Fan control in OpenBSD

[Angevin]

Alright I have a computer with OpenBSD on one hard disk and Windows XP on another hard disk. In OpenBSD my fans run loudly like a dumb appliance and in Windows XP they run less loud and less intensely. I used acpidump in OpenBSD and it showed both fans on my system in the output. My CPU doesn't have frequency scaling so that sysctl variable switch is out of the question. However, I think I should probably be able to control my fan via sensord and the adt driver with a shell script. I'm not in OpenBSD right now (I'm actually using windows XP right now) so I'm not going to provide information from stdout from my system etc.. (at least not right now). I doubt that information is necessary anyway since my next question is the whole point of this whole post : does someone have an example sensord shell script that is the same or somewhat similar to the one I'm planning to write ? If so please post it or point me to it. Since I'm merely asking for an example script to look at I didn't think it was necessary to post alot of my system details in this post. Thanks

[BSDfan666]

The ability to control fan speed is not currently supported outside of using the CPU scaling features, this is because it is very chipset specific and even possibly dangerous.

There may be a generic way to do it via ACPI on some systems, but as if now fan control is not supported by OpenBSD.

Constantine A. Murenin (cnst@) had sent in a patch for lm(4) along with a proposal for a generic sysctl-based interface earlier this year.. but it went mostly unnoticed and it was never committed, consider sending a reply to that email, or perhaps one to him directly.

http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=124182023631365&w=2

I remember there being a paper from him about it, but I can't recall where it is.. perhaps on the papers page.

Sorry, hope that helps..

Don't worry about spelling, I had no problems reading it.

[Angevin]

Originally Posted by BSDfan666

The ability to control fan speed is not currently supported outside of using the CPU scaling features, this is because it is very chipset specific and even possibly dangerous.

There may be a generic way to do it via ACPI on some systems, but as if now fan control is not supported by OpenBSD.

Constantine A. Murenin (cnst@) had sent in a patch for lm(4) along with a proposal for a generic sysctl-based interface earlier this year.. but it went mostly unnoticed and it was never committed, consider sending a reply to that email, or perhaps one to him directly ...


I remember there being a paper from him about it, but I can't recall where it is.. perhaps on the papers page.

Alright, thanks a lot for the information I know where the papers page is so I'll take a look later.

Originally Posted by BSDfan666

Sorry, hope that helps..

It is somewhat dissapointing but it does help in the sense that I'm glad you told me this before I attempted to try to write or seriously research a shell script using sensord and the adt(4) driver. That would have been waste of time.

Originally Posted by BSDfan666

Don't worry about spelling, I had no problems reading it.

I've just gotten into the bad habit of polishing up and fixing my posts on forums after I post them by editing them but this forum does not indulge that bad habit since as a new user I can't edit posts (it is more austere here).

[kpedersen]

Hello,

I do not know if this helps but...

In FreeBSD I can set exactly my fan speed. (I can even turn it off!)

I have an IBM Thinkpad Z60t, t23 and R60 and this works in all of them.

Just load the acpi_ibm kernel module and then using sysctl I can set the fan speed.

Best regards,

[BSDfan666]

Originally Posted by kpedersen

Hello,

I do not know if this helps but...

In FreeBSD I can set exactly my fan speed. (I can even turn it off!)

I have an IBM Thinkpad Z60t, t23 and R60 and this works in all of them.

Just load the acpi_ibm kernel module and then using sysctl I can set the fan speed.

Best regards,

This is the OpenBSD section, such advice doesn't apply here.

[roundkat]

If you want a hardware solution, I would suggest a couple of Zalman "FanMate"(s).
this way you could "dial" in the optimum speed.. noise /cooling..

On my OpenBSD email server I have 2 "cheap" 80mm fans (case was free) and I have these
controlled via FanMates...
IIRC, the cost was something like 3-4 USD..

rk

[Angevin]

Originally Posted by roundkat

If you want a hardware solution, I would suggest a couple of Zalman "FanMate"(s).
this way you could "dial" in the optimum speed.. noise /cooling..

On my OpenBSD email server I have 2 "cheap" 80mm fans (case was free) and I have these
controlled via FanMates...
IIRC, the cost was something like 3-4 USD..

rk

I havent' checked this thread in a while so I just noticed some of the responses now. That is good advice; I've never heard of that until now and the price is very reasonable. I'll look more into it. It might actually be the best solution for my current situation (sounds like it probably is).

Thank you,

--Kevin