Fan doesn't switch on TOSHIBA L305D

[peterwil]

I have a TOSHIBA L305D-S5881. This runs Vista and Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.0.4
The laptop definitely overheats in Ubuntu only. ( Temps > 66 C with nothing running).
Overheating does not occur with Vista.

acpi -t ( reports temps > 66 C ).

Installed acpitool to force Fan on . ie ( acpitool -F 1 ) ( option only for Toshiba).

The output is "Forcing the fan of/off is only supported on Toshiba laptops.
No Toshiba ACPI extensions were found. "

Please advise

Thanks
Peter William

[peterwil (peter-william)]

Upgraded to Jaunty and temps start a bit lower now..
But still spikes to 75C.. from time to time..
Is this normal ?

And fan default status is still OFF.
Please make this work for Toshiba users..

Are Toshiba extensions available for Jaunty users?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

[Wouter de Groot (donteatcheese)]

Same machine, also having temperature issues, running jaunty x86-64.
The reason acpitool doesn't work is that it requires the toshiba_acpi kernel module, which does not work for this model, apparently.

Fan control seems to be hit and miss. Sometimes the fan will not spin faster when it really should be, sometimes it starts spinning fast and does not slow down again until I suspend and resume the machine. I have no idea how to manually tell the fan to do something.

[peterwil (peter-william)]

Yes I installed acpitool under jaunty.. It has an option to force the
fan ON but it complained that the toshiba_acpi kernel extensions were
not installed .... We have to figure out a way to modify this ..
Also in my dmesg output I see Thermal Zone critical setting at 105C but
I don't see passive temperature settings at all..

Wouter de Groot wrote:
> Same machine, also having temperature issues, running jaunty x86-64.
> The reason acpitool doesn't work is that it requires the toshiba_acpi kernel module, which does not work for this model, apparently.
>
> Fan control seems to be hit and miss. Sometimes the fan will not spin
> faster when it really should be, sometimes it starts spinning fast and
> does not slow down again until I suspend and resume the machine. I have
> no idea how to manually tell the fan to do something.
>
>

--

[Jeremy Foshee (jeremyfoshee)]

Hi peterwil,

This bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? Can you try with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO CD images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/ .

If it remains an issue, could you run the following command from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal). It will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report.

apport-collect -p linux 382806

Also, if you could test the latest upstream kernel available that would be great. It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text. Please let us know your results.

Thanks in advance.

[This is an automated message. Apologies if it has reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[Michael Carr (cstrife89)]

Same issue, slightly different machine, and still occurring in Lucid Lynx (x86-64). My Satellite is an L305D-S5897. There are no issues with the fan in Windows Vista.

Wouter de Groot wrote:
"Fan control seems to be hit and miss. Sometimes the fan will not spin faster when it really should be, sometimes it starts spinning fast and does not slow down again until I suspend and resume the machine. I have no idea how to manually tell the fan to do something."

[peterwil (peter-william)]

Hi Jeremy,
Thanks for your note. Sorry about checking this out after so long.
I spent many days trying to understand this problem.
A few months ago I even recompiled my kernel and the problem is still there.

Temps are running distinctly higher than Vista. My Toshiba laptop doesn't shutdown but definitely
runs hotter than normal.

The last compile compile ( from maybe 6 months ago) which I am currently still running is 2.6.30 with the acpi="Linux" added in the
/boot/grub/menu.lst.

I haven't tried out Ubuntu 10 version.

Have you guys changed anything in the acpi module for the latest kernel.. ?

Thanks and best regards
Peter

[peterwil (peter-william)]

Hello there Wouter after quite some time...
Did you get your Toshiba L305 working right with Ubuntu.
Just this morning I posted a response to the bug report..

https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/500666

Pl. see..
Cheers and best regards
Peter

Wouter de Groot wrote:
> Same machine, also having temperature issues, running jaunty x86-64.
> The reason acpitool doesn't work is that it requires the toshiba_acpi kernel module, which does not work for this model, apparently.
>
> Fan control seems to be hit and miss. Sometimes the fan will not spin
> faster when it really should be, sometimes it starts spinning fast and
> does not slow down again until I suspend and resume the machine. I have
> no idea how to manually tell the fan to do something.
>
>

[peterwil (peter-william)]

Wow! I have GREAT NEWS regarding my Toshiba Laptop L305-S5881.
I struggled with this issue since I bought the laptop in '08 October.
Reported it a number of issues. Tried
i) Hardy - Ubuntu 8 (temps > 75C ) , then
ii) Jaunty - Ubuntu 9.0.4( temps <65 but definitely still hot )
iii) compiled the 2.6.30 kernel and installed the image all to no avail
then gave up the idea of running Ubuntu solely on this laptop, being aware
that the laptop could fry over.
Last week dual booted Vista crashed - had to recover my email from thunderbird and
then decided to look into Ubuntu again based on Jeremy's email a couple of months ago.
After looking through the acpi module source code -noticed a patch was introduced in sleep.c
referencing "Toshiba Satellite L300" to set the EIN bit ,
changed this string to "Toshiba Satellite L305" and recompiled
Kernel.. Still no difference.

Then did an upgrade to 9.10 . After the upgrade and a reboot VOILA !
i) My Fn keys are working. Suspend actuallly WORKS! .. It never did. always had to power down the switch
to make it recover from either Suspend to RAM or Hibernate. -dmesg always showed errors in ACPI .
ii) And then the magic .. acpi -t shows 45 C... !!! This laptop has never showed this reading after 10 mins.
of usage before this.

So fellow Ubuntu aficianados! using Toshiba Laptops L305D or similar
models.

