Getting the laptopt fan to work

Forum: User Feedback
Topic: Getting the laptopt fan to work
started by: reidar

Posted by reidar on May 22 2006,11:58

Hi

A while ago I used DSL as my main system. I was happy with my frugal install, and everything was great. When I purchased a new (second-hand) laptop, the first thing I did was to "save" the poor machine by erasing XP and replacing it with DSL. Mostly everything worked like it should, except for my laptop fan. To be honest, I didn't recognise this at first, but appreciated the fact that my computer was amazingly silent. I was not so happy about the fact that it became very hot, and when the cpu frequency was getting higher, the system froze. Not entirely, but there was a "lag" in mouse movement and other things, until the cpu reached a more comfortable working mode again. On a couple of occasions the laptop just "died", i.e. shut down. I then realised that something was not working the way it should...

I searched the forums, and experienced that other people also had similar problems, and compaq laptops appeared to be among the most problematic (mine is a compac evo n600c). Someone suggested to disable acpi in the bios. I entered the bios, but I couldn't find any settings that appeared to have anything to do with acpi. (Anyone has a suggestion for what I should look for?) I also tried with several boot options, like noacpi, noapm, acpi=off, acpi, acpi=force, etc. And I tried these in all kinds of combinations (except for noacpi together with acpi/acpi=force, which appeared too stupid to try out). Nothing helped. After a while I simply gave up. Since then I have mainly lived with Ubuntu on this laptop. Everything works with Ubuntu, but the more I use these more full-fledged systems, the more I miss the simplicity, flexibility, speed and power of a system like DSL! So, I kindly ask if some of you could help me get back into the wonderful world of DSL, preferably without burning out my cpu :-)

For the technical stuff, I might add that my laptop is a Compaq Evo N600C, 1Ghz processor, 385 MB RAM, 20GB hdd. Everything works like it should in Ubuntu, Mepis, Slackware, Suse and several other distros I have tried on it. I guess this could be a problem with the kernel, as 2.4.26 does not have complete support for acpi. Someone on the forum suggested, I belive, that using a distro with a 2.6 kernel would do the trick. But maybe some of you has a suggestion for how I could get this working with DSL? Perhaps any ideas on what I should change/look for in the bios settings? Some smart boot options, or combo of boot options that I didn't try?

Any help would be highly appreciated by someone who really would like to get back to DSL :-)

-r

P.S. Sorry that this post was somewhat long, but I thought it would be wise to get all the details from the start.

Posted by AwPhuch on May 22 2006,23:44

Is the laptop fan controlled by acpi?

It should have some sort of thermal protection built into it...if all else fails..crack it open and hardwire the fan on

There is ALWAYS some sort of thermistor controlling the fan...maybe its not the CPU thats hot but maybe the HD or other things in the computer

< http://www.psychosis.net/evo-linux/ >
< http://bgoglin.free.fr/evoN600c.php >
< http://www.icculus.org/~mongoose/Compaq-Evo_N600c.html > <-- custom kernel acpi modules
# ACPI, custom kernel patch required
modprobe ac
modprobe thermal
modprobe fan
modprobe battery

Looks like you are going to have to build those modules and all separately to get the fans working properly with the acpi function..if they arent included!?

Brian
AwPhuch

Posted by roberts on May 23 2006,00:14

Older laptops used apm
Newer ones need acpi.
On some you can choose which one to use via BIOS.

I just finished implementing acpi for the next version of DSL.
I have been testing it on my circa 2000 laptop.
There I needed to boot with acpi=force. Seems to work
Wait for the release candidate comming soon...

Posted by reidar on May 23 2006,05:26

I am not really sure if the fan is controlled by ACPI or not. How do I find out about that? I searched some more on the internet yesterday, and it appears that other people (mainly in the past, with older kernel versions) also have had problems getting the fan to work properly with this particular laptop.
If the next version of DSL will have ACPI working, I might have to wait for that one then... I really hope I could get this working, and preferably without doing too much of manual intervention with the hardware. My handicraft skills are not always the best, but isn't that what they always say about teachers - that there's a lack of practical skills :-)

Thanks for the input guys! I am looking forward to the next version Robert :-) But I'll try and see if I could figure out these things you mentioned also AwPhuch. Thanks again!

-r

Posted by reidar on May 23 2006,05:32

By the way, thank you for the links AwPhuch! I had already found the first one, but the two latter ones might be useful. I'll dig into those. Thanks!

-r

Posted by AwPhuch on May 24 2006,01:06

Not a prob bud!

Just remember: Google is your friend!

Brian
AwPhuch

Posted by hs7sv on May 24 2006,05:18

roberts, that sounds very nice.

I'm using DSL-2.1b on my laptop. I will wait for the next version of DSL.

Posted by cbagger01 on May 24 2006,17:12

Yes

DSL version 2.1b or instead you could also try DSL-N

both should support ACPI.

Posted by reidar on May 25 2006,13:06

I haven't tried DSL-N yet. How stable is it, compared to DSL? I suppose it works in very much the same way, with possibility of frugal/toram install, extensions and so on? I guess I must dig into it and give it a go...

-r

Posted by cbagger01 on May 27 2006,17:37

DSL version 2.1b with Linux kernel version 2.4.31, SATA hard drive support and ACPI support is very stable. DSL went back to the older 2.4.26 kernel with version 2.2+ of DSL in order to maintain maximum support for older hardware and to resolve issues with some wireless & pcmcia services with some specific pieces of hardware.

DSL-N is still in very early stages of development but is considered to be far enough along for everyday use for the many people who are already using it.

Posted by reidar on May 28 2006,19:10

I guess I'll give 2.1b a go then. Should it work 'out of the box', or will I have to boot with acpi=force or something like that?

-r

Posted by roberts on May 29 2006,06:25

Wait a few days and you can try it with the next release.
There will be many new features, besides acpi.
Whether you need acpi=force or not really depends on your hardware.

Posted by WDef on May 29 2006,09:38

Looking forward to that acpi. 狢 imagine that means the time remaining on my laptop battery will be working, like it does on dsl-n

Posted by reidar on May 29 2006,09:58

Ok, Robert. I'll be patient and wait a couple more days :-)
You are doing an amazing job by the way, Robert! That cannot be said too often.

-r