Simple fan speed control for the Firebox X750e

[stephenw10]

That's great news.
I tested my X5500e box that has the 2GHz Pentium-M in it (533MHz FSB) and still exhibited weird symptoms. I was hoping the fixed ACPI might send the correct valued to powerd. My box could have some other problem though I did get it very cheaply!
Out of interest what loader.conf value were you passing to make powerd work with your CPU?

Steve

[power_matz]

I don't have any settings now for using powerd. It is just working…
No config under Advance (sysctl) and no loader.conf stuff.

But there are only two speeds: 2.13 Ghz and 1003 Mhz in display.
Maybe the Pentium M have more steps!?

Matthias

[stephenw10]

Hmm, yes there should be more steps if the ACPI tables are sending the correct data. Since Watchguard never fitted that CPU it's impossible to say what support there might be.

With ACPI enabled the kernel timecounter uses the ACPI-fast counter as it's the most accurate. That means you don't have to use a sysctl to switch away from TSC (which changes with CPU frequency).

I was just interested to know what loader.conf value you were using previously since my CPU does not appear to be supported.

Steve

[power_matz]

Hi,

I added the following:

cpufreq_load="YES"

Matthias

[browntown]

After 3 months of happy uptime, I upgraded from 2.1.1 to 2.1.3.  The fan no longer throttles down to quiet.  Are there cliff notes on how to get it back running again?  Do I need to reload WGXepc?

Steve mentioned once that Shellcmd would be better as to survive an update, but I lost my bookmarks on how to do that. Searching these giant threads with all the quotes is a headache. Forgive my impatience.

edit:

I guess I am doing shellcmd, here's a screenie.

But it doesn't seem to work.

Edit a little later:
Guess the upgrade wiped wgxepc from the local folder. Re-downloaded into conf using the command function in the webscreen and the fetch commands from the wiki. and changed shellcmd to point to /conf/wgxepc .  All working now, thanks for your indulgence. I'm keeping this here so I can find it next update.

Note to self:
Go to Diagnostics -> nanobsd  –  enable read/write filesystem
Go to Diagnostics -> command  -- fetch -o /conf https://sites.google.com/site/pfsensefirebox/home/WGXepc
*****Can then test settings by running command --  /conf/WGXepc -l green or /conf/WGXepc -f 30
Go to Diagnostics -> nanobsd  --  Switch back to read only filesystem
Go to Services -> Shellcmd -- Add entry type shellcmd (or early) and your command  /conf/WGXepc -f 32

reboot and enjoy the quiet

Or just build a rasberry pi box and go fanless.

[stephenw10]

Yep, like you found only the /conf (actually a link to the config slice) is shared between slices and not overwritten.
I take it you're not actually using the fan speed control program then?

Steve

[power_matz]

Hi,

after enabling the ACPI settings the system runs good with the script. But now it is screwed up after some time with the display attached. The fan is running at ff then.

Any idea what is happening here?

Matthias


[stephenw10]

So that dashboard shot is with the temperature sensor set to ACPI?
This seems to be the same issue that has been seen throughout this thread. When ACPI is reporting 0 what does WGXepc or mbmon report? I expect to see it's gone to the maximum value.
It's hard to know quite what can be done about this. It might be feasible to somehow reset the SuperIO chip but it's hard to test anything because there's no reliable way to trigger the issue.

Steve

[power_matz]

ok. I wait until the error occurs. Then I will check what WGXexp reports

[Guest]

@browntown:

Or just build a rasberry pi box and go fanless.

pfSense doesn't run on the raspberry pi.

I've considered a port to the beaglebone black though.

[chpalmer]

@power_matz:

Hi,

after flashing BIOS 8.1 XEOS and restting the CMOS I could go into the appropriate section to enable ACPI.
Now the system is running fine. No issue with the temperature display so far.

Even the powerd stuff is working without adding the specific sysctl.

