hey, i've been continously searching for a solution to the heat problem.
it seems that playing music, watching videos, visiting websites that uses
alot javascript, makes the
temperature of 1 CPU core to rise dramatically, while the other core remain
~constant in temperature.
i've always had a temperature issue with my thinkpad x60 on Linux, though on
Windows i installed a
software from lenovo that fixed everything, so i am certain it is possible to
fix this heat issue on Linux too.
currently i've managed to decrease the temperature maybe 10-15 degrees
celsius, but it still rises to 70~90
during said activities. i've scoured the net for settings that got the
potential to decrease temperature.
success? not really very much. i've come to a final resort, which is to look
at the appropriate kernel modules's
source code for documentation about how they work and their different power
saving settings. i might do this
when i have time. i would hope though that someone would already have a plain
text file documenting these
settings, hopefully and most likely can they all be interfaced by /sys/
and/or /proc/ or as arguments to the
modules.
away from that, my previous 'scouring' have had some effect. namely i
randomly managed to disable the
high pitched noise during an attempt to decrease temperature by interfacing
/sys/ and /proc/.
i was surprised because before i used powertop --auto-tune to disable the
noise, and that rendered
the noise into effect again when plugging in certain (not wifi nor external
hard drive, but soundcard and audio
player) usb devices (powertop also disabled power supply to them, when i
called powertop --auto-tune after
plugging them in). i've not tested which line(s) in that script that had this
effect, when i get time i might.
it would maybe be useful to know for the coreboot developers. i have
assembled this script from various sources,
but i cannot remember them all. i wish there were a complete reference and
explanation of the /sys/ and /proc/
interfaces, but i am sure the needed information can be obtained by reading
the kernel/module sources (if not,
then who has the knowledge? is it forgotten?). my experience with power
management on Linux, is that it sucks,
with or without coreboot. that is, atleast out of the box. i'm just thinking
some configuration must be done.
one useful thing regarding decrease of temperature that i've come across is
fan control. on my debian os it was
not enabled by default. i had to pass fan_control=1 to the thinkpad_acpi
module,
# modprobe thinkpad_acpi fan_control=1
then it would be possible to interface /proc/acpi/ibm/fan,
# echo level full-speed > /proc/acpi/ibm/fan #set fan speed to maximum
# echo level auto > /proc/acpi/ibm/fan #automatically controlled
# cat /proc/acpi/ibm/fan #you will see a numberical value, 0-X
# echo level X > /proc/acpi/ibm/fan #X is the numerical value
with the settings in this file and fan speed at maximum, running,
$ nice -n 19 mplayer video.mp4
the *one* core temperature starts out at ~45, gradually very slowly but
surely reaches up to ~90 celsius after
a while. note that the other core will stay at a nearly constant ~45 celsius.
then when the process, mplayer, exits, then the temperature will almost
rapibly decrease. in a few
minutes, the core temperature will be back at ~45 celsius. i think this is
weird, just seems like it has
to do with how Linux handles the cpu frequency, not some inherent hardware
issue nor a lack of capability to
prevent it. i will maybe try out different cpufreq drivers and recompile my
kernel in detail, then i will
report back results. if that won't work then my only solution is to delve
into the kernel/module sources...
and i'm just a darn amateur who is clueless.
ASLO: trisquel.info does not work well with webkit (it does not render well
at all, everything is line wrapped at like 300 pixels and you cannot see
complete posts, words are invisible!) in neither uzbl, luakit, vimb, etc. I
would appreciate if you disabled this fancy page style, whatever it is that
is causing it.
