Check that Laptop Fan is Functioning Correctly on Linux
Solution 1
I didn't really find a robust solution, other than to wait and monitor the fan temperatures via sensors
in the terminal.
I can however provide a few things that were useful:
- I ran
sudo sensors-detect
and said YES to probing everything - I saw that
lm-sensors
was going to addcoretemp
to/etc/modules
so I did asudo modprobe coretemp
to avoid restarting to load the module - I installed XSensors as a GUI for live CPU temperatures:
sudo apt-get install xsensors
- I installed a hardware information GUI:
sudo apt-get install hardinfo
, which showed some awesome information, even did hardware profiling
The key was just to wait about an hour and make sure the CPUs weren't going near the critical temp
Solution 2
There is a specific package for Dell laptops, i8Kutils, that gives you utilities to control/report fan speed. It is quite old but works fine on my Dell M4500:
sudo apt-get install i8kutils
sudo modprobe i8k
sudo i8kfan 0 1
Also have a look at dellfand. Note that I had to add #include <sys/stat.h>
to dellfand.cc to get it to compile. Once installed you can play with the fan speeds. eG:
sudo ./dellfand 0 3 40 50 65
sudo ./dellfand 0 0.2 25 40 65
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Alex W
Updated on September 18, 2022Comments
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Alex W over 1 year
I just completely disassembled and reassembled my Dell Studio 1555 laptop. I had to remove the hard drive, WLAN card, unplug optical drive, display connector, even the motherboard to get to the fan.
I replaced the fan with a brand new fan, and everything seems to be working fine because I'm using the computer right now to type this. However, I want to check that the fan is functioning correctly because I don't hear it running and the fan speed isn't showing up when using
sensors
from the terminal.Is there a way that I can be assured that the fan is functioning, e.g. get a fan speed when
sensors
is only showing temp1 and temp2?The critical temp for both CPUs is 100 degrees Celsius and I'm at 54 and 46, so I'll have to power down soon if I can't figure this out.
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Alex W almost 12 yearsIs there a Linux download?
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Carl B almost 12 yearsalternativeto.net/software/open-hardware-monitor - this will at least show you fan speed and temp monitoring and works with both win and Linux. Hope it helps