Re: How does one control fans?
On Thu, 2005-10-13 at 18:52 +0100, marc wrote:
> I've installed packages: acpi and acpid
> and the fan now stops occasionally. Magically, something called,
> KLaptop, has appeared in the KDE system tray, presenting lots of options
> to manage ACPI features.
I don't use KDE, so I don't know KLaptop. I hear some good stories about
it, but as I don't use it, I have other ways of achieving probably the
same goals. So, it might be that you are doing things just differently,
not necessarily wrong.
> These packages also installed the modules: thermal, fan, button,
> processor, ac and battery.
OK, so maybe there is some ACPI related problem, because I'd say it
would need to give you something along the lines of what I wrote before.
Maybe take it to the ACPI people if it really doesn't work. Or try a new
BIOS. Or wait for a new kernel, with updated ACPI. Or try to debug your
DSDT. Or... :-)
> I loaded cpufreq_userspace or acpi_cpufreq, but these seem to only
> provide "power profiles" - which I can select in KLaptop - or
> "governors", but I can't find out what they do precisely.
See above; I don't know about KLaptop...
> I have a handle on 'governors', including those in the kernel, now.
> However, after I modprobe the kernel governors, nothing appears in
> /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/ until I modprobe acpi_cpufreq.
> Is this correct? Is there another way to activate
> /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq without loading this module and its
> 'performance' governor?
You need a cpufreq governor, and a cpufreq processor driver.
acpi_cpufreq is a cpufreq processor driver, but not the optimal one.
Once you've got this loaded, or any other processor driver, then you
should be able to load any governor you want.
> Yes, CONFIG_ACPI_THERMAL is set to m. There are no references to thermal
> in the ACPI messages :-( The thermal module is loaded.
> # acpi -V says,
> No support for device type: thermal
> AC adaper: on-line
> So, I guess that thermal detection is not possible, unless there is
> something else that needs to be done. Clearly, there is thermal
> detection in operation, and it seems odd that it is not, apparently,
> under the control of ACPI.
I think it is most likely under ACPI control, but there just a
miscommunication between the OS ACPI stuff and the BIOS ACPI stuff. I
don't know how to debug that.
> CONFIG_X86_SPEEDSTEP_CENTRINO=m
> CONFIG_X86_SPEEDSTEP_CENTRINO_ACPI=y
> CONFIG_X86_SPEEDSTEP_CENTRINO_TABLE=y
The last one isn't required, but I'd say it doesn't hurt either. I'm
sorry, I think it should work, so I don't know where to look to debug
it. You could stick to the ACPI cpufreq driver for now, just to get the
cpufreq governor stuff going. Then, you can try to get the speedstep
thing to work.
Koen
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