Re: what populates /proc/acpi/fan?

[Camaleón <noelamac@gmail.com>]

On Tue, 30 Mar 2010 15:04:08 -0400, kamaraju kusumanchi wrote:

> On a Dell Precision T7400 machine running Debian Lenny (stable) with
> 2.6.26-2-amd64 kernel, I find that /proc/acpi/fan directory is empty. Is
> there any package to install, module to load to populate this directory?

In fact, under some computers that directory is empty but in others I can 
see there is fan info (on/off status)

"acpi -V" will display all available information.
 
> The actual problem is like this:
> 
> Initially when the machine is rebooted it is very quiet. Then if I run a
> large simulation (with heavy CPU laod) for a day or so, the fan starts
> revving up to cool the CPU. But when the simulation is stopped, the fan
> does not stop rotating even after couple of hours. At this point, the
> load on the system is minimal, but the fan does not stop rotating.
> However, if I reboot the machine, the fan is quiet again. So, I am
> guessing it is an acpi related issue.
> 
> The fan is very noisy when it rotates, so I would like to manually stop
> the fan once in a while.

There is an utility for Dell laptops (i8kutils) to handle this:

***
http://packages.debian.org/lenny/i8kutils

utilities for Dell Inspiron and Latitude laptops

This is a collection of utilities to control Dell Inspiron and Latitude 
laptops. It includes programs to turn the fan on and off, to read fan 
status, CPU temperature, BIOS version and to handle the volume buttons 
and Fn-keys
***

But seems to be only available for 32-bits architecture :-?

Greetings,

-- 
Camaleón