Loud Fan and Hot to the Touch

English Hardware
1

Dear SUSE Experts

Could someone kindly point me to a fix to my problem?
After I installed OpenSUSE 12.1 64 bit on my VAIO notebook (Intel Core2Duo - 4GB RAM) , the fan became very loud and the notebook hot, and it is not very comfortable anymore to work or type on it.

I know that some suggestions were posted, and I tried the following:

  1. YAST power management tool: It makes no difference whatsoever no matter which profile I select, with or without reboot
  2. PowerTop: Although I accepted all suggestions made by the tool, nothing changed, exception that I heard my hard drive make like “gulp” sounds…
  3. CPUfrequtils: I installed it from YAST, and used the terminal to run the commands, but nothing ever changed, same loud fan and same hotness, reboot or not, and I repeated many times trying to set a governor…I used this guide: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CPU_Frequency_Scaling
  4. Bashing script from a post I saw here: (C.F.U. - CPU Frequency Utilitiy - Version 1.10 - For use with the cpufrequtils package - Blogs - openSUSE Forums)
    Whenever I follow the instructions, I reach to the command : cfu or cfu -h but I get : /home/ahmaddaoud/bin/cfu: Permission denied.
    I am not knowledgeable about linux, so from “Permission denied”, all I could infer was that I am not allowed to run the script, but I am logged in as su … is there another problem?

Please can you help me make some power management tool work ! Thanks!
Also, one more thing, can you tell me how to know if my GPU is getting hot too? (using ATI Radeon 4550 - same drivers that came with openSUSE).

Thanks all for your time and for your help…

Sincerely
Ahmad Daoud

2

On 12/19/2011 08:16 PM, Ahmad Daoud wrote:
> Please can you help me make some power management tool work !

you can try booting with one of these as a boot parameter…that is,
boot and at the first green screen type in ONE of the following and then
hit enter…the machine will boot up and may or may not be helped in
running cooler…if the first doesn’t help, then try the other…if that
doesn’t help, try both at the same time (space in between)

pcie_aspm=force
acpi_osi=Linux

> Also, one more thing, can you tell me how to know if my GPU is getting
> hot too?

for some years now the chips are self protecting–that is, they will
just quit before they are damaged by heat (if all the internal circuits
are working correctly)

by the way, if you have overclocked–go back to the default…

and, let us know how yout get on…(and, maybe someone has a better
answer!!)

–
DD http://tinyurl.com/DD-Caveat
openSUSE®, the “German Engineered Automobiles” of operating systems!

3

On 2011-12-19 20:16, Ahmad Daoud wrote:
> Whenever I follow the instructions, I reach to the command : cfu or
> cfu -h but I get : /home/ahmaddaoud/bin/cfu: Permission denied.

Home partition mounted noexec by default. Change it.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)

4

Fan at max speed + hot laptop = most probably a process is using 100% CPU all the time. Check top (or CTRL-ESC in KDE4 if you want a GUI version) to see what process is that, and post back here.

Things that sometimes hog my CPU: indexing (nepomuk/strigi and the likes of it), kded (a kde4 daemon), prepare-preload, etc.

5

OT: what’s this cfu command? I couldn’t find a man or info page about it, either in oS 11.4 or Google .

6

On 2011-12-19 23:36, brunomcl wrote:
> OT: what’s this -cfu- command?

Point 4 of his initial post.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)

7

Hello all
Thanks first…

I tried:
1. I wrote pcie_aspm=force parameter at boot time…but nothing noticeable afterwards (I worked normally)
I wrote acpi_osi=Linux , but also same result (nothing)
I wrote both parameters together, I am still working under the OS after I wrote both parameters… and absolutely nothing changed, hot, and fan still working like a car radiator…
Also, I never overclocked any CPU…never tried it or even installed a tool to do it.

