Laptop fan never turns off, please help.

[Erik Hemdal]

> On Tue, 2004-07-20 at 23:38, Francisco Figueiredo Jr. wrote:
> > Hi all.
> > 
> > I just bought a Gateway m350 notebook and installed fc2 in it. Now I noticed
> > that my fan doesn't turn off. Is there something I can do about it? I found
> > many references about that with toshiba notebooks in archives, but nothing
> > about other laptops fans.
> >

Francisco, do you know for certain that the fan turned off before you
installed FC2?  Newer laptops run the fan continuously, whether on AC or
not.  My Dell always runs the fan, but it is slow and nearly silent. 
When the system gets hot, the fan screams at high speed.  Finally the
CPU will clock down, which cools the system a lot. Then the fan slows
down again.

>  
> > Could you point me where can I get my fan to turn off correctly?? I mean, turn
> > off and turn on depending on temperature automatically?
> > 
> > ACPI is working as I can get laptop battery status and I have /proc/acpi
> > available.

This is a good bit of information.  ACPI and APM are both enabled by
default, so simply checking services isn't going to tell the tale.  But
when the battstat is good, it's a good bet that power management is
happy.

Check the following points.  I can't offer you a definitive answer, but
these might help:

Is the laptop hot to the touch?  Not all laptops are fitted with
"mobile" chipsets, so they run hotter (I learned this the hard way).  If
that's the case, you'll find the fan running harder and longer.  I
wouldn't be surprised if that turns into "continuously".

Does the system slow down when on battery or after running a while? 
This may indicate that the CPU is throttled for thermal control.

Are there other problems or glitches with the system?  CPU's do crazy
things when they overheat.  If you aren't seeing strange behavior, this
also might suggest that the fan is supposed to be on.

Erik

> > Francisco Figueiredo Jr.