Simple fan speed control for the Firebox X750e

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

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!

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.