1 day Memory 1026.3/3952.4MB Client Shell inxi 1.7.7
Re: Laptop fan running too often
Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2012 5:34 am
by AlbertP
Maybe you need to update the BIOS. Usually you can only do that on Windows if you have a laptop.
Re: Laptop fan running too often
Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2012 9:36 am
by ww.ellis
AlbertP wrote:Maybe you need to update the BIOS. Usually you can only do that on Windows if you have a laptop.
I checked, and I have the second-to-latest BIOS, released in 2010. There's a BIOS version released in Jan 2012. I didn't have this problem when Windows was on the computer, either XP or 7. Would that rule out the BIOS being the problem? It seems that you're right, this update must be installed from within Windows. Perhaps it can be done from a boot disk?
What other affects, if any, will updating the BIOS have on the system? Everything else is running perfects right now that I don't want to throw it off balance if that's a risk.
Is there no way to change the fan settings within Linux itself? Or should I take the fact that pwmcontrol didn't recognize anything as a sign that it's impossible with the current machine/BIOS?
Thanks for the help.
Re: Laptop fan running too often
Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2012 10:26 am
by braingateway
ww.ellis wrote:AlbertP wrote:Maybe you need to update the BIOS. Usually you can only do that on Windows if you have a laptop.
I checked, and I have the second-to-latest BIOS, released in 2010. There's a BIOS version released in Jan 2012. I didn't have this problem when Windows was on the computer, either XP or 7. Would that rule out the BIOS being the problem? It seems that you're right, this update must be installed from within Windows. Perhaps it can be done from a boot disk?
If this problem does not show in Windows, the outdated BIOS seems NOT responsible for your particular problem.
Re: Laptop fan running too often
Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2012 10:44 am
by AlbertP
That's not true. On Acer laptops updating BIOS often fixes Linux fanspeed even when Windows already has a correctly working fan.
Re: Laptop fan running too often
Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2012 10:46 am
by ww.ellis
But would updating the BIOS allow me to take control of the fans somehow? As in, I'd update the BIOS and then pwmcontrol would suddenly work? Or is the fact that the fans aren't pwm-compatible a hardware issue?
Re: Laptop fan running too often
Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2012 1:53 pm
by AlbertP
Laptop fans are usually not PWM driven but controlled by BIOS, or the manufacturer's Windows-only fan control software (Acer). In desktop computers PWM fans are common, mainly for the CPU fan.
Re: Laptop fan running too often
Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2012 2:02 pm
by ww.ellis
AlbertP wrote:Laptop fans are usually not PWM driven but controlled by BIOS, or the manufacturer's Windows-only fan control software (Acer). In desktop computers PWM fans are common, mainly for the CPU fan.
Albert,
Thanks for clarifying that. I guess I'll try updating the BIOS and seeing if that fixes it. Thanks for all your help.
Re: Laptop fan running too often
Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2012 12:09 am
by pkcinna
This is a common problem with laptops and recent linux kernels with mint. I have been trying for months to get this right since it is the last crude and clunky thing about Linux Mint 13. Most posts suggest it is a BIOS problem, dust, or you got to install lm_sensors and fancontrol but none worked for me. Other posts suggest rebuilding the kernel with home made patches based on your hardware... not a good idea if you got a nice computer. Some people have the opposite issue and things overheat.
Re: Laptop fan running too often
Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2012 10:10 am
by ww.ellis
pkcinna wrote:This is a common problem with laptops and recent linux kernels with mint. I have been trying for months to get this right since it is the last crude and clunky thing about Linux Mint 13.
Exactly! For me, on Mint 12 KDE, this is the only thing that bothers me about the computer. Everything else is great. I think that makes it all the more annoying.
pkcinna wrote: Most posts suggest it is a BIOS problem, dust, or you got to install lm_sensors and fancontrol but none worked for me. Other posts suggest rebuilding the kernel with home made patches based on your hardware... not a good idea if you got a nice computer.
Sounds like me. I've tried dust removal and lm_sensors also, to no avail. I would like to update the BIOS (as in earlier posts) just to make sure I've tried everything, but it seems like a fair pain, having to do it via Windows and all, and like I say, this is the only thing at all wrong, so I don't want to mess things up.
And on that note, there's no way I'm rebuilding the kernel specifically for my hardware. That's way beyond what I can/will do.
Re: Laptop fan running too often
Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2012 1:16 pm
by AlbertP
Many people have reported problems in this topic. If you need help please open a seperate topic for your computer - this one is opened by a Dell Latitude D630 user. That the problem looks the same does not mean that the cause is the same, if you have different hardware.
(To anybody who's opening a new topic: please paste the output of inxi -Gx there - it can well be a graphics card/driver problem, even though it wasn't graphics related on this Dell)
Re: Laptop fan running too often
Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 6:48 pm
by plnovo.us
Hi, I had the same problem.
Kernel 3.2.0-4-amd64 x86_64 (64 bit) Distro Linux Mint Debian Edition, Toshiba U400
Now fixed by adding
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GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 i915.i915_enable_fbc=1 quiet splash pcie_aspm=force "
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="acpi_osi=Linux"
to /etc/default/grub
Dont forget to run update-grub after that change.
Hope someone finds this useful.