1thermald(8) System Manager's Manual thermald(8)
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6 thermald - start Linux thermal daemon
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9 thermald [ OPTIONS ]
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13 thermald is a Linux daemon used to prevent the overheating of plat‐
14 forms. This daemon monitors temperature and applies compensation using
15 available cooling methods.
16 By default, it monitors CPU temperature using available CPU digital
18 temperature sensors and maintains CPU temperature under control, before
19 HW takes aggressive correction action.
20 Thermal daemon looks for thermal sensors and thermal cooling drivers in
22 the Linux thermal sysfs (/sys/class/thermal) and builds a list of sen‐
23 sors and cooling drivers. Each of the thermal sensors can optionally be
24 binded to a cooling drivers by the in kernel drivers. In this case the
25 Linux kernel thermal core can directly take actions based on the tem‐
26 perature trip points, for each sensor and associated cooling device.
27 For example a trip temperature X in a sensor can be associates a cool‐
28 ing driver Y. So when the sensor temperature = X, the cooling driver
29 "Y" is activated.
30 Thermal daemon allows one to change this relationship or add new one
32 via a thermal configuration file (thermal-conf.xml). This file is auto‐
33 matically created and used, if the platform has ACPI thermal relation‐
34 ship table. If not this needs to be manually configured.
35 When there is a sensor, which has no associate cooling device, via con‐
37 figuration file or thermal relationship table, then this sensor is
38 tested for relationship with CPU load dynamically up to maximum 3
39 times. If there is no relationship, then it is added to a black list of
40 unbinded sensors and not tried again.
41 Optionally thermal daemon can act as an exclusive thermal controller by
43 using thermal sysfs and acting as a user space governor. In this case
44 kernel thermal core is not active and decision is taken by thermal dae‐
45 mon only.
46 Dbus Interface: When started with dbus-enable option, dbus interface
48 can be used to control thermal temperature at which cooling action
49 takes place. This change is persistent. For example, to start CPU cool‐
50 ing at 80C, dbus-send command can be used:
51 # dbus-send --system --dest=org.freedesktop.thermald /org/freedesk‐
53 top/thermald org.freedesktop.thermald.SetUserPassiveTemperature
54 string:cpu uint32:80000
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59 -h, --help
60 Show help options.
61 --version
63 Print thermald version and exit.
64 --no-daemon
66 Don't become a daemon: Default is daemon mode.
67 --loglevel=info
69 log severity: info level and up.
70 --loglevel=debug
72 log severity: debug level and up: Max logging.
73 --poll-interval
75 Poll interval in seconds: Poll for zone temperature changes. To
76 disable polling, set to zero. Polling can only be disabled, if
77 available temperature sensors can notify temperature change
78 asynchronously.
79 --dbus-enable
81 Enable Dbus.
82 --exclusive-control
84 Act as exclusive thermal controller. This will use user-space
85 governor for thermal sysfs and take over control.
86 --ignore-cpuid-check
88 Ignore cpuid check for supported CPU models.
89 --config-file
91 Specify thermal-conf.xml path and ignore default thermal-
92 conf.xml.
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96 thermal-conf.xml(5)
97 8 May 2013 thermald(8)