But the best is: my big problem is solved also. I had some weired crashes while connecting the WAN port (I write this in some other topics).
The reason was an entry in the loader.conf.local to support my processor 2.13 Ghz Pentium M with powerd.

But after the CMOS reset this is not necessary anymore.

So now my systems is running with HD and faster CPU and fan control and powerd. Fine!

Thanx so far to all who helped me.

Matthias

Thanks-  you got me doing a little more experimentation tonight.  ;D

CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 2.26GHz (2266.76-MHz 686-class CPU)
cpu0: ACPI CPU on acpi0
est0: Enhanced SpeedStep Frequency Control on cpu0
est: CPU supports Enhanced Speedstep, but is not recognized. Rats!  ::)
est: cpu_vendor GenuineIntel, msr 612112b0600112b My LCD display is finally showing the CPU speed.

Edit-  However…

Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 2.26GHz Current: 1133 MHz, Max: 2266 MHz

;D

[chpalmer]

Interesting-  after several hours of being out I came home to see pfmbmon now reporting-

| | CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 2.26GHz (2266.76-MHz 686-class CPU)
cpu0: ACPI CPU on acpi0
acpi_throttle0: ACPI CPU Throttling on cpu0 |
| dev.cpu.0.freq | 2266 |

[stephenw10]

For anyone following this topic I just posted a new version of WGXepc which includes a workaround for an odd condition the SuperIO chip can find itself in. Might help out anyone running this script. See:
https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=63240.msg462749#msg462749

Has anyone seen the measurement fail when using ACPI via bios 8?

Steve

[power_matz]

Hi Steve,

yes I see this from time to time.

Matthias

[TieT]

I've installed this on a B7 bios and on first sight, it's working great.

Nice to have some speed control on the WG  :)

[wwwdrich]

I have been playing with the fanctrl script a bit after having a problem where I had a multitude of fanctrld.sh processes running. I modified the script to create a pid file and only start if it isn't running already, and rewrote the start script to be a standard FreeBSD rc script.

If anyone is interested, I attached a zip file of my version of the scripts. Rename it from .png to .zip and unzip it in /usr/local and it will drop the files in /usr/local/sbin/fanctrld and /usr/local/etc/rc.d/fanctrld.sh.

fanctrl-new.zip.png

[MacUsers]

Hi there,

My first ever pfSense on WG x550e and the first post, of course.

As with everyone else, get annoyed by x550e fan noise and found this script, which worked just fine in the beginning. But I got two questions.  The first thing: The x550e is in the attic, which gets very cold during the night time. I restarted the box in the early morning and found the fan-speed is going back to full just after few seconds of booting into pfSence. Checked the CPU temp with WGXepc and it was only 26:

[2.1.5-RELEASE][admin@wg550.home]/usr/local(14): /conf/WGXepc -t | sed '1,2d'
26 

but due to  min_temp=30 check it didn't trigger. I believe the temp was right one for that time of the day. So where comes the first Q: How I can make sure that's the right temp?Or should I really worry about thinking that's might not correct?

Then at 8pm in the evening, I checked the CPU temp and it was 32 but the fan-speed was still ff:

[2.1.5-RELEASE][admin@wg550.home]/root(1): /conf/WGXepc -t | sed '1,2d'
32 
[2.1.5-RELEASE][admin@wg550.home]/root(2): /conf/WGXepc -f
Found Firebox X-E
Fanspeed is ff

So, here the 2nd Q: Does it really do any real time monitoring or it's just only at the system startup? Any pointed would be very much appreciated. Best!

[power_matz]

This depends on the min temperature in the shell script.
Try to set the min temp there to a lower value e.g. 15. For me this is working fine.
Otherwise my system reacts like yours.

Matthias

[MacUsers]

Thanks Matthias! Locked mine to 25 and that seems to working okay. Best!

[MacUsers]

And it does't work after the v2.2 upgrade. Does anyone have any update. The fan noise is driving me crazy. Best!