[lm-sensors] fan control questions

[lm-sensors] fan control questions

[Mark Nienberg]

I was hoping to use the fan control program on a server with an ASUS KFN4-DRE 
motherboard.  The BIOS has three settings for control of fans (disabled, smart fan, 
smart fan II). The two smart fan options work very poorly, cycling through full speed 
and low speed on about a 24 hour cycle with no apparent regard to temps.  That is why 
I would like to take control and force something more rational.

I assumed that if I am controlling fans from the OS then I don't want the BIOS to 
also try to control fans, so I set it to "disabled" and then ran the pwmconfig 
program. The program found three pwm devices and tried each one in turn, but there 
was no effect on the two fans connected to the motherboard.  There are a total of 10 
fan connectors on this board, six of which show up in lm_sensors.  The manual says 
that the "smart fan" setting applies to all fan connectors.

Should I have tested with the BIOS settings other than "disabled"?

Should I test the other 4 fan connectors that lm_sensors recognizes?

Or is this just one of the boards that fan control won't be able to handle?  I'm 
using 2.10.6.

Thanks,

Mark Nienberg


_______________________________________________
lm-sensors mailing list
lm-sensors@lm-sensors.org
http://lists.lm-sensors.org/mailman/listinfo/lm-sensors

Re: [lm-sensors] fan control questions

[Jean Delvare]

Hi Mark,

On Tue, 27 Jan 2009 10:02:28 -0800, Mark Nienberg wrote:
> I was hoping to use the fan control program on a server with an ASUS KFN4-DRE 
> motherboard.  The BIOS has three settings for control of fans (disabled, smart fan, 
> smart fan II). The two smart fan options work very poorly, cycling through full speed 
> and low speed on about a 24 hour cycle with no apparent regard to temps.  That is why 
> I would like to take control and force something more rational.

It might be better to tweak the settings of the automatic modes than to
switch to software control. Sometimes the BIOS allows this. If not,
some of our drivers have sysfs files to tweak the settings.

> I assumed that if I am controlling fans from the OS then I don't want the BIOS to 
> also try to control fans, so I set it to "disabled" and then ran the pwmconfig 
> program. The program found three pwm devices and tried each one in turn, but there 
> was no effect on the two fans connected to the motherboard.  There are a total of 10 
> fan connectors on this board, six of which show up in lm_sensors.  The manual says 
> that the "smart fan" setting applies to all fan connectors.
> 
> Should I have tested with the BIOS settings other than "disabled"?

This shouldn't change anything. If pwmconfig finds a PWM output in
automatic mode, it'll warn you that you probably don't want to change
it to manual mode, but that's about it (you can override that if you
really want to.)

> Should I test the other 4 fan connectors that lm_sensors recognizes?

Yes, it can't hurt.

It would help if you would provide more information about your board.
In particular, which hardware monitoring chip(s) are found by
sensors-detect? What does the output of "sensors" look like?

If there is more than one chip, are the PWM outputs found on the same
chip that reports the fan speeds?

And do you see fan speeds change when in automatic control mode?

> Or is this just one of the boards that fan control won't be able to handle?

If the BIOS has options to control the fans then the wiring on the board
must be correct. You're probably not too far away.

-- 
Jean Delvare

_______________________________________________
lm-sensors mailing list
lm-sensors@lm-sensors.org
http://lists.lm-sensors.org/mailman/listinfo/lm-sensors

Re: [lm-sensors] fan control questions

[Mark Nienberg]

Jean Delvare wrote:
> Hi Mark,
> 
> On Tue, 27 Jan 2009 10:02:28 -0800, Mark Nienberg wrote:
>> I was hoping to use the fan control program on a server with an ASUS KFN4-DRE 
>> motherboard.  The BIOS has three settings for control of fans (disabled, smart fan, 
>> smart fan II). The two smart fan options work very poorly, cycling through full speed 
>> and low speed on about a 24 hour cycle with no apparent regard to temps.  That is why 
>> I would like to take control and force something more rational.

> It might be better to tweak the settings of the automatic modes than to
> switch to software control. Sometimes the BIOS allows this. If not,
> some of our drivers have sysfs files to tweak the settings.

There is nothing in the BIOS that allows me to tweak the way the BIOS fan control 
works.  I would love to let the BIOS take care of this, but it does a poor job, often 
running the CPU fan noisily at full speed for hours, even when temps are low.

>> I assumed that if I am controlling fans from the OS then I don't want the BIOS to 
>> also try to control fans, so I set it to "disabled" and then ran the pwmconfig 
>> program. The program found three pwm devices and tried each one in turn, but there 
>> was no effect on the two fans connected to the motherboard.  There are a total of 10 
>> fan connectors on this board, six of which show up in lm_sensors.  The manual says 
>> that the "smart fan" setting applies to all fan connectors.
>>
>> Should I have tested with the BIOS settings other than "disabled"?
> 
> This shouldn't change anything. If pwmconfig finds a PWM output in
> automatic mode, it'll warn you that you probably don't want to change
> it to manual mode, but that's about it (you can override that if you
> really want to.)
> 
>> Should I test the other 4 fan connectors that lm_sensors recognizes?
> 
> Yes, it can't hurt.

