Bug 100851

Summary:	thinkpad_acpi with fan level=auto causes overheats
Product:	Drivers	Reporter:	Yill Din (justincase)
Component:	Platform_x86	Assignee:	drivers_platform_x86 (drivers_platform_x86)
Status:	ASSIGNED ---
Severity:	normal	CC:	aaron.lu, harviecz
Priority:	P1
Hardware:	Intel
OS:	Linux
Kernel Version:	4.0.2	Subsystem:
Regression:	No	Bisected commit-id:
Attachments:	acpidump of my system

Description Yill Din 2015-07-03 01:44:36 UTC

Hello, i have Thinkpad x201 and it overheats under load and fans do not even try to run faster in order to cool things down.

as workaround i use modprobe.conf:
options thinkpad_acpi fan_control=1 fan="level disengaged"

however this is running too high when there is no load, therefore wasting my battery and fan lifetime.
some people are using userspace daemons and funky desktop applets that control fan speed according to temperature. i don't think this is way to go. there is already code for this in kernel, so we should probably use it instead.

my system is shutting down because of overheat, but i barely can feel any wind coming out of my fan. there's probably something wrong. if i set it manualy to level=7 or level=disengaged then i feel that fan is really blowing. this should probably happen with level=auto automatically when temperatures are rising too high, so there's no need to shutdown.

THX

Comment 1 Aaron Lu 2015-07-08 05:38:09 UTC

If the fan is controlled by thinkpad_acpi module, then we need to move it to the platform driver category.

BTW, does the standard ACPI fan work?

Please attach your acpidump, that is needed no matter where the bug belongs:
# acpidump > acpidump.txt

Thanks.

Comment 2 Yill Din 2015-07-17 19:54:25 UTC

Created attachment 183021 [details]
acpidump of my system

Comment 3 Yill Din 2015-07-17 19:56:00 UTC

> BTW, does the standard ACPI fan work?

how do i tell?

however i think that automatic fan control works a bit, but it need to be tuned up... maybe some way to manually adjust the tresholds to be more sensitive may be useful...

Comment 4 Aaron Lu 2015-07-20 02:07:07 UTC

Do you have any of the following files?
/sys/class/thermal/cooling_device* and if so, please check its type. If its type is Fan, then it should be ACPI standard fan device and you can check if they work or not by writing 0/1(on/off) to their cur_state file.

Comment 5 Yill Din 2015-07-20 04:46:20 UTC

I don't think so :-(

$ grep . /sys/class/thermal/cooling_device*/type

/sys/class/thermal/cooling_device0/type:Processor
/sys/class/thermal/cooling_device1/type:Processor
/sys/class/thermal/cooling_device2/type:Processor
/sys/class/thermal/cooling_device3/type:Processor
/sys/class/thermal/cooling_device4/type:intel_powerclamp
/sys/class/thermal/cooling_device5/type:LCD

Comment 6 Aaron Lu 2015-07-20 04:53:06 UTC

That means your fan is not controlled through standard ACPI but platform specific driver thinkpad_acpi, and that's why I moved the bug to platform_x86 category.

Comment 7 Yill Din 2015-07-20 13:35:55 UTC

well obviously... thinkpad_acpi module is probably not standart ACPI. it's IBM ACPI...