Laptops cooler always on

Forum: Laptops
Topic: Laptops cooler always on
started by: Supermuncher

Posted by Supermuncher on June 16 2005,15:47

Hi everyone,
I'm fairly new to linux and acually liked DSL for being so small. I don't want a Distro that has to much stuff in it so I thought I'll give this a try.
Glad I did before installing it! Using the liveCD i notived that my Laptops fan is continuesly on! Which makes me assume 2 things, 1.) The CPU is always using the maximum possible speed and 2.) eating more power than necessary (ACPI not active?).

My question, is there a way to activate the speed step function on my Laptop with DSL? It works perfectly with Knoppix(kernel 2.6) but due to the size its not a possibility. I think DSL is still with the 2.4 Kernel right? So hope someone can help me find/or has a solution or else I'll have to look for another distro. That fan drives me crazy!
Thanks
Supermuncher

Laptop specs:
AMD Mobile Athlon XP 1500+ @ 1300 Mhz --> should run at 686Mhz when in a no stress Situation.
512MB ram
40 Gig HD

Posted by Guest on June 17 2005,23:00

You maybe right about the ACPI and the problem with 2.4 kernel. However, you might be able to lower the fan's run time by loading the whole DSL to your RAM using the "toram" boot option.

Posted by Supermuncher on June 19 2005,10:00

Already tried that but it makes no difference as it keeps the voltage at the same level. Since the new ACPI is supposed to be controlled by the software however, it is also not possible to change the core voltage in the bios anymore :angry:

Well I suppose I'll have to compile my own then was nice while it lasted. Hope you guys have more luck with DSL, I was Impressed with it but its not everybody’s distro

BTW I also tried some Kernel Patches but none of them made any difference to the fan problem. It works fine with newer kernel versions.

Posted by ke4nt1 on June 19 2005,11:10

Look at your default booting options..
I think one is 'noacpi' , to overcome issues with non-acpi boxen.

try booting up the live CD with acpi as an option.
e.g.

dsl dma toram acpi

and see if that works for you..

Also, noapm is also a default option,
so you may need to add 'apm' to the mix as well.

Let us know..

73
ke4nt

Posted by Supermuncher on June 21 2005,11:02

Again no luck. The apm gets overridden by acpi. Disabling it however stops DSL completly from loading.

However it did give me some kernel errors while the apm was overriden by the acpi from bios while booting. I'll see what I can find out on that.