Thinkpad Edge 11 fan is too loud

[Maximilian Fellner]

The fan of a Lenovo Thinkpad Edge 11 using an Intel chipset is running at a constant speed no matter the system load or whether the laptop is plugged in or running on battery.

The fan is especially annoying when the system is idle.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: linux-image-2.6.35-22-generic-pae 2.6.35-22.35
Regression: No
Reproducible: Yes
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-22.35-generic-pae 2.6.35.4
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-22-generic-pae i686
AlsaVersion: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.23.
Architecture: i386
ArecordDevices:
 **** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
 card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: CONEXANT Analog [CONEXANT Analog]
   Subdevices: 1/1
   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC0: max 1758 F.... pulseaudio
 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p: max 1758 F...m pulseaudio
CRDA: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
Card0.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:0 'Intel'/'HDA Intel at 0xf0700000 irq 48'
   Mixer name : 'Intel IbexPeak HDMI'
   Components : 'HDA:14f15066,17aa21c8,00100302 HDA:80862804,80860101,00100000'
   Controls : 20
   Simple ctrls : 12
Card29.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:29 'ThinkPadEC'/'ThinkPad Console Audio Control at EC reg 0x30, fw 86HT19WW-1.165000'
   Mixer name : 'ThinkPad EC 86HT19WW-1.165000'
   Components : ''
   Controls : 1
   Simple ctrls : 1
Card29.Amixer.values:
 Simple mixer control 'Console',0
   Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined penum
   Playback channels: Mono
   Mono: Playback [on]
Date: Tue Nov 2 22:02:06 2010
HibernationDevice: RESUME=UUID=720a13ce-8418-4705-9a4f-7f0fc5f5293e
HotplugNewDevices:

HotplugNewMounts:

InstallationMedia: Kubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release i386 (20101007)
MachineType: LENOVO 03284MG
ProcCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-generic-pae root=UUID=c8ce4f61-c063-4ed5-94b4-f9ceaa20a543 ro quiet splash
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=de_AT
 LANG=de_AT.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
RelatedPackageVersions: linux-firmware 1.38
SourcePackage: linux
Symptom: storage
UdevMonitorLog:
 monitor will print the received events for:
 UDEV - the event which udev sends out after rule processing
UdisksMonitorLog: Monitoring activity from the disks daemon. Press Ctrl+C to cancel.
dmi.bios.date: 08/10/2010
dmi.bios.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.bios.version: 86ET19WW (1.03 )
dmi.board.name: 03284MG
dmi.board.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.board.version: Not Available
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: No Asset Information
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.chassis.version: Not Available
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnLENOVO:bvr86ET19WW(1.03):bd08/10/2010:svnLENOVO:pn03284MG:pvrThinkPadEdge:rvnLENOVO:rn03284MG:rvrNotAvailable:cvnLENOVO:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
dmi.product.name: 03284MG
dmi.product.version: ThinkPad Edge
dmi.sys.vendor: LENOVO

[Victor Vargas (kamus)]

I have reassigned this issue to Linux kernel package for you

[Benjamin Schmid (benbuntu)]

I share the same problem, though on an Edge 11" AMD Neo II (K325) with Ubuntu 10.10 on 2.6.35-24 i386.

Running powertop indicates, that the kernel schedule may be one cause for this as it leads to many wakeup events per second.

Here a snapshot extract with an idiling Laptop playing a MP3 file over WLAN. Most of the time the kernel seems to be busy playing with himself. Maybe this leads to the fan running all the time?

P-states (frequencies)
  1300 Mhz 7.2%
  1100 Mhz 0.0%
   800 Mhz 92.8%
Disk accesses:
Wakeups-from-idle per second : 355.6 interval: 15.0s
Power usage (ACPI estimate): 10.9W (1.0 hours)
Top causes for wakeups:
  49.5% (313.0) [Rescheduling interrupts] <kernel IPI>
  19.7% (124.3) [kernel scheduler] Load balancing tick
   7.4% ( 46.6) [ehci_hcd:usb1, ehci_hcd:usb2, wlan0] <interrupt>
   3.9% ( 24.9) totem
   3.5% ( 22.1) alsa-sink
   3.0% ( 18.9) [extra timer interrupt]
   2.1% ( 13.3) USB device 2-2 : USB2.0-CRW (Generic)
   2.1% ( 13.1) [kernel core] hrtimer_start (tick_sched_timer)
   2.0% ( 12.7) firefox-bin
   1.6% ( 10.0) [kernel core] rtl8169_phy_timer (rtl8169_phy_timer)
   1.5% ( 9.5) ktpacpi_nvramd
   0.8% ( 5.0) syndaemon

[Benjamin Schmid (benbuntu)]

Hence this bug MAY be a duplicate of Bug #524281 and Bug #552020

[Felix Meyer (020felix)]

I've the same problem on my Edge 11 AMD K325

[Ulf Klose (ulf-klose)]

Same problem over here with the AMD Dual Core.

[Julian Viereck (julian-viereck)]

To get rid of this problem, I managed to control the fan by writing a small script. I got the background on how to do this by reading the wikipage in [1] (if you're not German, translate.google.com is your friend ;)). In short, here are the steps I've done:

- enable fan control by adding "options thinkpad_acpi experimental=1 fan_control=1" into "/etc/modprobe.d/thinkpad_acpi.conf"
- you can read the temperature values by executing $ cat /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal
- you can set the level of the fan by executing $ echo "level x" | sudo tee /proc/acpi/ibm/fan, where "x" is the level you want your fan to set to.

It turned out, that on my Edge the level 1 was equal to level 4, 2 = 5, 3 = 6. This means there are 5 different states for the fan

    level 0 < level 1 < level 2 < level 3 < level 7

 where level 0 means the fan is powered of, level 7 means the fan is rotating at full speed.

The script I wrote read the thermal information and based on that set the fan's level. This is by far not a perfect solution, very dangerous as you can overheat your Edge (!!!) but I hope worth sharing.

[1]: http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Thinkpad_ACPI

[Jeremy Foshee (jeremyfoshee)]

Hi Maximilian,

If you could also please 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.]

[Markus Michels (michels-markus)]

Same symptoms here, Edge 11 K325 with Maverick x64 behaving like a BBQ even in idle state... Will also check mainline kernel during the next days...

[Markus Michels (michels-markus)]

Checked mainline kernel 2.6.36, unfortunately it did not change the situation...

[Walter Nuss (walt-nuss)]

Thank you, Julian Viereck.
I have written script for automatic fan-control. Maybe, somebody can use it.
But WARNING it is not perfect and this script cause damage your Thinkpad through overheating. I would reccomend to use it only as a pattern, not more..

while [ 1 ]
do
temperatur=$(cat /sys/devices/platform/thinkpad_hwmon/temp1_input)
echo $temperatur
if [ $temperatur -gt 53000 ]
then
echo "level 1" | sudo tee /proc/acpi/ibm/fan
if [ $temperatur -gt 60000 ]
then
echo "level 2" | sudo tee /proc/acpi/ibm/fan
if [ $temperatur -gt 75000 ]
then
echo "level auto" | sudo tee /proc/acpi/ibm/fan
fi
else
echo "level 0" | sudo tee /proc/acpi/ibm/fan
fi
sleep 10
done

[Walter Nuss (walt-nuss)]

Oh sorry.. I have forgoten to write, that you should add the string "options thinkpad_acpi experimental=1 fan_control=1" in /etc/modprobe.d/thinkpad_acpi.conf to use this scpript. Good luck!

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for linux (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]