[RFC] Fan control for mactel-support repo

[kosumi68]

One of the most long-lived discussions regarding running Ubuntu on Macs is the problem of excessive heat. There exist solutions for every single case, but they are somewhat hard for the newcomer to find.

This post is a request for a fan-control solution suitable for all macs, to eventually be put in the mactel-support repository. I know there are several fan-control solutions out there, and my hope is that this thread will single out one of them to improve upon to the point that everybody can install and use it on their mac.

So, do you have a solution? Please come forward

[xxander]

I also need help with this.

[alexmurray]

A while ago I started work on a solution which composed a simple daemon to set the fan speeds, which exposed a dbus interface and allowed a client panel applet (or similar perhaps application indicator now with latest Ubuntu could be used) to monitor temps and set fan speed automatically (this would also provide a GUI to show the current temps, fan speeds etc and allow user control perhaps as well) - never finished it entirely but if people are keen I can try and finish it off / at least post the code if someone else wants to try and continue it.

[kosumi68]

A while ago I started work on a solution which composed a simple daemon to set the fan speeds, which exposed a dbus interface and allowed a client panel applet (or similar perhaps application indicator now with latest Ubuntu could be used) to monitor temps and set fan speed automatically (this would also provide a GUI to show the current temps, fan speeds etc and allow user control perhaps as well) - never finished it entirely but if people are keen I can try and finish it off / at least post the code if someone else wants to try and continue it.

By all means! It is probably a good idea for the fan control core to work directly with the sysfs interface of the applesmc, in case people use different setups. Some people might even run without dbus, for all we know. But on top of that, graphical tools are of course great.

[linuxopjemac]

I also hope that you can continue this project. It makes running Ubuntu on an Intel Mac smoother.

[hsoJoshFTW]

I definitely need a fan controller for my MacBook also! It seems to be running really hot whenever I use Ubuntu 10.4. I need a way to increase the speeds of the fans or something to cool it down.

[kosumi68]

Thanks to Alex Murray, we now have temperature labels in the applesmc sysfs interface, available via the mactel PPA. This is a big step towards realizing the one-model-fits-all fan control script. Kudos.

[linuxopjemac]

kudos and respect !

[dngfng]

Hi,
I was hopeing to find a solution hear to the heat/fan control problems for my MacBook Pro 6,2. But I fail to see a solution hear.

Can someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks in advanced.

BTW - has anybody had a look at this solution:
http://paste2.org/p/862259

or this one:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...3&postcount=57

[SwedishWings]

I wrote a C daemon that does the job, at least for me on Lucid and MacBook Pro 5,1. Please try it out and give me feed back.

See the README file.

/Mike