[GTALUG] Fan Control on Linux

[Giles Orr]

I have a very old laptop I'm trying to rehabilitate and use with Debian:
it's got an AMD Turion chip and 1G of RAM.  Works fine.  But one annoying
problem under Linux: the fan runs flat out all the time.  If the 'sensors'
command is correct, the CPU has never gone above 35C, so the fan isn't
running like that because of the heat.

I also used this machine recently to run Darik's Boot And Nuke (aka "DBAN")
on a hard drive: that's a Linux kernel, and the fan wasn't running full
out.  Not sure what that proves, except that the fan doesn't have to run
full out under a Linux kernel.

I've installed "lm_sensors," I've installed "fancontrol", I've run
'lmsensors-detect' (which is 'sensors-detect' under Fedora and Ubuntu -
I've tried three Linux OSes with essentially identical results).  I've run
'pwmconfig' which tells me "There are no pwm-capable sensor modules
installed."  I've written a file into /etc/sensors.d/fan-speed-control.conf
that said this:

    chip "k8temp-pci-*"
    set fan1_div 4

(This last at the suggestion of ArchWiki, which says reducing the fan
multiplier can make it accessible to Linux.)  But running 'sensors -s' to
reload the config is greeted with "Error: File
/etc/sensors.d/fan-speed-control.conf, line 2: Unknown feature name
k8temp-pci-00c3: No such subfeature known."  On an off-chance I tried
"fan0_div" and "fan2_div" but same answer.  This has exhausted most of the
mainstream remedies suggested by Google.  At this point I'm stumped: can
anyone else suggest ways to get a handle on this fan?

-- 
Giles
https://www.gilesorr.com/
gilesorr at gmail.com
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