2. I checked GNOME System Monitor, and the CPUs usage is not 100%, it is normal…jumps between 10, 4 , 1, 15%, 24% etc…
Also, the only process that is using 15% and changing is gnome-system-monitor. Others are zero…status sleeping…

3. I found out that I can change the file fstab in etc to enable “exec” to enable me to run executables, so that I can try CPUfrequtils…but I got totally confused and I cannot find which mount command + options to use, or how to edit the fstab file, because when I tried to edit it and add “, exec” to one line, I could not save the file again because it is read-only.

I would appreciate any follow up suggestions…

Thanks again

8

On 12/20/2011 12:36 PM, Ahmad Daoud wrote:
>
> I wrote both parameters… and absolutely nothing changed, hot, and fan
> still working like a car radiator…

try a few more (one at a time, no need to try stacking):

acpi_osu=Linux
acpi_osu=linux
acpi=off
noapic
apm=on

(if you think i’m just guessing, you are correct)

any of those might either work for good or bad (in terms of heat
generated or fan speed)–while i would not expect any to be
damaging…but, you never know for sure…so, read my sig’s caveat…

what i do know is that there are hundreds and hundreds of VAIO postings
in these forums (and thousands and thousands on the internet) and very
few are from smiling VAIO users using linux…read around:

http://www.google.dk/search?q=site%3Aforums.opensuse.org+vaio+heat+fan

http://www.google.dk/search?q=linux+vaio+heat+fan

> 3. I found out that I can change the file fstab in etc to enable
> “exec” to enable me to run executables, so that I can try
> CPUfrequtils…but I got totally confused and I cannot find which
> mount command + options to use, or how to edit the fstab file, because
> when I tried to edit it and add “, exec” to one line, I could not save
> the file again because it is read-only.

while i don’t think you are going to get much relief by doing this, here
is the way to be able to edit and save that file:

you must become root (aka: superuser) to change system files, this way:
(well heck! you have not said if you use KDE, or Gnome or what…so i
don’t know how to tell you!!)

  1. press Alt and then F2, a little popup near the top edge will appear,
    type into it

kdesu kwrite

if using gnome type


gnomesu gedit

  1. give your root password when requested

  2. soon a Graphical editor will pop up, navigate to /etc/fstab and do
    your editing (not that i actually think it will help at all, but you can
    try it)

note: not all hardware manufacturers make their hardware compatible with
Linux…some do, my little Acer works perfectly, is quiet, quick, long
battery life etc etc etc

–
DD http://tinyurl.com/DD-Caveat http://tinyurl.com/DD-Hardware
http://tinyurl.com/DD-Software
openSUSE®, the “German Engineered Automobiles” of operating systems!

9

If it was a snake it would have bitten me…

(obs: the above probably sounds better in portuguese)

10

Well, if it is hot with low cpu usage and full speed fan, then only the other thing that can be heating up your system (that I know of) is the graphics chipset. If nvidia you can use nvidia-settings (from the proprietary driver package) to see the temperature, other chipsets probably have their utilities for this too.

11

On 2011-12-20 22:56, brunomcl wrote:
> If it was a snake it would have bitten me…
>
> (obs: the above probably sounds better in portuguese)

X’-)

We have a similar one in Spanish, but I can’t remember the wording at this
moment :slight_smile:

Ah, yes: “un poco más y me|te muerde” - a bit more and it bites me|you :wink:

But I think there is another one. Perhaps “si es un perro te muerde” - if
it were a dog it would have bitten you.

