Fan speed control/thinkfan

Introduction

Thinkfan is a fan controlling deamon provided by app-laptop/thinkfan and is aimed specifically towards IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad laptops. It can read multiple sensors, but control only a single fan.

Kernel configuration

The kernel needs to have the Thinkpad ACPI driver configured:

KERNEL Enable Thinkpad ACPI support in the kernel

Device Drivers  --->
    [*] X86 Platform Specific Device Drivers  ---> 
        <M>   ThinkPad ACPI Laptop Extras

This will create a module called thinkpad_acpi, which needs to be configured to allow for controlling a fan.

Edit or create /etc/modprobe.d/thinkpad.conf as follows:

FILE /etc/modprobe.d/thinkpad.conf

<syntaxhighlight lang="bash">options thinkpad_acpi fan_control=1</syntaxhighlight>

Most Thinkpads provide /proc/acpi/ibm/fan as a path to the fan device.

Manual fan control

It is possible to manually control the fan speed:

root #echo level 7 > /proc/acpi/ibm/fan

root #cat /proc/acpi/ibm/fan

status:         enabled
speed:          3957
level:          7
commands:       level <level> (<level> is 0-7, auto, disengaged, full-speed)
commands:       enable, disable
commands:       watchdog <timeout> (<timeout> is 0 (off), 1-120 (seconds))

There are a few special values:

level auto: the fan RPM is controlled by the BIOS
level full-speed: the maximum speed while being monitored
level disengaged: even faster, where the controller does not monitor the fan speed.

Thinkfan software installation

Automatic speed control can be achieved through a package app-laptop/thinkfan.

Review thinkfan's USE flags prior to installing it:

USE flags for app-laptop/thinkfan simple fan control program for thinkpads

`atasmart`	include libatasmart support to get disc temperature
`nvidia`	allow thinkfan to read GPU temperature from the proprietary nVidia driver
`yaml`	use YAML format for config file

Data provided by the Gentoo Package Database · Last update: 2021-02-14 20:35 More information about USE flags

Install thinkfan as per normal:

root #emerge --ask app-laptop/thinkfan

Configuration

The configuration file of thinkfan is in /etc/thinkfan.conf. It requires manual configuration and supports as of version 1.0 configuration based on yaml. An example of a simple mode configuration is as follows:

FILE /etc/thinkfan.conf

<syntaxhighlight lang="yaml">sensors:
- tpacpi: /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal
  indices: [0]

fans:
- tpacpi: /proc/acpi/ibm/fan

levels:
  - [0, 0,  41]
  - [1, 38, 51]
  - [2, 45, 56]
  - [3, 51, 61]
  - [4, 55, 64]
  - [5, 60, 66]
  - [6, 63, 68]
  - [7, 65, 74]
  - [127, 70, 3276]</syntaxhighlight>

Details about the configuration can be found in /usr/share/doc/thinkfan-1.2.1/thinkfan.yaml.bz2, and in thinkfan.conf man page.

Thinkfan also takes commandline parameters, see thinkfan's man page for details. Take special note of the bias value, which will exaggerate or dampen a sudden increase or decrease between two temperature samples.

Testing

Test the behaviour of thinkfan as follows:

root #thinkfan -n -b -5 -c /etc/thinkfan.conf

Temperatures(bias): 46(0) -> level 1
Temperatures(bias): 51(0) -> level 2
Temperatures(bias): 59(-3) -> level 3
Temperatures(bias): 64(-3) -> level 4
Temperatures(bias): 68(-3) -> level 5
Temperatures(bias): 69(-2) -> level 6
Temperatures(bias): 62(0) -> level 5
Temperatures(bias): 69(-3) -> level 6
Temperatures(bias): 62(0) -> level 5
Temperatures(bias): 66(0) -> level 6
Temperatures(bias): 62(0) -> level 5

It may take a few cycles of configuration update and testing to find the optimum between all the different settings that are possible.

Start thinkfan as a service

Update /etc/init.d/thinkpad as per the selected commandline parameters:

FILE /etc/init.d/thinkfan

<syntaxhighlight lang="ini">#command_args="-q -s5 -c /etc/thinkfan.conf"
command_args="-q -s2 -b0 -c /etc/thinkfan.conf"</syntaxhighlight>

Start the thinkfan as a service and enable it as follows:

root #rc-service thinkfan start

root #rc-config add thinkfan

External resources

How to control fan speed|Thinkwiki How to control fan speed

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