Jean Delvare wrote: > Hi Mark, > > On Tue, 27 Jan 2009 10:02:28 -0800, Mark Nienberg wrote: >> I was hoping to use the fan control program on a server with an ASUS KFN4-DRE >> motherboard. The BIOS has three settings for control of fans (disabled, smart fan, >> smart fan II). The two smart fan options work very poorly, cycling through full speed >> and low speed on about a 24 hour cycle with no apparent regard to temps. That is why >> I would like to take control and force something more rational. > It might be better to tweak the settings of the automatic modes than to > switch to software control. Sometimes the BIOS allows this. If not, > some of our drivers have sysfs files to tweak the settings. There is nothing in the BIOS that allows me to tweak the way the BIOS fan control works. I would love to let the BIOS take care of this, but it does a poor job, often running the CPU fan noisily at full speed for hours, even when temps are low. >> I assumed that if I am controlling fans from the OS then I don't want the BIOS to >> also try to control fans, so I set it to "disabled" and then ran the pwmconfig >> program. The program found three pwm devices and tried each one in turn, but there >> was no effect on the two fans connected to the motherboard. There are a total of 10 >> fan connectors on this board, six of which show up in lm_sensors. The manual says >> that the "smart fan" setting applies to all fan connectors. >> >> Should I have tested with the BIOS settings other than "disabled"? > > This shouldn't change anything. If pwmconfig finds a PWM output in > automatic mode, it'll warn you that you probably don't want to change > it to manual mode, but that's about it (you can override that if you > really want to.) > >> Should I test the other 4 fan connectors that lm_sensors recognizes? > > Yes, it can't hurt. I'll try some more fans then. > It would help if you would provide more information about your board. > In particular, which hardware monitoring chip(s) are found by > sensors-detect? What does the output of "sensors" look like? > > If there is more than one chip, are the PWM outputs found on the same > chip that reports the fan speeds? I'll run pwmconfig again and see if I can answer that. Maybe I should try a newer lm_sensors, but so far I have been sticking with rpms rather than source. > And do you see fan speeds change when in automatic control mode? Yes, the BIOS does change the fan speed, though not rationally. >> Or is this just one of the boards that fan control won't be able to handle? > > If the BIOS has options to control the fans then the wiring on the board > must be correct. You're probably not too far away. Thanks. I won't give up then. This is the office file server, so I am limited in the times I can work on it. Maybe I'll have another go this weekend. -- Mark Nienberg Sent from an invalid address. Please reply to the group.