Please try out the generic kernel 2.6.31-22 ( 9.10 upgrade ). The overheating and the Suspend issues
are definitely fixed for this model in this release.

My salutations to the developer/s who fixed this most annoying bug/bugs which almost rendered the
Laptop unusable on Ubuntu.. It would have perhaps taken my weeks of ploughing through the
ACPI modules ( sleep.c, fan.c etc ) to try and fix this monster.! Not to mention the 1 hour kernel compile
on each change!.. Glad I can get back to the application space!.

Cheers and best regards
Peter William

[Fabio Marconi (fabiomarconi)]

Hello peterwil

Then you are telling that with kernel 2.6.31.22 (without recompile) this issue is not present, instead in the Lucid's kernel (2.6.32.21 to .24) the problem is present (regression release)?
thanks for the reply
Fabio

[peterwil (peter-william)]

Bonjorno Fabio,

Yes I can accurately attest that my laptop ( L305D -S5881 AMD 64 bit) is
working very well without overheating and that suspend/resume works very
well. This never happened before for over 1.5 years.
Even my compiled kernel 2.6.30 couldn't get the suspend/resume or Fn
keys to work right.

The most crucial step was upgrade to 9.10 which runs
   -- 2.6.31-22-generic #61-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jul 28 02:02:56 UTC 2010
x86_64 GNU/Linux.

Please try downgrading to the 9.10 with this kernel and hopefully you
will have success.
Prior to this I felt Ubuntu was unusable! since the overheating was a
bit too much. If you touched the laptop
your hand would feel as though you have touched a hot plate !.

Thanks for letting me know that Lucid has this problem.. which means I
will not upgrade until someone confirms that
it is ok.!

Cheers and good luck
Peter

Fabio Marconi wrote:
> *** This bug is a duplicate of bug 500666 ***
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/500666
>
> Hello peterwil
>
> Then you are telling that with kernel 2.6.31.22 (without recompile) this issue is not present, instead in the Lucid's kernel (2.6.32.21 to .24) the problem is present (regression release)?
> thanks for the reply
> Fabio
>
>

[Fabio Marconi (fabiomarconi)]

Hello peterwill

sorry i don't explain well,
I want to know from someone if Lucid's kernel is working well, because Michael Carr (#5) said ''Same issue, slightly different machine, and still occurring in Lucid Lynx ''.
So can someone tell something about Toshiba and Lucid ?
Thanks
Fabio

[peterwil (peter-william)]

Fabio,
ok I see.. I have not run Lucid's kernel so cannot advise on that..
I will not be changing my setup anytime soon since it took so long to
have a good working Ubuntu OS
for this laptop model.

Good luck
Peter
Fabio Marconi wrote:
> Hello peterwill
>
> sorry i don't explain well,
> I want to know from someone if Lucid's kernel is working well, because Michael Carr (#5) said ''Same issue, slightly different machine, and still occurring in Lucid Lynx ''.
> So can someone tell something about Toshiba and Lucid ?
> Thanks
> Fabio
>
>

[Michael Carr (cstrife89)]

Things are better but still seem a little iffy with 10.04. About five hours ago, I did a clean install of 10.04.1, and found that the Brightness Fn-keys worked, the fan seemed to work right (sped up and slowed down as necessary, just as well as it does in the stock OS, Windows Vista), and Suspend worked like a charm (even the Fn-key shortcut). I set up some of my usual programs, installed some updates, rebooted, and .....

.... the Brightness keys aren't doing anything, and the fan is erratic - it wouldn't run for a little while, then suddenly went to FULL BLAST, a noisy ordeal even if it did provide some necessary cooling. What's more, the fan refused to slow down even when it was clearly blowing out cool-ish air. Suspend is still working right, though (including the Fn-key shortcut), and is currently the only way to make the fan quiet down. It is behaving normally at this moment, so far.

Currently I am running kernel 2.6.32-24-generic. Despite my system's* 64 bit CPU, I am using the 32 bit version of the OS.

Please note that this is only the second time I've booted into Ubuntu since installing it again, so things may stabilize somehow. Just wanted to let y'all know.

*As mentioned in post 5, my system is a Toshiba Satellite L305D-S5897.

[Fabio Marconi (fabiomarconi)]

Hello Michael
attach here
/var/log/apt/history.log
Thanks

[Michael Carr (cstrife89)]

@Fabio Marconi

Done. Here's to resolving this once and for all. :)

[Fabio Marconi (fabiomarconi)]

Start-Date: 2010-08-16 09:51:33
Purge: linux-headers-generic (2.6.32.24.25), linux-headers-2.6.32-21 (2.6.32-21.32), linux-headers-2.6.32-24 (2.6.32-24.39), linux-headers-2.6.32-21-generic (2.6.32-21.32), linux-headers-2.6.32-24-generic (2.6.32-24.39)
End-Date: 2010-08-16 09:51:36

Start-Date: 2010-08-16 09:51:37
Install: linux-headers-generic (2.6.32.24.25), linux-headers-2.6.32-24 (2.6.32-24.39), linux-headers-2.6.32-24-generic (2.6.32-24.39)
End-Date: 2010-08-16 09:51:54

[Fabio Marconi (fabiomarconi)]

Hello Michael Carr

Try readding this from synaptic:

linux-headers-2.6.32-21
linux-headers-2.6.32-21-generic

[Jeremy Foshee (jeremyfoshee)]

This bug report was marked as Incomplete and has not had any updated comments for quite some time. As a result this bug is being closed. Please reopen if this is still an issue in the current Ubuntu development release http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ . Also, please be sure to provide any requested information that may have been missing. To reopen the bug, click on the current status under the Status column and change the status back to "New". Thanks.

[This is an automated message. Apologies if it has reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]