Re: How does one control fans?

[Frank <hugelmopf@web.de>]

> Ah, something else to explore. I installed the cpudyn package and that
> stops the fan a little. However, reading man cpudyn, it mentions that
> throttling is integrated into kernel from 2.6 on - I'm using 2.6.13.
> When I removed it, and rebooted, the fan went back to never switching
> off.
>
> I noticed that a lot of folk use
> # modprobe cpufreq_userspace
> so I loaded that, which at least stops the fan from time to time,
> although I have no idea what it does! (Despite goggling for a while...)
> That said, it seemed to have created the /proc/acpi/processor/ chain.
>
> Which modules and packages are the "best" too use, or to start with?

I would rather use the direct kernel functions to control the frequency (as 
opposed to using the cpufreq_userspace and a userspace program). That means 
you should for example 
# modprobe cpufreq_ondemand 

and tell the kernel to use the ondemand governor for frequency scaling:
# echo "ondemand" > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor
(you will have to do that every time you boot, so add a script to your 
runlevel)

The only disadvantage of the direct kernel method is, that you won't be able 
to scale the frequency according to battery/AC-adapter status, which some of 
the userspace programs will.

Hope that helps a bit, feel free to ask further questions.