Silence of the fan chapter 2

[Fintan]

For the last year or so and also during 14.04 / 14.10 testing my fan was always nice and quiet.

Lately it is running constantly and I don't know why. Especially with FF 34 running it likes to go crazy.

I have x-edgers installed and updated. I also installed the latest 3.7 kernel.
Checking switcheroo telly me that only my internal (intel) card is on.

I also put this in my etc/rc.local:

# [...]
# By default this script does nothing.

# turn off the discrete video adapter
echo OFF > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch

exit 0

Here is my lspci:

fintan2@fintanws2:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family DRAM Controller (rev 09)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200/2nd Generation Core Processor Family PCI Express Root Port (rev 09)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 05)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev b5)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev b5)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev b5)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 05)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation HM65 Express Chipset Family LPC Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller (rev 05)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Seymour [Radeon HD 6400M/7400M Series] (rev ff)
07:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 06)
0d:00.0 Network controller: Ralink corp. RT5390 [802.11 b/g/n 1T1R G-band PCI Express Single Chip]
13:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTS5209 PCI Express Card Reader (rev 01)
fintan2@fintanws2:~$

Lately this HP DV6 laptop keeps refusing to turn on in the morning, forcing me to do a forced reset (PIA) every morning. I have not found a replacement as of yet and really need this baby for work. Some forums have suggested that this laptop has overheating issues and this can lead to the "no turn on" issue.

So if I can get the fan to finally behave again I would be happy

[oshunluvr]

Rather than focus on the fan speed, have you looked at your temps? If your temps are high you would want the fan running,

What does PIA mean?

If it's overheating - try blowing out the vent areas with compressed air or opening the case and clearing the heat sink fins and fan areas of dust balls. My old HP needed this every year or so (dusty house). My old Dell had video card issues that caused lots of extra heat. I eventually had to disconnect the external monitor.

[Teunis]

Except for the dust issues I would have a look at the memory use of Firefox.
A while ago I had a time Firefox would leak memory and the more RAM it consumed the harder the fan had to work.

[SteveRiley]

Lately this HP DV6 laptop keeps refusing to turn on in the morning, forcing me to do a forced reset (PIA) every morning. I have not found a replacement as of yet and really need this baby for work. Some forums have suggested that this laptop has overheating issues and this can lead to the "no turn on" issue.

This. Even though it appears that your computer is only the Intel graphics, it's likely that power is still being supplied to the AMD chip. It's a huge source of heat, and the thermal design of HP's laptops has been quite bad for some time now. In fact, two HP laptops in my home cooked themselves to death over this very problem. Sounds like you're heading down the same path.

What does PIA mean?

Dude, it's a very common TLA that indicates the source of a particularly irksome discomfort.

[oshunluvr]

Well, I've been in Aviation pretty much my whole life but I didn't figure he meant Pakistani Airlines (PIA) or Peoria IL VORTAC (PIA) or even this http://www.pia.edu/

but now that you've explained I get it...
...often.

[Qqmike]

I thought that was PITA. But, then, PITA is not a TLA.

[Fintan]

Ok I forgot the "T" As long as I don't watch videos on my FF the fan is behaving. Still running but quietly. Temp is about 55C.

But when I shutdown I still have to do a forced reset to start up again, so I am keeping this machine on constantly, which isn't great either.

[Fintan]

I just had another look at my temperatures. It seems the radeon-pci temp is 0 and the others around 50-60. But the fan just won't shut off.

[SteveRiley]

For ThinkPads, there is the thinkfan utility. It can programmatically manipulate the file /proc/acpi/ibm/fan. You might enlist Google to find other kinds of fan control utilities.

Out of curiousity, what's the output of this command:

sudo find / -iname 'fan'

[Fintan]

I will check google Thanks.

sudo find / -iname 'fan'

fintan2@fintanws2:~$ sudo find / -iname 'fan'
[sudo] password for fintan2:
/sys/bus/acpi/drivers/fan

it stops there, when closing the terminal it tells me that the processs "sudo" is still running.

[Fintan]

I had a look around. apart from cleaning the fan I saw read that reducing the cpu state by 1% helps a lot. I tried finding something for that with linux (Ubuntu) but could not find anything useful. Do you know of a script or applet which lets me change the cpu ste?

Is doing:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash pcie_aspm=force"

useful?

[SteveRiley]

Yeah, that could help...I've always forced ASPM, because detection sometimes fails. Another option would be to force the PState driver for the CPU:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash pcie_aspm=force intel_pstate=enable"

Fan issues can be notorious to control and often are specific to the kind of hardware you have. If you don't have anything fan-related in /proc, you might be out of luck...