Fan speed control/thinkfan

Introduction
Thinkfan is a fan controlling deamon provided by and is aimed specifically towards IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad laptops. It can read multiple sensors, but control only a single fan.

Kernel configuration
The kernel needs to have the Thinkpad ACPI driver configured:

This will create a module called thinkpad_acpi, which needs to be configured to allow for controlling a fan.

Edit or create as follows:

Most Thinkpads provide as a path to the fan device.

Manual fan control
It is possible to manually control the fan speed:

There are a few special values:
 * level auto: the fan RPM is controlled by the BIOS
 * level full-speed: the maximum speed while being monitored
 * level disengaged: even faster, where the controller does not monitor the fan speed.

Thinkfan software installation
Automatic speed control can be achieved through a package.

Review thinkfan's USE flags prior to installing it:

Install thinkfan as per normal:

Configuration
The configuration file of thinkfan is in. It requires manual configuration and supports as of version 1.0 configuration based on yaml. An example of a simple mode configuration is as follows:

Details about the configuration can be found in, and in thinkfan.conf man page.

Thinkfan also takes commandline parameters, see thinkfan's man page for details. Take special note of the bias value, which will exaggerate or dampen a sudden increase or decrease between two temperature samples.

Testing
Test the behaviour of thinkfan as follows:

It may take a few cycles of configuration update and testing to find the optimum between all the different settings that are possible.

Start thinkfan as a service
Update as per the selected commandline parameters:

Start the thinkfan as a service and enable it as follows:

External resources

 * How to control fan speed|Thinkwiki How to control fan speed