MAN page from openSUSE Tumbleweed thinkfan-0.9.3-2.1.x86_64.rpm

THINKFAN

Section: thinkfan (1)
Updated: June 2013
Index

NAME

thinkfan - A simple fan control program

SYNOPSIS

[ -hnqzDd ][ -b BIAS ][ -c CONFIG ][ -s SECONDS ][ -p [DELAY] ]

DESCRIPTION

Thinkfan sets the fan speed according to temperature limits preconfigured in/etc/thinkfan.conf. It can read temperatures from three possiblesources:

/proc/acpi/ibm/thermal: Which is provided by the thinkpad_acpi kernel module,
/sys/class/hwmon/*/temp*_input: Which may be provided by any hwmon drivers, and
S.M.A.R.T. (since 0.9): Which reads the temperature directly from the hard disk using libatasmart.Note that since 0.9 you can use any sensors of these three types at the sametime. To allow that, the configuration keywords have been changed. Thesensor keyword has been deprecated in favor of the new keywordstp_thermal, hwmon and atasmart which mark the following pathas a legacy thinkpad_acpi thermal file, sysfs hwmon file, or a hard diskdevice file, respectively.The fan can be /proc/acpi/ibm/fan or some PWM file in /sys/class/hwmon. Note that the fan config keyword is deprecated aswell. Instead, you should use tp_fan for a legacy thinkpad_acpi fan fileor pwm_fan for a sysfs PWM file.See the README file and the example configurations for details on thesechanges.
WARNING: This program does only very basic sanity checking on the: configuration. That means that you can set your temperature limits as insaneas you like.There are two general modes of operation:

COMPLEX MODE

In complex mode, temperature limits are defined for each sensor thinkfan knowsabout. Setting suitable limits for each sensor in your system will probablyrequire a bit of experimentation and good knowledge about your hardware, butit's the safest way of keeping each component within its specified temperaturerange. See http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Thermal_Sensors for details onwhich sensor measures what temperature in a Thinkpad. On other systems you'llhave to find out on your own. See the example configs to learn about thesyntax.

SIMPLE MODE

In simple mode, Thinkfan uses only the highest temperature found in thesystem. That may be dangerous, e.g. for hard disks. That's why you shouldprovide a correction value (i.e. add 10-15 °C) for the sensor that has thetemperature of your hard disk (or battery...). See the example config filesfor details about that.

CONFIGURATION

Some example configurations are provided with the source package. For detailedexplanations please read the README file. If you installed thinkfan from adistribution package, you may find them under /usr/share/doc or whereveryour package manager puts documentation.

OPTIONS

-h

Show a short help message

-s SECONDS

Maximum seconds between temperature updates (default: 5)

-b BIAS

Floating point number (-10 to 30) to control rising temperature exaggeration.If the temperature increases by more than 2 °C during one cycle, this numberis used to calculate a bias, which is added to the current highest temperatureseen in the system:

current_tmax = current_tmax + delta_t * BIAS / 10

This means that negative numbers can be used to even out short and suddentemperature spikes like those seen on some on-DIE sensors. Use DANGEROUS modeto remove the -10 to +30 limit. Note that you can't have a space between -band a negative argument, because otherwise getopt will interpret things like-10 as an option and fail (i.e. write "-b-10" instead of "-b -10").

Default is 15.0

-c FILE

Load a different configuration file (default: /etc/thinkfan.conf)

-n

Do not become a daemon and log to terminal instead of syslog

-q

Be quiet (no status info on terminal)

-z

Assume we don't have to worry about resuming from standby when using the sysfsinterface (see README!)

-p [SECONDS]

Use the pulsing-fan workaround (for older Thinkpads). Takes an optionalfloating-point argument (0-10s) as depulsing duration. Default 0.5s.

-d

Do not read temperature from sleeping disks. Instead, 0 °C is used as thatdisk's temperature. This is needed if reading the temperature causes yourdisk to wake up unnecessarily.Note: This option is only available if thinkfan was built with -D USE_ATASMART.

-D

DANGEROUS mode: Disable all sanity checks. May damage your hardware!!

SIGNALS

SIGINT and SIGTERM simply interrupt operation and should cause thinkfan toterminate cleanly.SIGHUP makes thinkfan reload its config. If there's any problem with the newconfig, we keep the old one.SIGUSR1 causes thinkfan to dump all currently known temperatures either tosyslog, or to the console (if running with the -n option).

BUGS

If you have any problems with thinkfan, please go to the help forum at sf.net:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/thinkfan/forums/forum/905019.There's a bugtracker at

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=249873&atid=2416828.

Index

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

COMPLEX MODE
SIMPLE MODE

This document was created byman2html,using the manual pages.