8

Can you help me with finding all the hardware information (parameters) and configuration files about the fan in my laptop?
I'm interested of the fan's parameters and configuration files that I can edit and change those parameters to have the most possible control over the fan. I used sudo lshw | grep fan and it didn't find it.
I remember the sentence "Everything in Unix is a file" so there should be files with the information I'm looking for and commands that are able to extract the information from those files.

Linux kernel communicate with the hardware, so part of the information could be pulled out from there?

Here is the link to sensors-detect output ending with error message.

$ dmesg | grep fan
[    0.281316] fan PNP0C0B:00: registered as cooling_device0
[    0.281534] fan PNP0C0B:01: registered as cooling_device1

In /proc/acpi there is a lot of information. What are the fan parameters I can control (state, speed, scheduling)? And where are the files that I can edit the fan parameters?

Improve this question
8
  • What OS do you use?
    – tshepang
    Apr 9, 2011 at 17:29
  • I use Linux OS.
    – xralf
    Apr 9, 2011 at 17:34
  • 2
    Have you tried lm-sensors? There is a sensors-detect script.
    – forcefsck
    Apr 9, 2011 at 17:37
  • sensors-detect offers me more information than I need. Which information is particularly about the fan (parameters and configuration)?
    – xralf
    Apr 9, 2011 at 17:41
  • 2
    @ralf - what is the problem with more information? You can easily pull out the info from sensors-detect. Read linux.die.net/man/5/sensors.conf for some guidelines
    – Rory Alsop
    Apr 9, 2011 at 22:58

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
1

You might want to take a look at this script, which controls the settings for your model of fan: http://electronpusher.org/~rachel/acerfand

Improve this answer
5
  • Could you please explain how this script works? I'm using Acer Travelmate (not Acer Aspire). Is it OK?
    – xralf
    Apr 15, 2011 at 7:49
  • I wasn't saying that this script will solve your problem. I was pointing to this script because it demonstrates how to fiddle with your fans settings. That is, you can learn the commands that you can use to alter various fan settings by reading through the script, and seeing how they did it.
    – J. Taylor
    Apr 20, 2011 at 7:41
  • I haven't found the commands or configuration files that are working on my system. The script uses /etc/acerfand.conf, acer_ec.pl. I need to be able after this question to find all configuration and information about the fan (it doesn't matter if it will be in kernel, but it should be possible to find on every system)
    – xralf
    Apr 20, 2011 at 9:11
  • @xralf It looks like you need to donwload acer_ec.pl and create the config file /etc/acerfad.conf yourself if you want any custom settings (that file is not required). Of course you don't have it on your system by default, you would have to create it if you want to modify the default behavior of the script. Here are some instructions and downloads for acer_ec.pl and acerfand.
    – Caleb
    Apr 20, 2011 at 13:47
  • Thank you, but notice that this is not the exact answer to my question. It means I should look for the configuration files in acerfand? If it was a source code it would be possible, but it's a binary file.
    – xralf
    Apr 20, 2011 at 14:25
0

I would suggest dmidecode -s but here is the link what you are REALLY hunting for. For ALL your information needs... Leave a comment if its not a ball park what you are looking for so we can narrow down what it is you actually looking for.

Improve this answer
2
  • Thank you but I can't find there nothing about the fan. I'm interested of the fan's parameters and configuration files that I can edit and change those parameters to have the most possible control over the fan. I used sudo lshw | grep fan and it didn't find it. But command aren't so important. I remember the sentence "Everything in unix is a file" so there should be files with the information I'm looking for.
    – xralf
    Apr 15, 2011 at 7:19
  • dmesg is on a good way. /proc seems to have the information inside but I'd like to be able to locate it and be sure that it's all that controls the fan.
    – xralf
    Apr 15, 2011 at 7:35

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .