heat problem on inspiron 5150

I just had one more thought. When you run windows, see what the fan speeds and the temperature ranges for those speeds are. Then boot to Linux and compare. You may need to adjust your DSDT table for the differences.

---

@knolle wrote:
hi,

i have a serious problem with my inspiron 5150. the operating temperature (if the system is idle) is ~70 C and when i start running cpu and disk intensive stuff, the temperature becomes overcritical and the computer shuts down.

does anyone have an idea, if this can be a software issue with acpi for linux? i tried kernels 2.4.20, 2.4.21, and 2.6.0-test11 all with the latest patches.

any hint would be welcome!

chris

---

This surely sounds like an ACPI or power problem to me! I only recently got ACPI working properly on my Inspiron 5100. Here's what I did (as root, naturally!):

1) First, you need to download and unpack a plain vanilla kernel. I'm running 2.4.22 at the moment and it works for me. After unpacking into /usr/src, run "make mrproper" to clean out any old .o files and any leftover configuration.

2) Second, you'll need to patch the drivers/acpi/osl.c in the kernel with the DSDT patch to fix a table allocation problem. Use this patch for 2.4.22. I don't yet know what you need if you use 2.6.0 but you'll need to get the patches from Source Forge for 2.4.23 or 2.4.24. Who knows, maybe it's actually fixed in 2.6.0. You can install it by following this example commands:
gunzip acpi-20021212-2.4.22.diff.gz
patch -p1 -i acpi-20021212-2.4.22.diff

3) Now, you'll need to download Intel's IASL Compiler and install it.

4) Finally, you'll need to get what really customizes ACPI for your machine -- the DSDT table! Download the DSDT customization table for your particular machine. And here, you run into a problem. There is not one there for the Inspiron 5150. Since you have the mobile version of the P4 and the 5100 has the desktop version, you can't use it. Instead, take a look at this site. It may help you generate a good DSDT table. Make sure the file extension is .asl.


5) Once you have gotten over the rather high hurdle step four presents, then you need to compile the table and put it in the kernel source. To compile the DSDT Table use:
iasl -tc {DSDT file}.asl
That generates {DSDT file}.hex. Then you need to:
cp {DSDT file}.hex {kernel-src-dir}/drivers/acpi/tables/acpi_dsdt.c

6) Configure the kernel. You can use "make config/menuconfig/xconfig" or if this is a new version, you can get a leg up by putting a .config file from a previous kernel version in the .../linux directory and running "make oldconfig" -- which sets all the variables the old version has. Then do your "make config/menuconfig/xconfig" to finish it up.

NOTE: Under "General Setup", find the "ACPI Support" Menu. Compile all of the ACPI stuff into the kernel, rather than modules. Trust me on this - you get wierdness otherwise.

7) Finally, finish compiling the kernel with make dep; make clean; make bzImage, etc

8) Do the kernel install in whatever way you usually do; - initrd, boot disk, lilo, or whatever. I would add this to your selections of kernels to boot until you have confidence in it. Then you can remove the old ones.

9) Look over your services and make sure acpid is set to run upon boot.

10) Reboot and try the new kernel. If you get a successful boot, you should see a BUNCHA(tm) information in the /proc/acpi subtree. Likewise, your batter should work, the temperature should be accurate, and the fan control should work right.

Good luck!

DaCAP

Message Edited by dacap on 12-20-2003 07:25 AM

Could be that your CPU fan is not working at all. Try using the i8kutils package available here:
http://people.debian.org/~dz/i8k/

this will allow you to change the fan speed of the cpu. It was written for inspiron 8000 series, but works with most dell laptops. You can have a little gui button that tells you the fan speed and lets you set it based on CPU temp ranges.

on debian, just apt-get install i8kutils. Google for rpms if you need...

cheers

thanks so much for your help! i will try installing the DSDT tables under 2.4.22.

just one more question: how do i find the fan status/cpu temperature under xp? i am a total windows ignorant.

