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I'm struggling to get thinkfan set up and working on my lenovo x250. I have it installed, but I'm not convinced it is controlling the fan speed. If I run:

$ cat /proc/acpi/ibm/fan

in the Terminal, I get:

status: enabled

But I'm under the impression it should be "disabled" when thinkfan is controlling things. If I run:

$ sudo thinkfan -n

I get:

WARNING: Using default fan control in /proc/acpi/ibm/fan

How do I hand off control of the fan to thinkfan (where I can adjust the setpoints)?

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  • The man page (see first link above) notes you should use tp_fan for a legacy thinkpad_acpi fan file or pwm_fan for a sysfs PWM file as fan is depreciated. There's a forum which may have helpful info at sourceforge.net/p/thinkfan/discussion/905019
    – K7AAY
    Mar 24, 2020 at 18:16
  • 1
    @ K7AAY: thanks for the reply. Pretty sure the X250 doesn't have a "legacy thinkpad_acpi" which would require me to use something other than thinkfan. I've found others on the web stating they have it running with T440s, X280s, etc. Do you actually use thinkfan? Just wondering if you have it up and running and can answer specific questions?
    – manebule
    Mar 25, 2020 at 23:00
  • I have an x220 at home I can dust off and set up, but it make take a few days.
    – K7AAY
    Mar 25, 2020 at 23:06

1 Answer 1

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first be sure the fan is enabled, as a default, its not :

echo "options thinkpad_acpi experimental=1 fan_control=1" >/etc/modprobe.d/thinkpad_acpi.conf

relaunch the module :

sudo rmmod thinkpad_acpi ; sudo modprobe thinkpad_acpi

then edit the thinkfan config file

vi /etc/thinkfan.conf

mine is setup like that :

 tp_fan /proc/acpi/ibm/fan 

 tp_thermal /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal (0, 10, 15, 2, 10, 5, 0, 3, 0, 3)
 
 (0,    0,  41)
 (1,    40, 51)
 (2,    50, 56)
 (3,    55, 61)
 (4,    60, 65)
 (5,    64, 68)
 (7,    67, 32767)

the numbers are the temperature levels, for example > (5, 64, 68) means fan level 5 between 64 and 68 degrees

level 7, the maximum, above 67 degrees

service thinkfan restart

and check the messages with :

journalctl -f

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  • Thanks @neofutur. Your instructions didn't work for me, probably because I've messed things up... I've got a file called thinkfan_acpi.conf in /etc/modprobe.d, but when I run a command such as cat /etc/modprobe.d/thinkfan_acpi.conf I get "No such file or directory"... I suspect it's a permission thing, but I'm at a loss (yes, I'm a linux learner!). Any further suggestions welcome!
    – manebule
    Oct 16, 2020 at 18:43
  • you have to do that as root, perhaps you use a different distribution and the file is not in /Etc/modprobe , also perhaps you have to create the fle yourself
    – neofutur
    Nov 5, 2020 at 2:49
  • have you done : "echo "options thinkpad_acpi experimental=1 fan_control=1" >/etc/modprobe.d/thinkpad_acpi.conf" as root ?
    – neofutur
    Nov 5, 2020 at 2:50

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