fancon

A Linux user-space fan control daemon

• System, DELL and NVIDIA GPU fan control support
• %, RPM or PWM custom speed-temperature curve configuration

Contents

• Installation
• Building from source
• Configuration
• Usage
• Managing service
• Debugging issues
  • Monitoring fans and their status
  • Logs
  • Undetected fans
  • Mis-configured or unsupported devices
  • $XAUTHORITY and or $DISPLAY env variable(s) not set

Installation

Ubuntu, Debian (PPA)

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:hbriese/fancon; sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install fancon

.deb (alternative)

wget https://github.com/hbriese/fancon/releases/latest/download/fancon_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i ./fancon*.deb; sudo apt install -f

Fedora, Red Hat, CentOS (.rpm)

wget https://github.com/hbriese/fancon/releases/latest/download/fancon.x86_64.rpm
sudo yum –nogpgcheck install ./fancon*.rpm

Arch Linux (AUR)

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/fancon.git; cd fancon
makepkg -sirc

Configuration

/etc/fancon.conf is automatically created on first run once the tests complete

Only ‘sensor’ & ‘temp_to_rpm’ for each fan is required to be manually
configured

config {
update_interval:
  1000 #Milliseconds between updating fan speeds dynamic
      : true #Interpolate speeds between temps e.g(30 : 800, 50 : 1200)
            results in 1000
        @40 smoothing_intervals : 3 #Intervals over which to smooth RPM changes
            top_stickiness_intervals : 2 #Intervals to wait before decreasing
                RPM temp_averaging_intervals : 3 #Intervals to average
                    temperatures over -
      eliminating temp spikes
}
devices {
  fan {
  type:
    SYS #One of : SYS(default), DELL, NVIDIA;
    may excluded if SYS label : "hwmon3/fan1" #Name of device -
                                anything you want sensor
        : "CPU Package" #Sensor to read -
          specify by label temp_to_rpm : "39: 0%, 40: 1%, 75: 50%, 90: 100%"
#temp(optional : f | F; default °C) : RPM(optional : % | PWM; default RPM)
# 40 : 0 % Stopped at or below 40°C(°C is used if F is omitted)
# 50 : 1 % Lowest running speed at 50°C
# 75 : 50 % 50 % of max RPM at 75°C,                                           \
    could also be written as 75 : 180PWM in this case
# 194f : 100 % Full speed at 194°F(194f = 90°C)
                                         rpm_to_pwm
        : "0: 0, 3206: 128, 4954: 180, 7281: 255" #Mappings of RPM to PWM
              start_pwm : 128 #PWM at which the fan starts
#interval : 500 #Fan - specific update time; increasing improves test accuracy
                  ignore
        : false #Don't control or test device; may be excluded if false
#Following only applicable to SYS &DELL devices
          driver_flag : 2 #Driver flag to enable manual control pwm_path
        : "/sys/class/hwmon/hwmon3/pwm1" #Path to read /
          write PWM rpm_path
        : "/sys/class/hwmon/hwmon3/fan1_input" #Path to read RPM
#Following only applicable to SYS devices
              enable_path
        : "/sys/class/hwmon/hwmon3/pwm1_enable" #Path to enable PWM control
  }
  fan{
    type : NVIDIA label : "980_Ti" sensor : "980_Ti_temp"
    temp_to_rpm : "54: 0%, 55: 1%, 90: 100%" rpm_to_pwm : "850: 0, 3832: 255"
    start_pwm : 128 interval : 500 id : 0 #Only applicable to NVIDIA devices
  } sensor {
  type:
    SYS #One of : SYS(default), NVIDIA;
    may excluded if SYS label : "CPU Package" #Name of device -
                                anything you want input_path
        : "/sys/class/hwmon/hwmon5/temp1_input" #Path to
          read(only applicable to SYS devices)
  }
  sensor {
  type:
    NVIDIA
  label:
    "980_Ti_temp" id : 0 #Only applicable to NVIDIA devices
  }
}

Usage

fancon arg [value] ...
h  help           Show this help
s  status         Status of all fans
e  enable         Enable control of all fans
e  enable  [fan]  Enable control of the fan
d  disable        Disable control of all fans
d  disable [fan]  Disable control of the fans
t  test           Test all (untested) fans
t  test    [fan]  Test the fan (forced)
f  force          Test even already tested fans (default: false)
m  monitor        Monitor all fans
m  monitor [fan]  Monitor the fan
r  reload         Reload config
c  config  [file] Config path (default: /etc/fancon.conf)
   service        Start as service
   daemon         Daemonize the process (default: false)
   stop-service   Stop the service
i  sysinfo [file] Save system info to file (default: sysinfo.txt)
   recover        Recover control of enabled devices
   nv-init        Init nvidia devices
v  verbose        Debug logging level
a  trace          Trace logging level

Managing service

Status

sudo systemctl status fancon

Start

sudo systemctl start fancon

Without systemd

sudo fancon service

Debugging issues

Monitoring fans and their status

fancon monitor

Logs

journalctl -u fancon

Logging levels

fancon verbose

fancon trace

Undetected fans

First try detecting devices using lm-sensors

sudo sensors-detect

• You may need to reboot if unloaded kernel modules were added

Check to see if your device is detected

sensors

Mis-configured or unsupported devices

Devices (fans & sensors) that:

• Expose a sysfs like interface but are not found by lm-sensors
• Are reported as not having the required features but they do

May be configurable by altering their configuration

$XAUTHORITY and or $DISPLAY env variable(s) not set

X11 access is required for NVIDIA control

You will need to configure the unset environmental variable.

Manually configure the unset environmental variable(s)

Inside /etc/profile

• export XAUTHORITY=...; You can find the XAuthority file by running xauth info
• xhost siroot; May be necessary on Wayland

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Running_GUI_applications_as_root

Building from source:

With NVIDIA support:

sudo apt install clang cmake lm-sensors libsensors5 libsensors4-dev libboost-system-dev libboost-filesystem-dev libboost-log-dev libpthread-stubs0-dev libpstreams-dev libprotobuf-dev protobuf-compiler libgrpc++-dev protobuf-compiler protobuf-compiler-grpc libxnvctrl-dev libx11-dev
git clone https://github.com/hbriese/fancon.git && cd fancon; mkdir build; cd build
cmake -DNVIDIA_SUPPORT=ON .. && make -j && sudo make install

Without NVIDIA support:

sudo apt install clang cmake lm-sensors libsensors5 libsensors4-dev libboost-system-dev libboost-filesystem-dev libboost-log-dev libpthread-stubs0-dev libpstreams-dev libprotobuf-dev protobuf-compiler libgrpc++-dev protobuf-compiler protobuf-compiler-grpc
git clone https://github.com/hbriese/fancon.git && cd fancon; mkdir build; cd build
cmake -DNVIDIA_SUPPORT=OFF .. && make -j && sudo make install