Management of Thermal

[Norberto Meijome]

On Tue, 9 Oct 2007 03:21:20 +1000 (EST)
Ian Smith <smithi at nimnet.asn.au> wrote:

>  > > ### trying to finetune the action of the thermal zones
>  > > ## man 4 acpi_thermal
>  > > ## for details
>  > > ## Defaults:
>  > > #hw.acpi.thermal.min_runtime: 0
>  > > #hw.acpi.thermal.polling_rate: 10
>  > > #hw.acpi.thermal.user_override: 0
>  > > #hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.temperature: 91.0C
>  > > #hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.active: -1
>  > > #hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.passive_cooling: 0  
> 
> Mine's always 1, man says default on - is this your current setting?
> 
>  > > #hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.thermal_flags: 0
>  > > #hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._PSV: 94.5C
>  > > #hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._HOT: -1
>  > > #hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._CRT: 99.0C
>  > > #hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._ACx: -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1
>  > > ## Custom values
>  > > hw.acpi.thermal.user_override=1
>  > > hw.acpi.thermal.min_runtime=10
>  > > hw.acpi.thermal.polling_rate=5
>  > > hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.active=85C
>  > > hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._PSV=90C  
> 
> Just curious re syntax - do these values read back right after setting? 
> And if you're overriding, is that the right setting for .tz0.active ? 
> but I'm well out of my depth here .. 
> 
>  > > Any help / pointers would be greatly appreciated...  
> 
> The info on tzs and fan settings from acpi_ibm might have clues?

Hey mate,
i had another try with Mrs hw.acpi* .... no luck....
this are my current relevant lines in /etc/sysctl.conf :

## Custom values
hw.acpi.thermal.user_override=1
hw.acpi.thermal.min_runtime=25
hw.acpi.thermal.polling_rate=5
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._ACx=90 85 80 75 70 75 60 65 60 55

My intention is to :
1)  let me override defaults
2) run fans for 25 seconds for each state change (just to make sure i do hear
them :D )
3) check the temperature every 5 seconds

The first 3 apply fine. 

4) Set the temperatures at which to change the fan speed. I used temperature
values in decreasing order because man acpi_thermal says :"The lower the _ACx
value, the higher the cooling power."

Alas, even in the startup process, _ACx cannot be set, it says it's a RO knob. 

Something interesting, from the man page

 hw.acpi.thermal.tz%d.active
             Current active cooling system state.  If this is non-negative,
             the appropriate _AC%d object is running.  Set this value to the
             desired active cooling level to force the corresponding fan
             object to the appropriate level.

The value for _ACx shows 10 "-1":
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._ACx: -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1

when trying to set the value for tz0.active , only values from -1 to 9 will not
fail. They don't get saved either, they are always reset to -1, but there is no
error:


[betom at ayiin] [Thu Oct 11 11:29:31 2007]
/usr/home/betom
$ sudo sysctl -a hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.active=-3
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.active: -1
sysctl: hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.active: Invalid argument

[betom at ayiin] [Thu Oct 11 11:29:33 2007]
/usr/home/betom
$ sudo sysctl -a hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.active=-2
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.active: -1
sysctl: hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.active: Invalid argument

[betom at ayiin] [Thu Oct 11 11:29:36 2007]
/usr/home/betom
$ sudo sysctl -a hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.active=9 
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.active: -1 -> -1

[betom at ayiin] [Thu Oct 11 11:29:39 2007]
/usr/home/betom
$ sudo sysctl -a hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.active=10
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.active: -1
sysctl: hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.active: Invalid argument

So something seems to be recognising there are 10 levels of fan speeds, and
linking it to tz0.active, but it fails after that.

Also, when trying to set _ACx, i went to dig into the boot loader's cmds...just
to see if I could see anything interesting there ( I didnt ;) ). Anyway, while
I was browsing through the variables, the fan actually powered up! acpi_ibm was
already loaded of course...but i suspect that was a bios thing kicking in... It
slowed down again to its usual extremely quite 2.7 <->3.2 K rpms sometime
during the boot process.

I'll see if I can find anything useful in -acpi at ...
cheers,
B

_________________________
{Beto|Norberto|Numard} Meijome

"Religion is what the common people see as true, the wise see as false, and the
rulers see as useful." Seneca

I speak for myself, not my employer. Contents may be hot. Slippery when wet.
Reading disclaimers makes you go blind. Writing them is worse. You have been
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