Laptop fan on Acer 4061NWLCi

Laptop fan on Acer 4061NWLCi

[Saurabh Nanda]

Hi,

I have recently bought an Acer 4061NWLCi laptop and am having trouble
getting ACPI to work. I hope somoene will help me out :-)

I am running Ubuntu Linux -- Breezy Badger 5.10. With the default
Ubuntu kernel (2.6.12) ACPI did not work at all. I did not even get
the battery status in GNOME. Then I installed the latest kernel (
2.6.16.1) and ACPI started working - at least partially! I could check
my CPU temperature, AC adapter status, and battery status.

The only thing not working is the CPU fan. I tried reading through my
current(broken) DSDT and surprisingly there is no mention of a fan
anywhere! In the Thermal Zone configuration there is no mention of
_ACx (_AC0, _AC1, etc.) as well. I can post my DSDT to the list if it
would help.

Can anyone please help me in fixing this? Running my laptop without a
fan is pretty dangerous as the CPU temperatures crosses 65 degrees
celcius at times.

Can I declare a fan and an active cooling temperature point in the
DSDT, recompile it and hope that it would work? Has anyone else done
this kind of a thing before?

TIA
Nandz,
--
http://nandz.blogspot.com
http://foodieforlife.blogspot.com

Re: Laptop fan on Acer 4061NWLCi

[Bruno Ducrot]

On Mon, Apr 03, 2006 at 04:38:06PM +0530, Saurabh Nanda wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have recently bought an Acer 4061NWLCi laptop and am having trouble
> getting ACPI to work. I hope somoene will help me out :-)
> 
> I am running Ubuntu Linux -- Breezy Badger 5.10. With the default
> Ubuntu kernel (2.6.12) ACPI did not work at all. I did not even get
> the battery status in GNOME. Then I installed the latest kernel (
> 2.6.16.1) and ACPI started working - at least partially! I could check
> my CPU temperature, AC adapter status, and battery status.
> 
> The only thing not working is the CPU fan. I tried reading through my
> current(broken) DSDT and surprisingly there is no mention of a fan
> anywhere! In the Thermal Zone configuration there is no mention of
> _ACx (_AC0, _AC1, etc.) as well. I can post my DSDT to the list if it
> would help.
> 
> Can anyone please help me in fixing this? Running my laptop without a
> fan is pretty dangerous as the CPU temperatures crosses 65 degrees
> celcius at times.
> 
> Can I declare a fan and an active cooling temperature point in the
> DSDT, recompile it and hope that it would work? Has anyone else done
> this kind of a thing before?

Yes, only problem is to define _ON and _OFF methods in order to control
the fan device.  Good luck...

With my own laptop (Acer TM 4102WLMi) I can only get the fan speed,
but that's all.  I think it's possible to write some
different thresholds in order to control the cpu fan, but I don't
see why this is needed (after all 65 degree celcius should be ok for
a pentium-m).  In the case of my Acer, the fan speed is available
at 0x5d, 0x5c on the EC space and I think there are some more Acer
models that define those.

Cheers,

-- 
Bruno Ducrot

--  Which is worse:  ignorance or apathy?
--  Don't know.  Don't care.

RE: Laptop fan on Acer 4061NWLCi

[Karasyov, Konstantin A]

Hi,

Do you have any devices with 'PNP0C0B' ID in your DSDT? It's associated
with fan in ACPI spec. If you have one there is a chance that you can
assign it to _ALx method in thermal zone.

Do the thermal zone(s) provide other trip points (i.e. passive or
critical)?
Also, some systems provide hardware control to the fan, so the fan turns
on when the temperature high enough.
 
Anyway, sending DSDT would help to clarify the issue. 

Regards.
Konstantin.

>-----Original Message-----
>From: linux-acpi-owner@vger.kernel.org [mailto:linux-acpi-
>owner@vger.kernel.org] On Behalf Of Saurabh Nanda
>Sent: Monday, April 03, 2006 3:08 PM
>To: linux-acpi@vger.kernel.org
>Subject: Laptop fan on Acer 4061NWLCi
>
>Hi,
>
>I have recently bought an Acer 4061NWLCi laptop and am having trouble
>getting ACPI to work. I hope somoene will help me out :-)
>
>I am running Ubuntu Linux -- Breezy Badger 5.10. With the default
>Ubuntu kernel (2.6.12) ACPI did not work at all. I did not even get
>the battery status in GNOME. Then I installed the latest kernel (
>2.6.16.1) and ACPI started working - at least partially! I could check
>my CPU temperature, AC adapter status, and battery status.
>
>The only thing not working is the CPU fan. I tried reading through my
>current(broken) DSDT and surprisingly there is no mention of a fan
>anywhere! In the Thermal Zone configuration there is no mention of
>_ACx (_AC0, _AC1, etc.) as well. I can post my DSDT to the list if it
>would help.
>
>Can anyone please help me in fixing this? Running my laptop without a
>fan is pretty dangerous as the CPU temperatures crosses 65 degrees
>celcius at times.
>
>Can I declare a fan and an active cooling temperature point in the
>DSDT, recompile it and hope that it would work? Has anyone else done
>this kind of a thing before?
>
>TIA
>Nandz,
>--
>http://nandz.blogspot.com
>http://foodieforlife.blogspot.com
>-
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Re: Laptop fan on Acer 4061NWLCi

[Saurabh Nanda]

Hi,

> Yes, only problem is to define _ON and _OFF methods in order to control
> the fan device.  Good luck...

How do I do that? Can you please point me to some examples?

I've got my fan *visible* (doesn't function -- just visible), under
/proc/acpi. What else should I do to get it actually working?

Nandz.
--
http://nandz.blogspot.com
http://foodieforlife.blogspot.com

Re: Laptop fan on Acer 4061NWLCi

[Bruno Ducrot]

On Mon, Apr 03, 2006 at 09:26:28PM +0530, Saurabh Nanda wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> > Yes, only problem is to define _ON and _OFF methods in order to control
> > the fan device.  Good luck...
> 
> How do I do that? Can you please point me to some examples?

I can't, sorry.  It depend how the fan is controlled.  This could be
some magic values to poke to the EC space for example, or some
io register to set/reset, etc.

Look at ACPI spec v3.0 (available at www.acpi.info) page 345, 
"11.6 ThermalZone Examples."
for examples of fan devices and how to make them work with a
thermal zone.  But if you don't know how to control that fan,
I don't see how I can help you.
Those examples depends on the fact that the fan is controllable
via some registers into the EC space.  I don't know if your laptop
do have those registers.

> I've got my fan *visible* (doesn't function -- just visible), under
> /proc/acpi. What else should I do to get it actually working?

BTW you are sure the fan is not functionning properly?
What happens if you try to control it like this:

off:
echo 3 > /proc/acpi/fan/???/state

on:
echo 0 > /proc/acpi/fan/???/state

If that's work, it's just a matter to add to the thermal zone
some lines like those:

Method(_AC0)(Return (a temperature))
Name(_AL0, Package() {\_SB...\FAN})

-- 
Bruno Ducrot

--  Which is worse:  ignorance or apathy?
--  Don't know.  Don't care.