Ubuntu Manpage: thinkfan.conf.legacy - the old, backwards-compatible config syntax for thinkfan

NAME

       thinkfan.conf.legacy   -   the   old,  backwards-compatible  config  syntax  for  thinkfan
       thinkfan(1)

DESCRIPTION

       The thinkfan config file specifies one or more temperature input(s), exactly  one  fan  to
       control  and the fan levels.  A fan level associates a certain fan speed to a lower and an
       upper temperature bound.  If the temperature reaches the upper bound,  we  switch  to  the
       next  fan  level,  and  if  it  drops below the lower bound, we switch to the previous fan
       level.  Temperature bounds can either be a single temperature (simple mode) or consist  of
       multiple  temperatures  (complex  mode).   In  simple  mode, only the highest of all known
       temperature is compared to the upper &  lower  bound.   If  you  have  devices  with  very
       different  temperature  ratings (e.g. CPU vs.  mechanical hard drives), you should specify
       correction values to equalize their temperature ranges, or better: use complex  mode.   In
       complex  mode,  the upper and lower bounds of each fan level are specified for each sensor
       individually.  Thinkfan then switches to the next fan level if one of the upper bounds  is
       reached,  and  to  the  previous  fan  level  if all temperatures have dropped below their
       respective lower bounds.

THERMAL SENSORS

Multiple sensor keywords can be combined in one config file, but note that the ordering is
significant with respect to the upper and lower fan level bounds if you use complex mode.
I.e. if /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal contains 16 temperatures and you specify an hwmon sensor
after the tp_thermal statement, the hwmon sensor will be the 17th temperature. After each
sensor path, an optional correction-value can be specified. This value (can be negative)
is always added to the temperature reading from that sensor. Correction values should be
specified if you use Simple Mode with components that have a different temperature rating,
like hard disks and CPUs. Note though that Complex Mode is generally the better solution
since it gives you full control over fan levels and temperature ranges for each sensor,
instead of just adding a fixed value to equalize temperature ranges.

tp_thermal /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal [ (correction-value ...) ]
Use the thermal sensors provided by the thinkpad_acpi kernel module on older
thinkpads. These normally reside in /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal, so this keyword will
hardly be used with other paths. This file usually contains 8-16 temperatures,
some of which may be reserved for removable hardware or completely unused. Unused
temperature slots always contain the value -128. Since this file contains all
temperatures the thinkpad_acpi module knows about, there cannot be more than one
tp_thermal statement in a config file.

hwmon sysfs-path [ (correction-value) ]
Use a standard hwmon temperature input that may be provided by all kinds of kernel
drivers. sysfs-path is usually a file named ‘temp*_input’, somewhere under /sys,
so you can search for them e.g. with ‘find /sys -type f -name "temp*_input"’. Each
of these files contains one temperature, so you need to add a hwmon statement for
each device whose temperature you wish to control.

atasmart device-path [ (correction-value) ]
NOTE: only available if thinkfan was compiled with USE_ATASMART enabled.

Read the temperature directly from a hard disk using S.M.A.R.T. See also the -d
option in thinkfan(1) that prevents thinkfan from waking up sleeping (mechanical)
disks to read their temperature.

nv_thermal pci-bus-id [ (correction-value) ]
NOTE: only available if thinkfan was compiled with USE_NVML enabled.

Read the temperature of an nVidia graphics card from the proprietary nVidia driver.
This does not work with the open-source Nouveau driver, it depends specifially on
libnvidia-ml.so that is usually installed with the binary nVidia driver. The
correct pci-bus-id can be retrieved using e.g. lspci with: ‘lspci | grep -i vga’.
Most open-source graphics drivers (radeon, nouveau, possibly others too) can
instead be used with the hwmon keyword described above.

FANS

Currently, thinkfan can control only one fan at a time. In theory, you can run multiple
instances of the program simultaneously (with multiple config files) to control multiple
fans, but that requires enabling DANGEROUS mode and will likely break most init scripts.
It is an error to have more than one fan statement per config file.

tp_fan /proc/acpi/ibm/fan
Use the fan control provided by the thinkpad_acpi kernel module, which needs to be
loaded with the option fan_control=1. The path is defined by the thinkpad_acpi
kernel module and will hardly change. Besides the fan levels ranging from 0 to 7,
it also supports the disengaged and auto modes.

The auto mode should delegate fan control to the firmware, so it can be regarded as
a ‘default’ mode that does not change the fan behavior. This is useful for example
if you only want to change the fan behavior at high and/or low temperatures.

The disengaged or full-speed mode effectively disables the fan RPM limiter. Fan
speed will slowly ramp up until the fan uses the maximum electrical power available
from the embedded controller. Use this only to prevent potentially destructive
overheating, since it runs the fan outside of specifications and wears its bearings
down quickly.

pwm_fan sysfs-path
Control a sysfs PWM fan. Many hwmon drivers that provide a ‘temp*_input’ file also
allow fan control, although there may also be drivers that are specific to either
temperature reading or fan control. You can search for a PWM control file e.g.
with ‘find /sys -type f -name "pwm?"’. Note that with PWM, fan levels usually
range from 0 to 255, although besides a file like pwm1 there may also be pwm1_min
and pwm1_max that specify different (soft or recommended?) limits for a particular
fan.

FAN LEVELS

Defining the fan levels is the meat of the config file. Here you make use of your
previously defined temperature inputs to set the lower and upper bounds for the fan
speeds. You cannot mix simple fan levels with complex fan levels. The general syntax of
a simple fan level is:

( fan-level [,] lower-bound [,] upper-bound )

The fan-level is either a numeric value (0-7 or 0-255, depending on whether a tp_fan or a
pwm_fan is used) or a string enclosed in double quotes. When a tp_fan is used, specifying
0 has the same effect as specifying "level 0". In addition to the numeric fan levels,
tp_fan also supports "level auto" and "level disengaged" or "level full-speed". See above
for an explanation of what these mean. The format of lower-bound and upper-bound depends
on whether you want to use Simple Mode or Complex Mode.

Simple Mode
In simple mode, the lower-bound and upper-bound of a fan level are each specified as a
single temperature value. Both are compared only to the highest temperature found in all
of the configured thermal sensors. Using this mode of operation makes sense e.g. if all
temperature readings come from the on-DIE thermal sensors of a multicore processor. The
fan speed will affect all of these temperatures in the same way because they share a
single thermal connection to the heatsink, so it makes sense to ignore all but the highest
of these temperatures. As a rule of thumb, if your thermal sensors cover multiple devices
you should use Complex Mode, or at least specify correction values to account for
different temperature ratings.

Complex Mode
In complex mode, both the lower-bound and upper-bound are lists of temperatures, the
length of which must match the number of temperature readings thinkfan knows about. Each
bound must be enclosed in braces, with individual values separated by commas or spaces, so
the specific syntax of a complex mode fan level is:

{ fan-level
( lower-1 [lower-2 ...] )
( upper-1 [upper-2 ...] )
}

The optional commas have been omitted here for readability, and the curly braces are
interchangeable with round braces. Note that it is not possible to mix simple fan levels
with complex fan levels.

Complex mode is generally the preferred mode of operation since it allows you to specify
precisely what the fan should to to keep each component within its specified temperature
range.

NAME

DESCRIPTION

THERMAL SENSORS

FANS

FAN LEVELS

SEE ALSO