Unmaintained and can crash, leaving fans at minimum speed

[Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty]

Hi there,

1) Ubuntu release: 20.04 LTS (Mint 20).
2) 0.6+repack1-2
3) Software controls fans correctly without any issues.
4) Software randomly crashes, leaving fans at minimum speed regardless of temps.

This package seems to have been unmaintained for several years - upstream repo at https://github.com/MikaelStrom/macfanctld hasn't been updated since 2013 and most forks don't fare any better.

On my period-correct Late 2013 Macbook Pro with Ubuntu 20.04 base (Mint 20) macfanctld has apparently crashed in the background several times when the system is under load. What's bad is that this leaves the fans stuck on minimum speed - seems the firmware isn't able to take over at this point. Fortunately, I have a temperature widget so I could see the temps were getting dangerously hot, but I can definitely see this cooking machines. What's worse is that this appears to work for hours or even days before crashing sometimes - it is hard to pin down.

Given the existence of another actively-maintained program in the repos - mbpfan https://github.com/linux-on-mac/mbpfan - with a solid compatibility list, I suggest removing this old program to avoid damaging people's hardware. I also imagine that given it didn't work properly on my old hardware, it has even more issues on newer machines. I have had no problems since switching to mbpfan.

Hamish
---
ProblemType: Bug
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27.16
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
CurrentDesktop: X-Cinnamon
DistroRelease: Linux Mint 20.1
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-02-11 (1110 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Linux Mint 18.3 "Sylvia" - Release amd64 20171124
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
Package: macfanctld 0.6+repack1-2 [origin: Ubuntu]
PackageArchitecture: amd64
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.4.0-66.74-generic 5.4.86
Tags: ulyssa third-party-packages
Uname: Linux 5.4.0-66-generic x86_64
UnreportableReason: This is not an official Linux package. Please remove any third party package and try again.
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
UserGroups: adm cdrom dialout dip kvm libvirt lpadmin plugdev sambashare sudo
_MarkForUpload: True

[Chris Guiver (guiverc)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better.

Please execute the following command only once, as it will automatically gather debugging information, in a terminal:

apport-collect 1916800

When reporting bugs in the future please use apport by using 'ubuntu-bug' and the name of the package affected. You can learn more about this functionality at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs.

Please note: `ubuntu-bug`, `apport` & bug reporting tools are provided with Ubuntu by default, many require manual addition for some releases of downstream OSes based on Ubuntu (eg. Linux Mint). You should check with your distribution first.

[Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty (hamishmb)]

apport information

[Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty (hamishmb)]

apport information

[Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty (hamishmb)]

apport information

[Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty (hamishmb)]

All done, hope this helps.

[Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty (hamishmb)]

Bump, something needs to be done about this.

[Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty (hamishmb)]

Bump again.