From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Thomas Renninger Subject: Re: acpi on the sony tx1xp vaio laptop Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 09:12:51 +0100 Message-ID: <43D09B83.1030905@renninger.de> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from mx1.suse.de ([195.135.220.2]:48533 "EHLO mx1.suse.de") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750714AbWATIMq (ORCPT ); Fri, 20 Jan 2006 03:12:46 -0500 In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-acpi-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-acpi@vger.kernel.org To: Minty Cc: linux-acpi@vger.kernel.org Minty wrote: > hello, > > I've got a Sony TX1XP laptop running Kubuntu [1]. > > There are a couple of acpi things that I'd love to be improved on this > machine, so I'm offering to help out if I can - but I could use some > direction from someone who has a clue about acpi and it's workings. > I'm happy enough (although not that great at) kernel compiling if need > be. Fwiw, I know of two others running some linux variant on this > machine/hardware. > > Main issue: > /proc/acpi/fan exists, but is empty. > Fan comes on for about 20 sec, off for 5 secs, repeat. > Regardless of cpu temp. > > cpu temp is accurately reported, normally sitting at 61C, but I've > seen it go higher when the machine is under load. thermal_zone > reports passive cooling, but aside from reporting the temp, anything > that might be set is reported as "". It Passive/active cooling resets new trip point values exported by BIOS. If this is not supported(nearly none machine does) override them manually(see below). > appears that cpu throttling works via > /proc/acpi/processor/CPU0/throttling but this doesn't appear to alter > the behaviour of the fan. Lower the passive trip point(s). You need to play arround a bit to find your preferred performance/accoustic balance. The kernel will lower cpufreq as soon as you reach passive temp. As fans are mostly controlled by BIOS, this is a good and mostly only solution to get your machine quiet. Not sure whether kubuntu already includes powersave/kpowersave packages, AFAIK they exist. There you can define schemes and it will override the trip points as defined (you still need to define them manually as a perfect value needs a bit of watching the temps and listening to the fan activity of a machine). You can switch the schemes as you wish then... This makes only sense if your machine supports cpufreq! Throttling is bad and makes your machine unusable slow. (test -d /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq && echo "cpufreq supported"). You also can simply override the values by: echo "CRITICAL:HOT:PASSIVE:ACTIVE[0]:ACTIVE[1]" >/proc/acpi/thermal_zone/X/trip_points You need to pass all five values, not defined values (do a cat before) will be ignored. Be careful with the critical trip point value, you shouldn't use another value than the one defined by BIOS! Thomas