Laptop fans don't stop anymore

[Carl Karsten]

Miles Lane wrote:
> On 3/7/06, Carl Karsten <carl at personnelware.com> wrote:
> 
>>Mark Roach wrote:
>>
>>>I'm running dapper, and I've noticed lately that my laptop no longer
>>>ever gets quiet. Sleep mode has never worked on this system, but it used
>>>to be that if I wasn't running anything cpu intensive, and I closed the
>>>lid, eventually the fans would shut down, and the system would stay
>>>cool. Now it is always hot, and the fans are always running.
>>>
>>>According to the CPU scaling monitor, the CPU is getting scaled down to
>>>the 530 Mhz (the lowest). I don't think my hard drive is spinning down
>>>though. I used to run noflushd to make that happen, but it conflicts
>>>with the new laptop-mode stuff. I've got all my partitions mounted with
>>>"noatime" this used to work. Any suggestions?
>>>
>>
>>Something doesn't make sense: Box is hot, fans are running, and you want the
>>fans to... stop?
>>
>>I am guessing the real problem is the unit is just slowing down, but not going
>>to sleep.
> 
> 
> Run "top" to see which process is chewing up your CPU cycles (my bet
> is that it is gam_server, which seems to have a habit of doing this).
> 

Would the CPU get slowed down if something was chewing up your CPU cycles?  My 
guess is the CPU is fairly idle, but still "on", thus needing to be cooled down. 
  Not sure you would want a laptop CPU running at 530mhz without fans running at 
least sometimes, and the OP suggests they just stopped and stayed stopped (but I 
am assuming, so a better test really needs to be done.)

Also, can the fan speed be controlled?  what model laptop?

I would get a hoary, breezy and dapper Live CD and see how each behave.  might 
be worth the effort.

^C