installing thinkfan package does not make thinkfan usable

[Christopher Barrington-Leigh]

Binary package hint: thinkfan

Upon installing thinkfan, nothing happens any differently.
Running thinkfan produces the following. I think the necessary modprobe mods are needed as part of the package installation.
(Alternatively/as well, I think it's a bug on my Lenovo T410s that under 11.04 the fan stays on the whole time.)

sudo thinkfan

WARNING: Using default temperature inputs in /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal.
WARNING: You have not provided any correction values for any sensor, and your fan will only start at 50 °C. This can be dangerous for your hard drive.
Config as read from /etc/thinkfan.conf:
Fan level Low High
 0 0 50
 1 44 56
 2 47 59
 3 51 62
 4 56 65
 5 59 66
 7 63 32767
Module thinkpad_acpi doesn't seem to support fan_control

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: thinkfan 0.7.1-2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.42-generic 2.6.38.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-8-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Mon May 23 07:35:48 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release amd64 (20110427.1)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_CA:en
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_CA.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: thinkfan
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[mejo (jonas-freesources)]

the kernel modules thinkpad_acpi requires a kernel option in order to support fan control. Simply add a new file /etc/modprobe.d/thinkfan.conf with the following content:

options thinkpad_acpi fan_control=1

See /usr/share/doc/thinkfan/README.Debian for more information.

[Christopher Barrington-Leigh (cpbl)]

Hi, yes, I know. But isn't this true for all installations? So my point is that it should be done by apt. Installing the package currently fails to implement thinkfan.

That's what I meant by:

> I think the necessary modprobe mods are needed as part of the package installation.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Evgeni Golov (evgeni)]

This works on non-Thinkpads without fan_control=1.
Additionally, it wouldn't help, as the module is most probably loaded and the option would only be used on the next reboot.

[mejo (jonas-freesources)]

In case that non-Thinkpad systems don't suffer from fan_control=1, I'd suggest to add it nonetheless. After all a working thinkfan after next reboot is better than nothing.

[Fredrik Wendt (fredrik-wendt)]

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thinkfan/+bug/787697 discusses this as well.

[gcc (chris+ubuntu-qwirx)]

Re #5, adding the modprobe.d file should not affect platforms where the thinkpad_acpi module is not loaded/used.

Re #6, we can just reload the thinkpad_acpi module after installation, only if it's loaded.

[Evgeni Golov (evgeni)]

You cannot just reload the module, in most cases it will be "in use" by some ACPI daemon or somesuch, and thus not unloadable.

I would also very much like not to override the decision of the thinkpad_acpi author to disable fan_contol by default.

[Yves Dorfsman (dorfsmay)]

On Ubuntu 16.04, I added the following line to /etc/thinkfan.conf

    hwmon /sys/devices/virtual/hwmon/hwmon0/temp1_input

Solved the issue. I can now hear myself think, and heavy usage (like compiling big source trees) makes the fan kicks in as expected. I expect this to have a very significant positive impact on my battery life!

[robin (robinp)]

I installed thinkfan too, no change.

I tried
$ systemctl status thinkfan.service

and got:

● thinkfan.service - simple and lightweight fan control program
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/thinkfan.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: inactive (dead)

so I restarted the service then checked the status and got:

● thinkfan.service - simple and lightweight fan control program
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/thinkfan.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Fri 2020-04-03 20:37:52 NZDT; 3s ago
  Process: 6662 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/thinkfan $DAEMON_ARGS (code=exited, status=4)

Apr 03 20:37:52 darwin systemd[1]: thinkfan.service: Control process exited, code=exited status=4
Apr 03 20:37:52 darwin thinkfan[6662]: WARNING: Using default temperature inputs in /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal.
Apr 03 20:37:52 darwin systemd[1]: thinkfan.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Apr 03 20:37:52 darwin thinkfan[6662]: /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal: No such file or directory
Apr 03 20:37:52 darwin thinkfan[6662]: add_sensor: Error getting temperature.
Apr 03 20:37:52 darwin thinkfan[6662]: /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal: No such file or directory
Apr 03 20:37:52 darwin thinkfan[6662]: Error parsing temperatures:
Apr 03 20:37:52 darwin thinkfan[6662]: readconfig: Error getting temperature.
Apr 03 20:37:52 darwin systemd[1]: Failed to start simple and lightweight fan control program.
Apr 03 20:37:52 darwin thinkfan[6662]: Refusing to run without usable config file!

Looking in /proc/acpi/ibm/ , there is no "thermal" node.

ubuntu 18.04.4, thinkpad t420

[Lukasz Marcinowski (nowymarluk)]

I added a module configuration in

/etc/modprobe.d/thinkfan.conf :

        options thinkpad_acpi fan_control=1 experimental=1

to make it work.