cannot read or control fan speed on XPS M1330 since 11.10

[Kevin]

I've recently upgraded my M1330 from Kubuntu 10.10 to 11.10 but the outer fan has been completely unresponsive since the new install. This causes the bios to constantly throttle the CPU down to 1GHz, and if I manually allow the governor to go to 1.83GHz on demand (with the processor.ignore_ppc=1 boot flag) it often hits the critical 87° and simply shuts down, usually within 30 seconds of starting any reasonably computationally intensive task.

I've tried to address the issue using i8kutils but I do not only get bogus fan speed output but also no reaction from the outer fan at all:
> sudo modprobe i8k
FATAL: Error inserting i8k (/lib/modules/3.0.0-12-generic/kernel/drivers/char/i8k.ko): No such device
> sudo modprobe i8k force=1
> i8kctl
1.0 (null) HJY5X3J 60 -1 0 27660 0 0 -1
> i8kfan
-1 0
> i8kfan 2 2
-1 2
# but when I call i8kfan again immediately afterwards:
> i8kfan
-1 0

When I call i8kctl repeatedly I always get
1.0 (null) HJY5X3J 62 -1 0 27660 0 0 -1
with the occasional:
1.0 (null) HJY5X3J 63 -1 2 27660 57840 0 -1
thrown in, so something's trying to control the fan but to no effect. It's not i8kmon because that's not even running.

If I load i8k with fan_mult=1 I simply get smaller values, i.e. either
1.0 (null) HJY5X3J 58 -1 0 922 0 0 -1
or
1.0 (null) HJY5X3J 60 -1 2 922 1928 0 -1

As I said it's a brand new fresh 11.10 install:
Linux dusty 3.0.0-12-generic #20-Ubuntu SMP Fri Oct 7 14:50:42 UTC 2011 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
i8kctl v1.5 10/11/2001

I was running 10.10 until last week where the fan worked flawlessly (and loudly), I'm also on the most recent BIOS (A15).

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Adam Porter (alphapapa)]

I am having a similar problem, but it's a bit different. When I upgraded from 11.10 Oneiric to 12.04 Precise, I started getting overheating and throttling. I've used Ubuntu on this M1330 since 8.04 Hardy and never had a problem before.

After upgrading, the fan always runs at its lower speed setting. I can force the fan to speed up using i8kfan, but it only lasts for a moment, then it goes back to low speed. This happens even when the GPU is over 95C, when the fans should be running at top speed.

I noticed that if I power off the system and then turn it back on, if the system is still hot, the fan will run at high speed like it's supposed to. But after booting and logging into X and KDE, after the system cools and the fan slows, the fan will never speed up again, even when it should. If I reboot instead of power-cycling, the fan doesn't speed up--only if I power-cycle it while it's still hot.

I thought it must be an NVIDIA driver problem. I've tried different versions, even using Xorg and nvidia-current from Oneiric, but it didn't change anything. I'm even running a 3.0.0 kernel from Oneiric, but that made no difference either.

I even upgraded the BIOS from A12 to A15, but that didn't change anything either.

It's so weird! It's like upgrading to Precise caused the BIOS-level fan control to not work properly anymore, but that makes no sense. I've read claims that the thermal pads/paste in the M1330 degrade and can be replaced, but the problem I'm having is simply that the fan isn't running at the proper speed when the system heats up. If the fan would remain at high speed when the system is hot, it wouldn't overheat and wouldn't throttle the CPU.

The throttling behavior is also strange. There is no single GPU nor CPU temperature that causes the throttling to begin or to end. Sometimes the GPU can reach 100C before it happens, and sometimes it only takes 92C. Sometimes it stops throttling when the GPU hits 87C, other times it waits until it hits 82C. The CPU temps also vary a lot. It's wildly inconsistent. It's as if there's not a computer controlling it, but a moody human.

Perhaps I can use the i8kmon daemon to force the fan to stay at high speed when the temperature is hot by reducing the i8kmon interval to a small enough setting that it will override whatever is causing the fan to slow down again--but that seems like a nasty hack. People were doing that years ago to force the fan to run at lower speeds after the NVIDIA 8400M fiasco, but I think that was made unnecessary by the BIOS and NVIDIA driver updates.

I'm pretty much out of ideas now. I can't figure out why the system won't speed up the fan anymore. I never had any throttling or overheating or low-fan-speed-only problems until a few months ago, after upgrading to Precise.

It seems like now I'm stuck with a laptop that can't handle max CPU usage for any period of time without being throttled down to 800 MHz--which makes the whole system very, very slow. And it used to work fine.

[Ole Sandum (sandum)]

Fwiw, I face the exact same symptoms on Fedora 17, and it has been like that since I was about Fedora 15 I guess.

Cleaning and re-pasting the heatpipe-to-GPU-and-CPU-assembly did at least alleviate the problem somewhat, i.e. the CPU gets to do a lot more before being throttled down, even with the slow, and it's a darn cheap "upgrade" anyway.

[vitorafsr (vitorafsr)]

Hello.

Kevin (lionandoil), could you please post the text of your file '/etc/default/i8kmon' here?

[Kevin (lionandoil)]

Hello,

I'm away from my machine for the next two months but I'll post it as soon as I get back! Should the i8kmon config affect the behaviour of i8kctl though if i8kmon itself isn't running?

[vitorafsr (vitorafsr)]

I thought i8kmon was in fact running but was not seem as it is initialized as a system process, and not a user process. But as you say it is not running, lets move on.

To investigate a little more, let me ask another question: when 'i8kfan 2 2' is executed, does the fan at least begin to function loudly? I know you said 'no reaction from the outer fan at all', but in this case, the problem is not a bug in i8kutils. That might be a hardware problem.

If the fan at least begin to function, then i8kfan can control the fan, and i8kmon can do its job. It is just a case to detect who is turning the fan off.

Just to take note, if the BIOS was the responsible for the fan, then the fan should have been working properly as in the previous instalation of Kubuntu 10.10. But it is not! So I supose there are another program that was installed at Kubuntu 10.10, which is not installed in Kubuntu 11.10. That might be fancontrol, lm-sensors, etc.