thinkfan

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

Installation

Kernel

The kernel needs to have the Thinkpad ACPI driver configured:

KERNEL Enable Thinkpad ACPI support in the kernel

Device Drivers  --->
    [*] X86 Platform Specific Device Drivers  ---> 
        <M>   ThinkPad ACPI Laptop Extras

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

Note
The module's fan control operations are disabled by default for safety reasons.

Edit or create /etc/modprobe.d/thinkpad.conf as follows:

FILE /etc/modprobe.d/thinkpad.conf

options thinkpad_acpi fan_control=1

Most Thinkpads provide /proc/acpi/ibm/fan as a path to the fan device.

USE flags

USE flags for app-laptop/thinkfan Simple fan control program for thinkpads

+yaml	use YAML format for config file
atasmart	include libatasmart support to get disc temperature
nvidia	allow thinkfan to read GPU temperature from the proprietary nVidia driver

Data provided by the Gentoo Package Database · Last update: 2022-11-29 08:42 More information about USE flags

Emerge

root #emerge --ask app-laptop/thinkfan

Configuration

The configuration file of thinkfan is in /etc/thinkfan.conf. 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:

FILE /etc/thinkfan.conf

sensors:
  - tpacpi: /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal
    indices: [0]

fans:
  - tpacpi: /proc/acpi/ibm/fan

levels:
  - [0, 0,  41]
  - [1, 38, 51]
  - [2, 45, 56]
  - [3, 51, 61]
  - [4, 55, 64]
  - [5, 60, 66]
  - [6, 63, 68]
  - [7, 65, 74]
  - [127, 70, 32767]

Details about the configuration can be found in /usr/share/doc/thinkfan-*/thinkfan.yaml.bz2, 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.

Verification

Test the behaviour of thinkfan as follows:

root #thinkfan -n -b -5 -c /etc/thinkfan.conf

Temperatures(bias): 46(0) -> level 1
Temperatures(bias): 51(0) -> level 2
Temperatures(bias): 59(-3) -> level 3
Temperatures(bias): 64(-3) -> level 4
Temperatures(bias): 68(-3) -> level 5
Temperatures(bias): 69(-2) -> level 6
Temperatures(bias): 62(0) -> level 5
Temperatures(bias): 69(-3) -> level 6
Temperatures(bias): 62(0) -> level 5
Temperatures(bias): 66(0) -> level 6
Temperatures(bias): 62(0) -> level 5

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

Service

OpenRC

Update /etc/init.d/thinkfan as per the selected commandline parameters:

FILE /etc/init.d/thinkfan

#command_args="-q -s5 -c /etc/thinkfan.conf"
command_args="-q -s2 -b0 -c /etc/thinkfan.conf"

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

root #rc-service thinkfan start

root #rc-config add thinkfan

systemd

The thinkfan commandline parameters are passed via the /etc/systemd/system/thinkfan.service.d/default.conf file.

After setting the desired parameters enable and start the thinkfan service:

root #systemctl enable --now thinkfan.service

Manual fan control

It is also possible to control the fan speed manually:

root #echo level 7 > /proc/acpi/ibm/fan

root #cat /proc/acpi/ibm/fan

status:         enabled
speed:          3957
level:          7
commands:       level <level> (<level> is 0-7, auto, disengaged, full-speed)
commands:       enable, disable
commands:       watchdog <timeout> (<timeout> is 0 (off), 1-120 (seconds))

There are a few special values of level:

• level auto - the fan RPM is controlled by the BIOS
• level full-speed - the maximum fan speed while being monitored
• level disengaged - even faster speed, where the controller does not monitor the fan speed.

External resources

• How to control fan speed