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In Windows' power options, you had the ability to configure your system to use either 'active' or 'passive' cooling schemes.

In the 'active' scheme, the fans would start running faster as the CPU got hotter - then slow the CPU if the fans were at maximum.

In the 'passive' scheme, the CPU would slow down before running the fans faster.

Is there a way to configure Linux to switch between these 'schemes' somehow, either set up manually with a configuration file or similar?

As a note, pwmconfig states: There are no pwm-capable sensor modules installed and fancontrol states: Can't read configuration file.

I'd like to be able to switch to a passive power scheme at times for times when I need my laptop to remain quiet, but not necessarily fast, e.g. in a library.

Kupiakos
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  • Have a look at indicator-cpufreq http://www.webupd8.org/2010/12/cpu-frequency-scaling-appindicator.html – Rinzwind Jul 01 '13 at 14:47
  • read full story http://askubuntu.com/questions/285434/is-there-a-power-saving-application-similar-to-jupiter/285681#285681 – Qasim Jul 01 '13 at 16:16
  • Why not post those as answers? I'll let y'all know the results of those utilities. – Kupiakos Jul 01 '13 at 23:30

1 Answers1

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What you need is cpufreqd, this can take input from various sources and apply rules to set each CPU to a given profile, dependent on a scoring system.

I use it with the lm-sensors package. This lets cpufreqd query motherboard and chip temperatures, voltages and fan speeds (and, dependent on your hardware lots of other things) and you can use that to create weighting factors that are tested by the rules to switch power profiles.

Each power profile can set things like individual CPU frequency, how that frequency is govenered and other things like monitor brightness (for power saving) and fan speeds. It can even run arbitrary programs to do things like send out emails.

Note the default cpufreqd.conf is just an example and pretty useless. lm-sensors has a utility to help you create it's config file.

Jay M
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