Ubuntu
macfanctld package

  1. Bug #1916800
  2. Comment #0

Comment 0 for bug 1916800

Revision history for this message
Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty (hamishmb) wrote :

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