[GTALUG] Fan Control on Linux

[Giles Orr]

On 12 November 2017 at 09:20, David Thornton via talk <talk at gtalug.org>
wrote:

> I find that sometimes different distros have different default supported
> configs and grok to different degrees various features and hardware.
>
> You might try booting various live cds and see what they grok. I loved
> knoppix to quickly tell how linux friendly a given machine is. Maybe ubuntu
> or fedora will give you a different view.
>
> Live cds often have elaborate complete detection stages... boot and see
> what chips and config it detects.
>
> You might try older versions of distros that have better support for older
> hardware. Maybe try the version of the live cd that was released one year
> after the introduction of the laptop.
>
>
> David
>
> David Thornton @northdot9 https://www.quadratic.net
>
> On Nov 11, 2017 4:36 AM, "ac via talk" <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 10 Nov 2017 20:37:43 -0500
>> Kevin Cozens via talk <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:
>> > On 2017-11-10 03:31 PM, Giles Orr via talk wrote:
>> > > 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.Â
>> > > But one annoying problem under Linux: the fan runs flat out all the
>> > > time.Â
>> > If the fan connection to the MB is only two pins it may not have the
>> > ability to operate at anything other than full speed. Check the MB
>>
>> keyword, 'may' on my notebook the main fan has two pins but it has
>> variable speed... so i guess ymmv
>>
>> so +1 for checking the manual or contact manufacturer website/support
>>
>> > manual. As this is a laptop you may find it hard to locate
>> > information about fan control.
>> > You could add a circuit to do variable speed control of the fan but
>> > it may be difficult, if not impossible, to fit it in to the laptop case.
>> >
>> again depending on notebook/laptop model... many of the older models
>> (before space became such a fixating factor) actually has lots of crawl
>> space, just yesterday i added some custom components to one of
>> my old HP's and recall thinking how cool it is that it can all fit
>> inside the case :)
>>
>
As I mentioned in my initial post, the fan speed is variable, so it seems
clear it's controllable.  Just not - so far - by Linux.

David - your suggestion is a good one.  I don't actually like it (because
it entails quite a bit of work), but if I'm to pursue this that's
definitely the best way to go.  Thanks.

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