Happens to us all the time, we do not see the obvious.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)

12

On 12/20/2011 10:56 PM, brunomcl wrote:
> if it is hot with low cpu usage and full speed fan

i didn’t read that (not that it is not written, i just FAILED to read it
that way)…

if that is true i’d guess it is past time to clean the chicken feathers
and cat hair out of the cooling passages…

it might even be needed to clean the heat sink connected to the CPU…in
some situations the thermal paste which connects the CPU and heat sink
needs to be removed and replaced (it can harden over time and become
ineffective)

hello Ahmad_Daoud: WAIT–search the internet for the correct and safe
ways to clean the junk out of your specific laptop…do not just
start unscrewing the screws and opening it up to see what you can see
(unless you like expensive stuff that does not work!!)

do not just start blowing compressed air into every opening you can
find…because you just might blow to much the wrong direction and kill
the fan…or too much too fast the correct direction way but overspeed
the fan and ruin the bearings…[see, there will be a cooling air
entry and exit…do not blow into the exit (unless VAIO says to) for
fear of turning the fan backwards too fast…]

find the how-to, and follow it…and, let us know how you get on…
please…

–
DD http://tinyurl.com/DD-Caveat http://tinyurl.com/DD-Hardware
http://tinyurl.com/DD-Software
openSUSE®, the “German Engineered Automobiles” of operating systems!

13

AT LAST!

I tried most of the parameters you threw at me (I refrained from some), but I only “felt”, after closing all sources of noise in the room, that things were a tiny bit better with: apm=off pcie_aspm=force acpi=force
However, after 10 minutes, the laptop would start getting louder and really hot…This never happened in previous OS’s, and the laptop is 2 years old (mayb it needs cleaning, but the heat problem was abrupt). So, as someone suggested here, I checked the graphics card (ATI Radeon HD using the opensource driver that comes with openSUSE 12.1):

  1. With this command…
    $ cat /sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/radeon_pm_info
    I saw that the GPU was running at FULL clock speed.

  2. So…as per the guide, I changed the profile to “mid”, since I mostly work on the desktop and do not run GPU heavy apps
    # echo mid > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile

You can replace “mid” with: default, auto, low, mid, high

Right after I pressed Enter…the CAR became a LAPTOP again! Significant reduction in fan speed and heat. Thanks alot guys for your help.
Check out the Radeon driver (Xorg) page to make use of power saving utilities, which I guess all work properly. Or type: man radeon at the command line to see all information.
I guess I still need to check the hard disk…because it is still kind of hot for my taste

Thanks again :slight_smile:

Sincerely,
Ahmad Daoud

14

On 12/22/2011 07:56 AM, Ahmad Daoud wrote:
> Significant reduction in fan speed and heat.

GREAT that you found the answer (even if we couldn’t)

hmmmm…i guess you used this guide (which i’d never seen it before):

http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/how-faq-forums/unreviewed-how-faq/462887-mini-howto-quieten-your-radeon-system-foss-default-opensuse-radeon-driver.html

–
DD
openSUSE®, the “German Engineered Automobiles” of operating systems!

15

Hehe, actually, no…see, that’s another problem, whatever keywords you write in the search textbox in the forums, you get ZERO results…at least my experience…

In fact, I first found out about X.org website, then after seeing the power management profiles, I searched for them and found this guide:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI#Powersaving
So I tried the profile change command and it worked.
However, this guide you posted has a way to make the change “permanent” even after reboot. So I will try that.

I am also looking for other ways to cool down the 2 CPUs and Hard-disk (51 C, 51 C, and 41 C respectively, constant the WHOLE TIME), because I am used to much cooler keyboard and wrist resting area under other OS. So, I bet it is not the GPU doing that still, although the noise and heat are greatly reduced.

Thanks alot for the new link :slight_smile: Please share any ideas for CPU or HD cooling… (I will still clean the Laptop like you recommended though)…

Regards,

16

On 12/22/2011 12:26 PM, Ahmad Daoud wrote:
> whatever keywords you
> write in the search textbox in the forums, you get ZERO results…

yep…as far as i know every search engine built into either the
openSUSE forum or wiki are total rubbish!! completely worthless and i
most stopped complaining about them because they are “too hard to fix”.

so i always recommend you use Google and their “site specifier” option,
which i explained in detail in an earlier post today:
http://tinyurl.com/7n4t6fk (once you get there just search on “site
specifier” (without the “”))

–
DD
openSUSE®, the “German Engineered Automobiles” of operating systems!