Laptop Fan

[Proinsias]

I have one of these:
http://miniputer.com/Acer/Aspire_5715Z.html

I gave up on it a while back as I couldn't get the fan working properly, which I had read may be due to bios issues. I couldn't update the bios with freedos and trying to get Windows running never got far aside from hours wasted.

After trying a few linux and bsd distros it turns out the fan works wonderfully when it is running Alpine Linux, so I've had it happily running Alpine for the past 6 months or so.

I'm wondering what Alpine is doing that Debian/Void/Calculate/etc were not...imagining it's the kernel or modules but I'm not really sure how to track it down.

Any pointers?

[Jaglover]

Luckily enough it is very seldom if you are the first one to encounter a particular problem in Linux. One might say 99.99% of times the solution is already out there ... Linux fan management < for starters.
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My Gentoo installation notes.
Please learn how to denote units correctly!

[Proinsias]

I have been occasionally looking into this for a few years and have tried the suggestions in the Arch wiki and a few others places with no success. Updating the bios to 1.45 seems to be the suggested fix for this model but I was unable to apply the update from FreeDos, I spent a few days downloading old versions of Vista and 7 which I couldn't get past the installer, Windows 10 installer just won't boot.

lm_sensors doesn't detect the fan, when working properly or not. I had read it was working on older kernels <2.6.31 but haven't tested this, it does work nicely on Alpine without needing the lm_sensors package.

[NeddySeagoon]

Proinsias,

I have the somewhat similar Acer One netbook from 2008.
There is an Acer kernel module ASUS_LAPTOP ? from memory that might help.

-- edit --

Its actually ACERHDF that I use on the netbook.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[Proinsias]

Thanks Neddy,

The vanilla alpine kernel has both the ASUS_LAPTOP & ACERHDF modules but I don't see them in lsmod or dmesg. acer_wmi appears but that doesn't seem to be fan related.

I have moved my Alpine install to a usb stick and have chrooted from there into a new gentoo install on the hard drive. It's runs pretty smoothly on the usb and is letting me build the desktop profile whilst keeping cool, and having a working system. I'm wondering if make localmodconfig from the Alpine system might get things working but will have to wait a while as it builds up the world, on the bright side it's compiling far quicker than I expected so far 70 out of 229 in 20 mins or so

[Proinsias]

Gentoo is up and running but I'm not getting anywhere fast with the fan. make localmodconfig wouldn't run from the alpine host on the gentoo chroot and I've tried builtin/modules/either/or/and with the acer and asus laptop options with no joy. I've tried most of the options that seem even vaugely related in the same menu area.

I've been looking for signs of the fan in Alpine when it's on but can't see anything postive in /sys/class/thermal or thereabouts, it just works. When I do install lm_sensors, pwmconfig and fancontrol the only functionality I seem to be gaining is sensors outputs the 2 core temps.

I'm keeping the gentoo install as a chroot pet in alpine and building up the world between periods of rebooting and rechrooting to test the fan.