[Lenovo Thinkpad x201s] Overheat due to slow fans when on 'auto'

So the immediate solution is what?

I chucked this into my /etc/rc.local file before exit 0:

rmmod thinkpad_acpi
modprobe thinkpad_acpi fan_control=1
echo "level 7" > /proc/acpi/ibm/fan
# echo "level disengaged" > /proc/acpi/ibm/fan
# this is being problematic
# echo "level auto" > /proc/acpi/ibm/fan

I ekpt the other settings just in case.

Just confirmed in maverick that a) the same test case does not raise the temperature quite as high but b) the fan speed is still not correctly set. In other words, with the fans set to 'auto' in maverick, the fan speed still never rose above ~4500 rpm even though the temperatures were very high (~90C).

Marking critical.

I have hit this bug recently in both Natty and Maverick.

I'm marking critical, as this affects a) server uptime, and b) possibly can cause real-life physical damage.

I went poking around the BIOS (I also have the most up to date BIOS for my x201s: 1.34) and noticed something called 'Advanced Thermal Management'. It was set to 'Maximum Performance' when on A/C. I changed this to 'Balanced' (which is what is used on battery) and the situation is considerably improved, but not solved. I have gathered more information:

Fan speeds (observed by setting the level manually in /proc/acpi/ibm/fan):
auto: ~4500rpm max (but may be lower depending on temperature)
level 6: ~4500rpm
level 7: ~5300rpm
disengaged: ~6500

CPU speeds:
lowest: 1199 MHz
highest: 2134 MHz

To monitor:
$ watch -n 0.5 'cat /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal ; cat /proc/acpi/ibm/fan | egrep "(speed|level):" ; cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep MHz'

Eg:
$ watch -n 0.5 'cat /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal ; cat /proc/acpi/ibm/fan | egrep "(speed|level):" ; cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep MHz'
temperatures: 65 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
speed: 4501
level: auto
cpu MHz : 1199.000
cpu MHz : 1199.000
cpu MHz : 1199.000
cpu MHz : 1199.000

Kernel thermal zones: aiui, this controls cpu scaling:
$ cat /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/trip_point_*
100000
critical
91500
passive

When set to 'balanced', the BIOS will scale the CPU back way before 91.5C (at 83C it immediately scales back to 1199 MHz). The trip point appears to not mean anything (except to suggest that things aren't critical until we are at > 91.5).

I turned thinkfan off and set the fan to 'auto' (the default) and I then went about trying to stress the machine:
$ apt-get install stress
$ stress -c 8 -i 8 -m 8 -d 8

With this load, the system was able to manage itself ok. The fan ever only got up to 4500rpm, but when the temperature got to 83C, the cpu scaling kicked in and the temp dropped to 72C. After a bit the CPUs would go back to 2134MHz and the temperature would raise again, then the cpus would be scaled back, and on and on.

So 'stress' was not good enough. What was good enough was doing 3 builds of kde4libs/amd64 concurrently (in an ecryptfs encrypted HOME). After a rather long while (ie all the dependencies are installed, configure is done, the .moc files are generated and the compilation kicks goes for several minutes), the 4500rpm speed of the fans with the CPUs all at their lowest speed is not enough and the temperature very slowly rises.

For now, I am adjusting thinkfan to run at level 6 (ie, the fan speed equivalent of 'auto') starting at 70C and level 7 at 85C and above (ie run the fan at the highest controlled speed (but still higher than 'auto') when the temperature is still rising after the cores are running at their lowest speed). This configuration has not been extensively tested, but I will report back if level 7 is not sufficient and the fans need to go disengaged.

It should be noted that thinkfan is an optional universe package that runs as a daemon and can be used to control the fans based on configurable temperatures. Misconfiguration could lead to hardware damage and I mention it here as a workaround only and am not advocating its use generally. If using thinkfan, please read the documentation fully (I've deliberately not posted my configuration so people are forced to read the docs). In other words, don't blame me if thinkfan breaks your system. :)

It looks like thinkpads have a non standard ACPI device that handles the fan control, among other things. That is where /proc/acpi/ibm comes from. It is implemented in the kernel in drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.c, and has some comments pointing to:

http://thinkwiki.org/wiki/Embedded_Controller_Firmware#Firmware_Issues

@Jamie -- ok according to upstream this thinkpad-acpi driver is essentially unchanged, and the fans really should be controlled by the EC in the defualt mode. There is no logical reason to expect this change in behaviour. We are going to have to try and narrow down where this change has come from. Could you test some of the mainline kerenls, specifically including the v2.6.35 and v2.6.38 kernels to see if they are good and bad respectivly, and then could you use a few of the intermediate releases and -rcs to narrow our search. Mainline kernels can be found at the URL below. Please report any testing here:

    https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/MainlineBuilds

Thanks!

