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I recently installed Ubuntu (18.04.1 LTS) on my old desktop to use as a server. I have been trying to manage the fan speeds, but I cannot get it to work. I started out with this tutorial: How to control fan speed?

After that didn't work I read up that dell's need some more work and tried this: Fan speed in ubuntu: pwmconfig no pwm-capable sensor modules installed

But pwmconfig still says There are no pwm-capable sensor modules installed.

And i8kctl just gives me this: 1.0 1.0 BJ17YG1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1

I'm not even sure if i8k is for dell desktops, maybe only for laptops. If someone can help me out, that would be awesome, Thanks!

mo523
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2 Answers2

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I've got exactly the same problem with pwmconfig and decided to implement it on my own.

Try this utility https://github.com/ichiriac/ubuntu-smart-fan, it's based on lm-sensors and it will manage the fan speed and log them.

At start you can run it as a monitor in order to seed the fan behavior.

After calibrating the temperature and thresholds you will be able to run it as a daemon on your server, and retrieve a log with fan events

Ioan Chiriac
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  • Thanks for this. I tried it but I get: Looking for sensors Unable to find any fan device Try to run sensors-detect – mo523 Dec 03 '18 at 14:52
  • Did you ran sudo sensors-detect without any error. If so that means no sensors was detected. Take a look at the /sys/class/hwmon folder, you should find into a subfolder a file named fan[1...x]_label. If you want me to help you could also fill an issue on github, maybe my script does not recognize the configuration – Ioan Chiriac Dec 03 '18 at 20:57
  • yes, it runs fine and I get coretemp & it87 – mo523 Dec 18 '18 at 00:46
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Neither of the articles you posted mentioned modifying grub, so I assume you have not done that.

You don't need i8k.

Focus on it87 in your searches. One of the common changes is to edit /etc/default/grub and append acpi_enforce_resources=lax at the end of the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX. This thread confirms that it87 needs that grub change: lm sensors not returning CPU temp (it87)

rtaft
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  • I didn't link this, but I've tried it before. I'll try it again, maybe I did something wrong. – mo523 Dec 18 '18 at 00:51
  • Thanks so much! This was the issue. I must of typed it wrong the first time I tried – mo523 Dec 18 '18 at 04:45