1THINKFAN(5)                        thinkfan                        THINKFAN(5)
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NAME

6       thinkfan - A simple fan control program
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SYNOPSIS

9       thinkfan [-hnqDd] [-b BIAS] [-c CONFIG] [-s SECONDS] [-p [DELAY]]
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DESCRIPTION

15       Thinkfan  sets the fan speed according to temperature limits set in the
16       config file.  It can read temperatures from a number of sources:
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19       /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal
20              Which is provided by the thinkpad_acpi kernel  module  on  older
21              Thinkpads,
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24       temp*_input files in sysfs
25              Which   may   be   provided  by  any  hwmon  drivers,  including
26              thinkpad_acpi on modern Thinkpads,
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29       Hard disks with S.M.A.R.T. support
30              With the help of libatasmart,  if  thinkfan  was  compiled  with
31              -DUSE_ATASMART=ON
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34       From the proprietary nVidia driver
35              When  the  proprietary  nVidia  driver is used, no hwmon for the
36              card will be available. In this situation, thinkfan can use  the
37              proprietary NVML API to get temperatures.
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40       The fan can be /proc/acpi/ibm/fan or some PWM file in /sys/class/hwmon.
41       See thinkfan.conf(5) for a detailed explanation of the config syntax.
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44       WARNING: This program does only very basic sanity checking on the  con‐
45              figuration.  That means that you can set your temperature limits
46              as insane as you like.
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48       There are two general modes of operation:
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52   COMPLEX MODE
53       In complex mode, temperature limits are defined for each sensor  think‐
54       fan knows about. Setting suitable limits for each sensor in your system
55       will probably require a bit of experimentation and good knowledge about
56       your hardware, but it's the safest way of keeping each component within
57       its         specified          temperature          range.          See
58       http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Thermal_Sensors for details on which sen‐
59       sor measures what temperature in a Thinkpad. On  other  systems  you'll
60       have  to  find  out on your own. See the example configs to learn about
61       the syntax.
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65   SIMPLE MODE
66       In simple mode, Thinkfan uses only the highest temperature found in the
67       system.  That  may  be  dangerous, e.g. for hard disks.  That's why you
68       should provide a correction value (i.e. add 10-15 °C)  for  the  sensor
69       that has the temperature of your hard disk (or battery...). See the ex‐
70       ample config files for details about that.
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CONFIGURATION

76       Some example configurations are provided with the source package. For a
77       detailed see the config man page thinkfan.conf(5).
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OPTIONS

83       -h     Show a short help message
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86       -s SECONDS
87              Maximum seconds between temperature updates (default: 5)
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90       -b BIAS
91              Floating  point number (-10 to 30) to control rising temperature
92              exaggeration.  If the temperature increases by more  than  2  °C
93              during one cycle, this number is used to calculate a bias, which
94              is added to the current highest temperature seen in the system:
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96               current_tmax = current_tmax + delta_t * BIAS / 10
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98              This means that negative numbers can be used to even  out  short
99              and  sudden  temperature  spikes  like those seen on some on-DIE
100              sensors. Use DANGEROUS mode to remove the -10 to +30 limit. Note
101              that  you can't have a space between -b and a negative argument,
102              because otherwise getopt will interpret things like  -10  as  an
103              option and fail (i.e. write -b-10 instead of -b -10).
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105              Default is 15.0
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108       -c FILE
109              Load a different configuration file.  By default, thinkfan first
110              tries to load /etc/thinkfan.yaml, and  /etc/thinkfan.conf  after
111              that.   The  former must be in YAML format, while the latter can
112              be either YAML or the old legacy syntax.
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114              If this option is specified, thinkfan attempts to load the  con‐
115              fig  only from FILE.  If its name ends in “.yaml”, it must be in
116              YAML format.  Otherwise, it can be either YAML or legacy syntax.
117              See thinkfan.conf(5) and thinkfan.conf.legacy(5) for details.
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120       -n     Do not become a daemon and log to terminal instead of syslog
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123       -q     Be  quiet,  i.e.  reduce  logging level from the default. Can be
124              specified multiple times until only errors are displayed/logged.
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127       -v     Be more verbose. Can be specified  multiple  times  until  every
128              message is displayed/logged.
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131       -p [SECONDS]
132              Use  the  pulsing-fan workaround (for older Thinkpads). Takes an
133              optional floating-point argument (0-10s) as depulsing  duration.
134              Default 0.5s.
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137       -d     Do  not  read  temperature from sleeping disks. Instead, 0 °C is
138              used as that disk's temperature. This is needed if  reading  the
139              temperature  causes  your  disk to wake up unnecessarily.  NOTE:
140              This option is only available if  thinkfan  was  built  with  -D
141              USE_ATASMART.
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144       -D     DANGEROUS mode: Disable all sanity checks. May damage your hard‐
145              ware!!
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SIGNALS

148       SIGINT and SIGTERM simply interrupt operation and should cause thinkfan
149       to terminate cleanly.
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151       SIGHUP  makes  thinkfan  reload its config. If there's any problem with
152       the new config, we keep the old one.
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154       SIGUSR1 causes thinkfan to dump all currently known temperatures either
155       to syslog, or to the console (if running with the -n option).
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RETURN VALUE

158       0      Normal exit
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161       1      Runtime error
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164       2      Unexpected runtime error
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167       3      Invalid commandline option
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SEE ALSO

173       The thinkfan config manpage:
174       thinkfan.conf(5)
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176       Example configs shipped with the source distribution, also available at:
177       https://github.com/vmatare/thinkfan/tree/master/examples
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179       The Linux hwmon user interface documentation:
180       https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/hwmon/sysfs-interface.html
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182       The thinkpad_acpi interface documentation:
183       https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/laptops/thinkpad-acpi.html
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BUGS

189       If  thinkfan tells you to, or if you feel like it, report issues at the
190       Github issue tracker:
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192       https://github.com/vmatare/thinkfan/issues
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197thinkfan 1.3.1                   December 2021                     THINKFAN(5)
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