Options for fan speed control (Winbond SuperIO chips)
-
I have some 1U "network appliance" type of boxes that currently run pfSense quite well, but they're a bit too loud. These machines use Winbond W83627EHF chips which seem to be supported on other operating systems. On Windows I can control fans successfully with SpeedFan. On Linux, I can apparently use lm_sensors.
In my research I've tried ipmitool (no IPMI hardware available), editing ACPI cooling settings with sysctwl -w (no apparent effect), and bsdhwmon (unsupported board).
Are there any other methods of controlling the fan speed in software?
-
You can always write to the superio chip registers directly. That's what the Watchguard script does.
Steve
-
You can always write to the superio chip registers directly. That's what the Watchguard script does.
Steve
Ah, I didn't realize that the Watchguard boxes use the same SuperIO chip. I'll take a look at your source code and see if I can build on it. Thanks!
-
It may not be identical but the Winbond chips share a lot of the registers etc.
Look at the source and then check the specific datasheet for your chip. It's unfortunately pretty confusing.Steve
-
I wish there were a general API for this stuff that we could simply write a driver for. Writing one-off tools and adding scripts to manage them is so much less attractive than having the OS self-manage once all the resources are described to it.
-
Interestingly the lm driver was ported to FreeBSD in 2007 but never included. There were some reasons given, I forget now though. That would have made things a lot easier.
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2007-September/076966.html
Steve
