Comment 22 for bug 1179282

I am experiencing similar hiccups when using i8kutils.

I was looking through the i8kmon script, and it doesn't seem that reading the fan speed is strictly mandatory. While reading from /proc/i8k in the read_i8k_status function performs the i8k_smm reads for all attributes, it's possible to selectively choose all fields except the speed by calling i8kctl instead of reading from /proc/i8k. In other words, modifying the read_i8k_status function in the i8kmon script can eliminate most of the slow i8k_smm calls, without needing to mess with the driver. Obviously, there is no way to bypass the long i8k_smm call when setting the state of the fan (to 0, 1, or 2) but this doesn't happen on a periodic update basis.

-TomL