Dear Maintainer,

My laptop's fan acting very strangely (it does not seem to be correlated
with the temperature at all…), I tried using i8kutils. Unfortunately, it
has absolutely no effects, even as root.

Other users got it working on the same laptop (Latitude E7440) :
https://superuser.com/questions/533102/laptop-fan-is-always-on-using-linux-mint-14

Kernel module is loaded :
$ lsmod | grep smm
dell_smm_hwmon         16384  0

i8kctl output seems correct :
$ i8kctl
1.0 A21 348DTZ1 36 -1 2 -1 6698 -1 -1

But i8kctl has no effect, either for starting :
# i8kctl fan 2 2
or stopping the fan :
# i8kctl fan 0 0

Of course, the system service also does not seem to have any effect.

I am using the newest version of the BIOS (A21). Do not hesitate to ask
if I can provide other information, or if I should report this upstream.

Rergards,
Yvan

Hi,


It's needed to override the BIOS control. You can take a look here :
'https://github.com/vitorafsr/i8kutils/issues/6'


In the past you have to use "smm" to override the BIOS fan control (like
here
'https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fan_speed_control#Dell_laptops'),
but it's some ASM code and command. There is a security risk and the
maintainer and developer of i8kutils remove SMM.


The problem is still pending, and unfortunately I didn't found an
alternative to SMM.


I hope a solution will be found, my e7440 is very noisy, CPU at 49°C and
more than 6000rpm for the fan...


Bests regards,