/fan dir empty!

[Steve Stalcup]

Binary package hint: acpi

i upgraded my laptop (Dell Inspiron 6000) to feisty today. The fan has been running on med-hi since the upgrade was complete.

my /proc/acpi/fan dir is empty. I have used 5.04 /5.10 /6.06/ 6.10 on this lap top and have never had a fan issue.

[Matthew Gregg (mcg)]

I've noticed med-hi fans speeds on my Dell desktop with recent Feisty released. The fan sounds as if I've been working the CPU hard playing a game, but I haven't and no process is showing to be pegging the CPU.

I've run older Ubuntu releases on this machine without this issue. Possibly an ACPI problem?

[O Muxú (uriceira)]

I have the same situation of Stephen Stalcup: laptop Dell Inspiron 6000, feisty upgrade and /proc/acpi/fan empty.
I have tried to solve it loading all availables kernel's, but the result is always the same. I have seen that it could
be a problem related with the control of frequency scaling on the processor, maybe seem with Bug #36014.

I trie that:

kubuntu@kubuntu:~$ sudo modprobe acpi
FATAL: Error inserting acpi_cpufreq (/lib/modules/2.6.20-15-386/kernel/arch/i386/kernel/cpu/cpufreq/acpi-cpufreq.ko):
No such device

and that:

kubuntu@kubuntu:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/powernowd restart
powernowd: PowerNow Daemon v0.97, (c) 2003-2006 John Clemens
powernowd: Found 1 scalable unit: -- 1 'CPU' per scalable unit
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/cpuinfo_max_freq: No such file or directory

and that:

kubuntu@kubuntu:~$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure powernowd
 * Stopping powernowd: [ OK ]
 * Starting powernowd...
/etc/init.d/powernowd: 156: cannot create /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0//cpufreq/scaling_governor: Directory nonexistent
 * CPU frequency scaling not supported

but I am lost. Some idea?

Thanks very much.

[Ropetin Again (ropetin)]

It appears that I'm having this same issue;

Since upgrading my Dell Inspiron 9200 to Feisty, as soon as I do anything even remotely processor intensive (like running Konversation and Amarok at the same time), the fan kicks on full and stays on until I reboot. A dual boot machine, I can run the most intensive game in Windows and the fan rarely, if ever, kicks in this high.

Per the linked bug, someone else is suffering from this issue on a 9200, but that bug seems to be related to CPU scaling. My CPU scaling works, when set to dynamic it yo-yos between 600 and 1800, depending what I'm doing. I'm pretty confident CPU scaling is really working, not just looking like it is, because the bogomips in /proc/cpuinfo changes based on the scaling reported I've let it sit at 600 for as long as I can stand it after the fan kicks in, but it never shuts down. The laptop doesn't feel any hotter than normal, so I don't believe it genuinely needs the fan to be running at this point.

The processor is a Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.80GHz, with 512MB RAM, so isn't the latest and greatest, but isn't horrible.

[fejes (anthony-fejes)]

I'm also having a similar issue on my desktop machine - my fans are constantly running at full speed/volume, though my CPUs (AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4600+'s) are both scaling appropriately.

In fact, until upgrading to feisty, I did not have this issue - this machine was cool and quiet unless the load on it was elevated.

Otherwise, I'm not sure what information I can add to support this, but I'd be happy to add any logs that might be of use. Please let me know.

[Dan Lewis (actiondan)]

Exact same issue for me on a Dell Inspiron 9300. The fan spins up after something moderately intensive (like opening a busy website), and then never spins down again until a reboot or a hibernate-resume cycle.

Like the others, this issue started after installing feisty. Never had it before with edgy or any other distros, or with Windows. The fan dir is also empty.

[Jackd (jack-jacknet)]

I had problems with the laptop overheating and the fan being on highest all the time, what i did (i accept no responsibility if this buggers your machine :D) i blew into the fans vents while it was turned on and out come a big puff of dust, that seemed to fix the high speeds on my fan!

[Jesse Hansen (twindagger)]

I have this problem on a Dell Optiplex GX280. Just like Dan Lewis, all it takes is one intensive task and my computer leaves the fan on until I reboot.

[Jesse Hansen (twindagger)]

Forgot to mention I'm running Ubuntu Gutsy

[Davis Zanetti Cabral (daviscabral)]

I have this problem with Gutsy and Acer Aspire 5720.

[Davis Zanetti Cabral (daviscabral)]

Sorry, I have problems with fans (arent working).

[John Bradley Bulsterbaum (infinitelink)]

I don't know if this could add information/insight or not, but I also have fan issues on a Dell: if I resume (using either Ubuntu or Kubuntu) out of standby often, but not always, the fans kick-in to full speed and won't stop, and the whole computer slows to a snail's crawl (excruciatingly). I think there's a few error messages that if you're quick (and lucky) you can catch. I'm using an Inspiron 9100 with a P4 and 2GB of Ram. Might this be related? And if not...how does one figure-out if another bug report is already filed?

[Kissell (jeremy-kissell)]

I am also having this problem, on a Dell GX280.

The system is fine, until something causes the fan to speed up, then the fan always stays at whatever it's highest speed has been, it never slows back down, even if you leave the PC of for days doing nothing but sitting at the prompt.

A reboot fixes it, temporarily... until it happens again, but a reboot is necessary because it gets so annoying/loud at constant and sustained full speed.

This problem existed on Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 and still exists after installing Intrepid 8.10.

This thread is really old... any of you guys find a solution yet?

[Bob Hazard (junkbit)]

This happened to me...same powernowd errors etc, it turned out when I reset my BIOS a few months ago the default setting had INTEL EIST disabled. I found it in the overclocking section of my bios. It turns out EIST stands for speedstep:

Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/reseller/asmo-na/eng/203838.htm

When I enabled it in BIOS then powernowd daemon starts properly and the CPU frequency scaling applets show that it has dropped to 66% as it should.. AND MOST IMPORTANT BLESSED PEACE FROM THE FAN lol