Re: Systems running hot?

On Sat, 2009-12-19 at 13:53 -0800, Doug Barton wrote:
> In the last weeks (I generally update to the latest HEAD daily) It
> seems that my -current laptop is running hot temperature wise, even
> when it's idle, or nearly so. The temperature sensor (via wmbsdbatt)
> generally stays in the 80s C, as opposed to the 70s, and the fan is
> regularly on its "medium" speed as opposed to the low speed. Also, the
> keyboard area sometimes becomes so hot that it's actually
> uncomfortable. If I boot windows and let it run that way for a while
> everything goes back to normal.
> 
> I've got the back end of the laptop propped up an inch or so to
> improve ventilation which helps some, but it's still running hotter
> than usual. And before someone suggests it, yes, I've blown out all
> the fans/heatsinks.
> 
> This is a Dell Latitude D620 with a C2D, running i386 SMP in case any
> of that matters. :)
Is this the same system as in your thread "powerd and nvidia drivers not
playing nicely together"? If it is, do you know where fan level
information comes from? You do not seem to have ACPI fan devices defined
there:

hw.acpi.thermal.min_runtime: 0
hw.acpi.thermal.polling_rate: 10
hw.acpi.thermal.user_override: 0
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.temperature: 72.5C
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.active: -1
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.passive_cooling: 0
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.thermal_flags: 0
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._PSV: -1
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._HOT: -1
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._CRT: 126.0C
===> hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._ACx: -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._TC1: -1
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._TC2: -1
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._TSP: -1

If all you want is to make your system cooler during the operation, you could try setting  

hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.passive_cooling=1
hw.acpi.thermal.user_override=1
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._PSV=70C

either in /etc/sysctl.conf or manually and see whether this makes a difference.


-- 
Alexandre Kovalenko (Олександр Коваленко)