1THINKFAN(1) thinkfan THINKFAN(1)
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6 thinkfan - A simple fan control program
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9 thinkfan [-hnqzDd] [-b BIAS] [-c CONFIG] [-s SECONDS] [-p [DELAY]]
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12 Thinkfan sets the fan speed according to temperature limits preconfig‐
13 ured in /etc/thinkfan.conf. It can read temperatures from three possi‐
14 ble sources:
15 /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal
17 Which is provided by the thinkpad_acpi kernel module,
18 /sys/class/hwmon/*/temp*_input
20 Which may be provided by any hwmon drivers, and
21 S.M.A.R.T. (since 0.9)
23 Which reads the temperature directly from the hard disk using
24 libatasmart.
25 Note that since 0.9 you can use any sensors of these three types at the
27 same time. To allow that, the configuration keywords have been changed.
28 The sensor keyword has been deprecated in favor of the new keywords
29 tp_thermal, hwmon and atasmart which mark the following path as a
30 legacy thinkpad_acpi thermal file, sysfs hwmon file, or a hard disk
31 device file, respectively.
32 The fan can be /proc/acpi/ibm/fan or some PWM file in /sys/class/hwmon.
34 Note that the fan config keyword is deprecated as well. Instead, you
35 should use tp_fan for a legacy thinkpad_acpi fan file or pwm_fan for a
36 sysfs PWM file.
37 See the README file and the example configurations for details on these
39 changes.
40 WARNING: This program does only very basic sanity checking on the con‐
42 figuration. That means that you can set your temperature limits
43 as insane as you like.
44 There are two general modes of operation:
46 COMPLEX MODE
48 In complex mode, temperature limits are defined for each sensor think‐
49 fan knows about. Setting suitable limits for each sensor in your system
50 will probably require a bit of experimentation and good knowledge about
51 your hardware, but it's the safest way of keeping each component within
52 its specified temperature range. See
53 http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Thermal_Sensors for details on which sen‐
54 sor measures what temperature in a Thinkpad. On other systems you'll
55 have to find out on your own. See the example configs to learn about
56 the syntax.
57 SIMPLE MODE
59 In simple mode, Thinkfan uses only the highest temperature found in the
60 system. That may be dangerous, e.g. for hard disks. That's why you
61 should provide a correction value (i.e. add 10-15 \[u00B0]C) for the
62 sensor that has the temperature of your hard disk (or battery...). See
63 the example config files for details about that.
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66 Some example configurations are provided with the source package. For
67 detailed explanations please read the README file. If you installed
68 thinkfan from a distribution package, you may find them under
69 /usr/share/doc or wherever your package manager puts documentation.
70
72 -h Show a short help message
73 -s SECONDS
75 Maximum seconds between temperature updates (default: 5)
76 -b BIAS
78 Floating point number (-10 to 30) to control rising temperature
79 exaggeration. If the temperature increases by more than 2 °C
80 during one cycle, this number is used to calculate a bias, which
81 is added to the current highest temperature seen in the system:
82 current_tmax = current_tmax + delta_t * BIAS / 10
84 This means that negative numbers can be used to even out short
86 and sudden temperature spikes like those seen on some on-DIE
87 sensors. Use DANGEROUS mode to remove the -10 to +30 limit. Note
88 that you can't have a space between -b and a negative argument,
89 because otherwise getopt will interpret things like -10 as an
90 option and fail (i.e. write "-b-10" instead of "-b -10").
91 Default is 15.0
93 -c FILE
95 Load a different configuration file (default: /etc/think‐
96 fan.conf)
97 -n Do not become a daemon and log to terminal instead of syslog
99 -q Be quiet (no status info on terminal)
101 -z Assume we don't have to worry about resuming from standby when
103 using the sysfs interface (see README!)
104 -p [SECONDS]
106 Use the pulsing-fan workaround (for older Thinkpads). Takes an
107 optional floating-point argument (0-10s) as depulsing duration.
108 Default 0.5s.
109 -d Do not read temperature from sleeping disks. Instead, 0 °C is
111 used as that disk's temperature. This is needed if reading the
112 temperature causes your disk to wake up unnecessarily. Note:
113 This option is only available if thinkfan was built with -D
114 USE_ATASMART.
115 -D DANGEROUS mode: Disable all sanity checks. May damage your hard‐
117 ware!!
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120 SIGINT and SIGTERM simply interrupt operation and should cause thinkfan
121 to terminate cleanly.
122 SIGHUP makes thinkfan reload its config. If there's any problem with
124 the new config, we keep the old one.
125 SIGUSR1 causes thinkfan to dump all currently known temperatures either
127 to syslog, or to the console (if running with the -n option).
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130 git://git.code.sf.net/p/thinkfan/code
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134 If you have any problems with thinkfan, please go to the help forum at
135 sf.net:
136 http://sourceforge.net/projects/thinkfan/forums/forum/905019.
137 There's a bugtracker at
139 http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=249873&atid=2416828.
140thinkfan 0.9.1 June 2013 THINKFAN(1)