IBM Thinkpad Fan Control (acpi_ibm)

[Tobias Roth]

Hi

I posted this same message to current@ a while ago, with only
one response, saying "it shouldn't be too difficult". So I'll
try again here in hope for a more thorough answer:

  
With acpi_ibm.ko, I can monitor fan speed, thermal sensors and do
many other nice things. However, my Thinkpad (a T43p) has an awfully
noisy fan, that, once the notebook reaches its standard working
temperature (around 45 deg C), turns on and never stops again. 

The generally accepted solution his to manually lower the fan speed
and live with the higher temperatures, which will still be in an
acceptable range even with slow running fans. The discussion and a
utility for Windows can be found here [1], and a linux tool is
described here [2]. 

Now my question. Since acpi_ibm.ko can already read temperature
sensors and fan speed, would it be feasable to teach it to control
fan speed as well? Is anyone working on it already? Or can someone
outline the steps that have to be taken so I can take a look and  
see if I can do it myself?

thanks, t.


[1] http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=17715
[2] http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Ibm-acpi