active[0] being ignored

Hi all,
I have an asus A3G with opensuse 10.2 running. My trip points are

critical (S5):           99 C
passive:                 60 C: tc1=2 tc2=10 tsp=100 devices=0xdffec504

active[0]: 75 C: devices=0xdffe157c

I do not have an active[1] point. My cooling_mode is active. Therefore I would expect the fan to start cooling as soon as the temperature reaches the 75C mark. Instead, the fan runs even if the temperature is like 45C. Sometimes the fan goes on and off several times within a short period of time so it starts to be annoying.

Is there a way to force the fan to only run at 75C?

thx, Mirco

Probably not.

Every system is different in this area, and some of them simply over-ride the trip points you set,
but the picture above shows that passive throttling is supposed to kick in at 60C, and the active fan at 75C.

75C is pretty hot. It is possible that there are other
fan controls -- perhaps lower speeds -- done by microcontroller before you hit this level, and the device at 75C may refer to top speed.

See if you can have any effect on this at all

echo 99:98:75:40 > trip_points

and in theory, if temperature is above 40, the fan should turn on. If it does, then look at trip_points and see if the BIOS overwrites them.

As the fan is doing things below the 75C above already, I predict that you have little control over it with these methods.
If you really want to dig into it, you'll need to dis-assemble your DSDT to see what the AML for this box does with temperature events -- but your description above suggests that will not show you the whole picture. See also if there are any options in BIOS setup related to active and passive cooling.

cheers,
-Len

Hi Len,
thank you for your detailed answer. I already tried to lower the temperatur point to see if the cooler starts working. It happens that my fan does not react to my changes at all. Even If I set up 40C as the point to start cooling the fan is still being activated at 45C. So I presume you are right with your suspicion that there is a non configurable hardware device playing a part. I checked my BIOS but found nothing related to deal with temperatur issues.
Since this starts getting a serious problem (simple office work lets the fan go on and off giving me a hard time) I'll have a look at the decompiled DSDT. However, my knowledge regarding this is small, so is there anybody who could help me with the dsdt if I sent it per email?

thanx a lot, Mirco

Hi again,
I read many articles about my A3G and found some windows users who were be able to exactly control the point of activation for the fan. Therefore I think it must be possible for linux users to do the same. The activation of my fan has something to do with CPU usage, every time the CPU is being charged the fan starts cooling. Even this this would mean for just one single second. The fan goes on and of but the CPU's usage never goes above 10% or so. Now I would like the fan to ignore CPU usage and only listen to the temp points. I don't know how to do it.

Please, can anybody help me out.....?

Thank you so much,
Mirco