[ltp] prefer not to hear the fan

[Dan Jacobson]

Gentlemen, I prefer not to hear the fan on my Thinkpad R50e. I'm not
trying to save power as I run it from the AC 110 V with the battery
just as a UPS. I just like quiet, and feel it's a shame to have the
fan spinning even when I am just in single user mode with just
/dev/console.

http://bugs.debian.org/328528: can Celeron M scale frequency?

>> cpu-freq/user-guide.txt should mention Celeron! Otherwise Celeron
>> users will have little hope of figuring out what to put in /etc/modules.
>>
>> After running http://www.plenz.com/linux/thinkpad_R50e thru a
>> translator, it is clear user-guide.txt should mention that Celeron M
>> users should put p4_clockmod, cpufreq_userspace, speedstep_lib into
>> /etc/modules, one per line.

D> Well, p4_clockmod will not allow your notebook to run longer on battery
D> power. That's why "Pentium M" is so much more expensive than "Celeron M"=
s:
D> only Pentiums can do CPU frequency and voltage scaling. Throttling can be
D> done by both, but that doesn't save you anything under normal circumstan=
ces.

Well all I know is I was successfully able at least to slow down programs
with cpufreq, and also more with throttling, and even more still with
both at the same time.

I am not trying to save the battery. I am trying to not need to listen
to the fan on and off every few minutes.

>> Did you ever get the fan to stay off for more than 5 minutes?

J> Yes, I did! Since my last ThinkPad (T23) died because I burnt the
J> Motherboard I am very careful with the the heat of my TP. It normally
J> runs at 40-50=C2=B0C, when the temperature goes up to 55=C2=B0C the fan =
turns on
J> and turns off again when the cpu is cooled down to like 46=C2=B0C.

J> How hot is your thinkpad normally runnning?

Using both ACPI throttling and cpufreq scaling, I can indeed make my
Thinkpad r50e run slow, however the fan nonetheless blows till we
reach 54 deg, then stops until temp rises again till 62 and then
starts blowing again.

I hear that even if one manages to cool the CPU, the fan will still
run almost all the time, due to a hot video card or something.  So you
must have figured out how to cool that too. Tell me how. I use Debian sid.


P.S. what is writing to the disk about every five seconds even in
single user mode with all logging programs to /var/log/* killed?

I don't want to spin down my disks or save power. I just think there
must be no need to write so often, and wonder what is doing it and
where it is writing to. lsof didn't help.