Simple fan speed control for the Firebox X750e

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!

power_matz

I have a clean install of 2.2. After this I installed the fan speed control with latest version of all the dan stuff. It is working!

MacUsers

Well, intact I did a clean install as well. Could you send me the link to fan control that you have used. There a few I think. Best!

power_matz

Just the code from seven replies above: https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=66129.0;attach=55565

And of course the latest version of Stephens WGXep.
And then I modified the min temp.

Voila

Matthias

MacUsers

Thanks Matt! It worked on the fresh 2.2 install. I can hear my heartbeats now :D

MacUsers

I cannot auto-start that at boot though. This is where I have those files:

[root@wg550 ~]# for ix in $(find / -name 'fanctrl*'); do ls -l ${ix}; done
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  1624 Apr 24 16:15 /usr/local/sbin/fanctrld
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  339 Apr 24 13:45 /etc/rc.d/fanctrld.sh
#
[root@wg550 ~]# ls -l $(which WGXepc)
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  13762 Nov 28 12:51 /usr/local/bin/WGXepc

and fanctrld is enabled in the rc.conf.local:

[root@wg550 ~]# grep fan /etc/rc.conf.local 
fanctrld_enable="YES"

What am I still missing? I can start fan-control manually though. Any one can help please? Best!

MacUsers

Sorry guys, found the problem: fanctrld.sh should be in "/usr/local/etc/rc.d/" not in /etc/rc.d. Working fine now.