Dell Inspiron 1200 Ubuntu 7.10 Fan not working

[Steve Flynn]

On 16/10/2007, Tim M <southern.tim at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> This is a *Celeron(r) M 360 (1.40 GHz/1MB Cache/400MHz FSB) laptop Dell
> Inspiron 1200. It is strange I plugged the XP disk back in the laptop and
> ran Dell's diagnostic program on it and the fan works fine at high and low
> speed BUT  when I was using XP on it (while downloading the diagnostic
> utility) the fan never came on. Maybe it just is designed to run hot? I know
> when I had Feisty Fawn running on it I did have the fan working but it ran
> all the time. Synaptic said something about recompiling the kernel and I am
> not sure what that means. Here is the message: i8kutils
> The programs require the kernel module i8k.o which can be compiled from
> the package sources or found in Linux kernel 2.4.14 and later versions.  *
>

I rather suspect that you are hearing the case exhaust fan running rather
then the CPU fan. Moderns CPUs will overheat in a matter of seconds if they
are not cooled with a heatsink and a fan on that heatsink. The case exhaust
fan should only fire up when you're hammering the machine (i.e a kernel
recompile for example). In normal day-to-day work such a web surfing,
reading email and so forth your CPU will be mostly idle, generating little
heat and consequently the case fan SHOULD remain off.

You are already running a kernel > 2.4.14 and you will be able to confirm
the precise kernel you are running via a 'uname -a' in a shell. As such, the
i8k.o module will either be built into the kernel or will be a pluggable
module which can be insmod'ed.

Do you have any temperature readings for your CPU or motherboard temperature
available?

-- 
Steve
When 1 person suffers from a delusion it is insanity. When many people
suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.

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