Re: Heating issues with FreeBSD on laptop

From: Saniya Maheshwari <saniya.mah_at_gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2022 03:25:32 UTC
[CCing Modulok whose reply (probably accidentally) reached me directly 
and not the mailing list]

Thank you both for your responses! I tried what you suggested but 
Powerd doesn't seem to resolve the issue. I already had it enabled

/etc/rc.conf:
powerd_enable="YES"

though not with the specific flags you mentioned

powerd_flags="-a adaptive -b adaptive -n adaptive"

Even after setting the flags though, and restarting powerd / rebooting, 
I can still observe that slight distinctive warming/fan noise.

Is there anything else that might be causing this? I remember I once 
had the same issue with a Linux distro on this same laptop, and that 
was because this laptop has Intel integrated graphics along with a 
separate NVIDIA GPU and the correct drivers were not in place. Though 
that was when I was using a graphical environment, while on FreeBSD 
here I am currently just using the TTY. Therefore I initially assumed 
that this might not have anything to do with the warming.

Thanks again for your time.

Saniya

On Mon, Sep 26 2022 at 04:47:29 PM -0300 -0300, Mario Lobo 
<lobo@bsd.com.br> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 26, 2022 at 1:40 PM Saniya Maheshwari 
> <saniya.mah@gmail.com <mailto:saniya.mah@gmail.com>> wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> I just installed FreeBSD on my laptop, and everything went smoothly, 
>> except one thing that my laptop seems to be a little warm and noisy 
>> (due to the fans) even when it's idle.
>> 
>> Following some steps on other forums, I tried the following:
>> 
>> $ sysctl 'hw.acpi.thermal'
>> 
>> This gives me an 'unknown oid' error.
>> 
>> $ sysctl -a | grep temp
>> 
>> This gives no results.
>> 
>> After running
>> 
>> # kldload coretemp
>> 
>> and retrying:
>> 
>> $ sysctl -a | grep temperature
>> 
>> I do get the CPU temperature values:
>> 
>> dev.cpu.15.temperature: 51.0C
>> dev.cpu.13.temperature: 50.0C
>> dev.cpu.11.temperature: 50.0C
>> ...
>> 
>> All this is when the laptop is absolutely idle with just the shell 
>> running in the TTY. I can confirm that
>> 
>> # top
>> 
>> shows the same (CPU 100% idle).
>> 
>> I'm not sure what is going wrong and would be grateful for any help.
>> 
>> Thanks!
>> Saniya
> 
> Hi Saniya.
> 
> Have you tried inserting
> 
> powerd_enable="YES"
> powerd_flags="-a adaptive -b adaptive -n adaptive"
> 
> in /etc/rc.conf? and issue:
> 
> service powerd start
> 
> --
> Mario Lobo
> http://www.mallavoodoo.com.br <http://www.mallavoodoo.com.br/>
> FreeBSD since version 2.2.8 [not Pro-Audio.... YET!!]