setting up fancontrol is way too hard

[Robert Persson]

Binary package hint: lm-sensors

To get fancontrol set up you need to follow howtos such as http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=42737 which involve a lot of command line stuff. Not only is this inherently difficult for non-techies, it is also not at all obvious how to find such a howto in the first place unless you already know that you need to search google for the word "fancontrol". Chances are that your average non-techie would simply assume that nothing could be done about the fan noise, and would either put up with it or would return to Windows for a bit of peace and quiet. Even I, who have installed Ubuntu in its various incarnations umpteen times, still need to dig out one of these howtos each time because I can never remember all the steps.

Two things are need to remedy this:
1. It should be possible to configure fancontrol in an intuitive way via the GUI. There should be a fancontrol in the System-->Administration menu.
2. The Ubuntu installer should offer to help you set up fancontrol without being prompted.

[Robert Persson (ireneshusband)]

Oops! Made a couple of typos. Last paragraph should have read:

Two things are needed to remedy this:
1. It should be possible to configure fancontrol in an intuitive way via the GUI. There should be a fancontrol front end in the System-->Administration menu.
2. The Ubuntu installer should offer to help you set up fancontrol without being prompted.

[omac777 (uticdmarceau2007)]

First off I just want to say ubuntu rocks!

This bug came about because I did an update from ubuntu 9.04 to ubuntu 9.10 and the fancontrol stopped working and now the fan is running at its maximum noisy speed. This bug isn't the most critical because the machine is still running, but it is highly irritable for anyone with sensitive hearing.

sensors-detect found it87 chipset on the motherboard,
but pwmconfig did not see a loaded it87 device driver so it reported:
/usr/sbin/pwmconfig: No sensors found! (modprobe sensor modules?)

In dmesg it says:
it87: Found IT8705F chip at 0x290, revision 3
(09:53:31 AM) omac: [ 557.065124] ACPI: I/O resource it87 [0x295-0x296] conflicts with ACPI region IP__ [0x295-0x296]
(09:53:31 AM) omac: [ 557.065130] ACPI: If an ACPI driver is available for this device, you should use it instead of the native driver.

From what I understand, the address memory it87 wanted has already been allocated to the ACPI device driver.
But I don't know how to load/use the relevant acpi-it87 driver.

Thank you for listening.