Ubuntu

Fan not speeding up on high temperatures

Asked by Andre

I have noticed, using lmsensors, that my laptop's fan is always around 3000RPM, except for the first minutes of usage. This is good as long as core temperatures stay around 50C, on normal usage. The problem is that with a more intense usage they reached around 75C, which is (scaringly) near the critic temperature shown by lmsensors (85C) and, nevertheless, the fan was still spinning at 3000RPM.

So my question is: is this a bug? If it's not, is there a safe way to change the way the fan behaves on high temperatures? I don't really want my laptop to run so hot. I'd prefer this kind of solution rather than CPUfreq scaling, since I need my laptop always at best performance and I don't really have power consumption problems.

The computer is a Lenovo R61i, with an Intel Core Duo T5450 CPU and I'm using Ubuntu 14.04.

Thanks to anyone who will help!

P.S.: I read about thinkfan, but I wonder how safe it is, before leaving the automatic management and why the latter doesn't work the right way.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

Be sure you have the latest BIOS. It may help

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Andre (andrea-m-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount) said : 		#2

Apparently I do, according to http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/BIOS_Upgrade_Downloads#R_Series and Lenovo Support as well (my machine is an R61i, type 7650-D6G):

andre@ThinkPad-R61i:~$ sudo dmidecode -s bios-version
7PETC3WW (2.23 )
andre@ThinkPad-R61i:~$ sudo dmidecode -t 11
# dmidecode 2.12
SMBIOS 2.4 present.

Handle 0x0028, DMI type 11, 5 bytes
OEM Strings
 String 1: IBM ThinkPad Embedded Controller -[7KHT24WW-1.08 ]-

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#3

Are there any bugs reported?

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Andre (andrea-m-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount) said : 		#4

The most similar bug I found is Bug #751689, though not mentioning my exact machine/distribution combination.
Bug #1048544 includes my problem among many others, but still about another model.

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Andre (andrea-m-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount) said : 		#5

I have subscribed to the first Bug i linked. I'll think about using thinkfan to overcome the summer! Unfortunately I don't remember how the fan used to behave under 12.04.

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Andre (andrea-m-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount) said : 		#6

I was suggested to fill a new bug report, which is now Bug #1325298. Thank you for your time.