2011-09-02

Loud fans...again

Configuring fan speed using pwmconfig and fancontrol is not a big deal, normally. However, some problem can arise (see: "Loud fans...WHAT?"). Now it was running smoothly on my machine, but was not always working after a reboot.

Running sudo fancontrol brings up no noise reduction, but following message:

Not starting fancontrol, outdated configuration file; please re-run pwmconfig.
Running and restarting fancontrol helps, but it will eventually fail later, after some reboot.
A closer look to the /etc/fancontrol config file shows following (on my system):
INTERVAL=10
DEVPATH=hwmon0=devices/platform/w83627ehf.656
DEVNAME=hwmon0=w83627dhg
FCTEMPS=hwmon0/device/pwm2=hwmon0/device/temp2_input
FCFANS=hwmon0/device/pwm2=hwmon0/device/fan2_input
MINTEMP=hwmon0/device/pwm2=35
MAXTEMP=hwmon0/device/pwm2=65
MINSTART=hwmon0/device/pwm2=135
MINSTOP=hwmon0/device/pwm2=90
MINPWM=hwmon0/device/pwm2=90
MAXPWM=hwmon0/device/pwm2=255
When I run again pwmconfig, what I missed first was the number behind hwmon. This number changed, being sometime 0, sometime 1 after rebooting. Searching for this kind of problem brought up this interesting page with the solution.
This seems to happen quite often in relation with the k8temp module. Anyway, removing this module from /etc/modules and black-listing it in the file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf adding blacklist k8temp did the trick, and I can listen to music without vacuum cleaner noise in background.