thanks,

chris

try the windows version, i8kfangui here:

http://www.diefer.de/i8kfan/

cheers

I have an inspiron 5150 running Gentoo. I'm using the 2.6 kernel. ACPI isn't working perfectly (namely lid and power button events), but I have no fan/heat related problems at all. If you'd like my .config I'll email it to you.

hi,

thanks, that would be great! do you also have a custom dsdt table or is that not necessary on 2.6? i am using the 5100 right now, since the one i get from the bios does not give me the temperature or fan status correctly.

my email:
christian.holbling@nospam.cern.ch

chris

uname -a
Linux laptop 2.6.0-mm1 #1 Fri Jan 2 16:02:08 CST 2004 i686 Mobile Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.06GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

the 2.6.0-mm1 is the 2.6.0 stable with Morton's patch set (I've used the vanilla 2.6 sources as well).

I have not used a patched dsdt. My acpi works fine (battery, cpuinfo, etc.) except for sleep. ACPI does not detect an event when the lid closes or when the power button is pushed. My dmesg checks out ok except for i8k support, so I'm not sure where the problem lies. I also disassembled my DSDT, then recompiled it and got the following warnings:

dsdt.dsl 1375: Method (_S0D, 0, NotSerialized)
Warning 2033 - Unknown reserved name ^ (_S0D)

dsdt.dsl 1417: Method (_S0D, 0, NotSerialized)
Warning 2033 - Unknown reserved name ^ (_S0D)

dsdt.dsl 1471: Method (_S0D, 0, NotSerialized)
Warning 2033 - Unknown reserved name ^ (_S0D)

dsdt.dsl 1513: Method (_S0D, 0, NotSerialized)
Warning 2033 - Unknown reserved name ^ (_S0D)

ASL Input: dsdt.dsl - 2426 lines, 64920 bytes, 991 keywords
AML Output: DSDT.aml - 8594 bytes 385 named objects 606 executable opcodes

All of the warnings seem to do with USB, so doubt if fixing them would correct the LID and PBTN problem anyway. I'm reading some documents on acpi programming and I'm going to see if I can correct the DSDT. Anyway, it's definately tolerable and definately no heat problems.If anyone runs across this and would like to point me toward some good sources on fixing DSDT's I'd be grateful.

My .config is too large to simply post.....pm me with an email and I'll send it to you.

Message Edited by krunk7 on 01-03-2004 02:04 AM

hi,

i removed the portions responsible for the warnings, but it did not change a thing.

i found some documents on the web describing how to fix some dsdt problems, altough they are far from complete. this is the best addresses i found, if you would like to check:

http://www.cpqlinux.com/acpi-howto.html


best,

chris

http://bugzilla.kernel.org

Bug #1752

http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1752

Anyone else had any luck makeing power/lid events work by fixing DSDT? Could be a broken ECDT.

Well I have been having problems with the lid and PBTN events as well. Here is what I have found. If you run redhat 9 with the 2.4.22 kernel they work. What is interesting about that, is that no other combination works at all. I now run slackware and it won't work with any combination of kernel or applied patches, when I tried 2.6 kernels on redhat it didn't work either. I have pretty much given up on it and I guess I will have to wait for Dell to release a bios revision that will fix the problem. But I do think the problem has to do with the DSDT, but I am not experienced enough with that to fix it.

 

Dan

In the bug report noted above, the dev. has determined it is a buggy DSDT and is working on fixing it.

hi,

yesterday i finally solved my heat problem and i think i should post my 'solution' here. i simply compiled a fresh kernel 2.6.1-1.126. i compiled in the intel speedstep support and acpi support. after this, the machine had an idle operating temperature of ~52 C.
i did not have to apply the acpi patch for this. also, almost everything in /proc/acpi works except the fan status.
one problem occured with the usb bus: it got some interrupt problems (i did not look into it more closely) and i had to pass the pci=noacpi kernel command line. after doing so, the batery was not recognized anymore. applying the acpi patch and the 'batery status fixup batch' (bugzilla 1766) did not help.

thanks to all for your suggestions. i will post a more complete solution if i can find how to squish the usb/batery/fan bugs and if there are some people having similar problems.

chris