iMac6,1: macfanctld does not adjust fan speed at all

[deutrino]

dmidecode -s "system-product-name" reveals I am using an iMac6,1 (Core 2 Duo, white plastic). This is on Mint 17.1 "Rebecca," 32-bit Xfce version.

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS

1. Set a minimum fan speed in /etc/macfanctld.conf. Play with all other variables, include, exclude, etc all you want.
2. macfanctld never alters the fan speed from the minimum.

WHAT I EXPECT TO HAPPEN

1. macfanctld should alter fan speed in accordance with the settings in /etc/macfanctld.conf.

[Naël (nathanael-naeri)]

Gordon, are you still using this computer and still having this issue? Did you find the cause and/or a solution?

There are other reports of macfanctld not working as the user wishes on early-2006 to mid-2011 iMac models. I believe most of them stem from the fact that these models have three fans (HDD, ODD, CPU) and macfanctld can only drive two fans. If the CPU fan is not among the two identified fans, computational load can drive the CPU into overload and make the SMC drive the fans at maximum speed.

Or did you change the hard disk drive and forgot to put the HDD temperature sensor in place?

[Ricardo (rikrdo89)]

I have the exact same issue, using an iMac11,3 kernel 4.18.0 ubuntu 18.04.

macfanctld only detects two 2 fans, (it fails to detect the HDD fan), and there is not way to control the speed of this fan that keeps ramping up to full speed, even though I am running Ubuntu from an external hard drive.