I'll try some more fans then.

> It would help if you would provide more information about your board.
> In particular, which hardware monitoring chip(s) are found by
> sensors-detect? What does the output of "sensors" look like?
> 
> If there is more than one chip, are the PWM outputs found on the same
> chip that reports the fan speeds?

I'll run pwmconfig again and see if I can answer that.  Maybe I should try a newer 
lm_sensors, but so far I have been sticking with rpms rather than source.

> And do you see fan speeds change when in automatic control mode?

Yes, the BIOS does change the fan speed, though not rationally.

>> Or is this just one of the boards that fan control won't be able to handle?
> 
> If the BIOS has options to control the fans then the wiring on the board
> must be correct. You're probably not too far away.

Thanks.  I won't give up then.  This is the office file server, so I am limited in 
the times I can work on it.  Maybe I'll have another go this weekend.

-- 
Mark Nienberg
Sent from an invalid address. Please reply to the group.


_______________________________________________
lm-sensors mailing list
lm-sensors@lm-sensors.org
http://lists.lm-sensors.org/mailman/listinfo/lm-sensors

Re: [lm-sensors] fan control questions

[Jean Delvare]

Hi Mark,

On Tue, 03 Feb 2009 10:29:56 -0800, Mark Nienberg wrote:
> Jean Delvare wrote:
> > It would help if you would provide more information about your board.
> > In particular, which hardware monitoring chip(s) are found by
> > sensors-detect? What does the output of "sensors" look like?
> > 
> > If there is more than one chip, are the PWM outputs found on the same
> > chip that reports the fan speeds?
> 
> I'll run pwmconfig again and see if I can answer that.  Maybe I should try a newer 
> lm_sensors, but so far I have been sticking with rpms rather than source.

The sensors-detect script is standalone, so you can download the latest
version, run it, report and delete it afterwards:

http://www.lm-sensors.org/svn/lm-sensors/trunk/prog/detect/sensors-detect

This should at least tell us whether there's a second hardware
monitoring chip available on your system.

-- 
Jean Delvare

_______________________________________________
lm-sensors mailing list
lm-sensors@lm-sensors.org
http://lists.lm-sensors.org/mailman/listinfo/lm-sensors

Re: [lm-sensors] fan control questions

[Mark Nienberg]

Well I tried a few more things and I think I am going to have to give up on this. 
Here is some of the output from pwmconfig.  As you can see, it found 3 pwm controls 
and they are on the same device as the fans speed monitors, so it seems promising.  I 
also added a fan and moved it around so that I tested almost all of the fan 
connectors.  And the first time I ran pwmconfig, it correctly detected that the 3 pwm 
controls were in automatic mode (enabled fan control in the bios), so they seem to be 
the correct ones.  Only problem is that pwmconfig does not have any effect on the fan 
speed.  I'm leaning toward concluding that fan control won't work on this board.



Found the following devices:
    hwmon0/device is w83792d

Found the following PWM controls:
    hwmon0/device/pwm1
    hwmon0/device/pwm2
    hwmon0/device/pwm3

Giving the fans some time to reach full speed...
Found the following fan sensors:
    hwmon0/device/fan1_input     current speed: 4218 RPM
    hwmon0/device/fan2_input     current speed: 2109 RPM
    hwmon0/device/fan3_input     current speed: 0 ... skipping!
    hwmon0/device/fan4_input     current speed: 5273 RPM
    hwmon0/device/fan5_input     current speed: 740 RPM
    hwmon0/device/fan7_input     current speed: 0 ... skipping!

Warning!!! This program will stop your fans, one at a time,
for approximately 5 seconds each!!!
This may cause your processor temperature to rise!!!
If you do not want to do this hit control-C now!!!
Hit return to continue:

Testing pwm control hwmon0/device/pwm1 ...
   hwmon0/device/fan1_input ... speed was 4218 now 4440
     no correlation
   hwmon0/device/fan2_input ... speed was 2109 now 2136
     no correlation
   hwmon0/device/fan4_input ... speed was 5273 now 5192
     no correlation
   hwmon0/device/fan5_input ... speed was 740 now 727
     no correlation

No correlations were detected.
There is either no fan connected to the output of hwmon0/device/pwm1,
or the connected fan has no rpm-signal connected to one of
the tested fan sensors. (Note: not all motherboards have
the pwm outputs connected to the fan connectors,
check out the hardware database on http://www.almico.com/forumindex.php)

Did you see/hear a fan stopping during the above test (n)?



-- 
Mark Nienberg
Sent from an invalid address. Please reply to the group.


_______________________________________________
lm-sensors mailing list
lm-sensors@lm-sensors.org
http://lists.lm-sensors.org/mailman/listinfo/lm-sensors