I have the same issue on my x201. My system has been crashing randomly during the day when the temp hits 100C.

I created a simple little script to work around the issue. This prevents my system from crashing and prevents damage from overheating. I monitor my temps throughout the day and change the speed as needed. I attached the script in case it might help someone else.

Use the script at your own risk and monitor your temperatures!

The script takes four possible arguments: 6, 7, H and A. The script will change the value in /proc/acpi/ibm/fan as follows:

6 for level 6
7 for level 7
H for level disengaged
A for level auto

The script will also start the watch command Jamie posted as well to monitor cpu speed and temp.

Script is attached with the name cool_cpu.sh

Hope this can help someone else.

@Joseph, you may be interested in the 'thinkfan' package, which does this type of thing for you.

@Andy, as stated, this is not a change in behavior-- maverick had the same problem of not spinning the fan high enough (only 4500rpm) when temperatures were particularly high. The difference between maverick and natty is that maverick tends to run ~8C cooler so you hit the critical 100C shutdown less frequently (but still hit it).

The BIOS/EC should be handling this, and indeed it does adjust the fan speed between 0 and 4500rpm just fine. The problem is that it doesn't spin up the fans to a fast enough speed (they are capable of ~6500rpm) when under very high temperatures. Also, when Advanced Thermal Management in the BIOS is set to 'Maximum Performance' (the apparent default for this machine when on AC) the problem is especially aggravated since frequency scaling doesn't seem to occur. When Advanced Thermal Management is set to 'Balanced' (the default when on battery), cpu frequency scaling does occur, which helps with overheating but there are still cases where the CPUs are at their lowest frequency and the fans at their BIOS/EC maximum speed (ie 4500rpm) where the temperature still goes up and you hit 100C.

I have an up to date BIOS/EC according to the Lenovo website. The 'Maximum Performance' vs 'Balanced' might be as designed, but clearly there is a problem when the lowest cpu frequency and the highest fan rpm in the default install is not enough to keep the machine from hitting 100C. While the fix should probably be with Lenovo, perhaps there is something we could do in the driver when i7s hit 85C we should spin up to level 7 (otoh solution).

Same issue with T500. When I switch in BIOS to 'balanced' mode when on AC kernel hangs during early initialization.

Same problem here with T410. Just before my machine shutdown, temperature was 148C.

My x201s with i7-CPU shows exactly the same behaviour. If a program hangs and creates a lot of CPU workload the temperature rises and if it reaches 100 degrees Celsius a thermal shutdown occurs. Not very nice.

Btw: I use Kubuntu Natty.

Same isue on R500/ Core2Duo - the workaround seems 2 help ....

This issue is occuring for me since a very long time; using Windows the fans have a much higher speed setting compared to using Linux and the thinkpad-acpi driver. However, since the use of Maverick I experience a lot more automatic shutdowns, triggered by thinkpad-acpi, due to overheating. Before, I was using Karmic and also experienced it sometimes.

When monitoring the temperatures manually and setting a fan speed accordingly the CPU is cooled properly, but thinkpad-acpi never triggers higher CPU fan speeds even when > 95 °C! That is, in my opinion, a bug.

I'm having this issue on my T61p - C2D T9300 w/ Nvidia QuadroFX 570M. Both need quite a lot of cooling, especially when using the docking station (less ventilation, more isolation on the bottom).

That's why I don't think this issue is specific for one Thinkpad model, but occuring as soon as you start using thinkpad-acpi, also in older versions of Ubuntu. And yes, it's a universe piece of software not part of the core of Ubuntu, but this should really be fixed as it might cause hardware failures.

I think running a user space software daemon as a workaround is rather 'dirty'.

More hardware related, but still not justifying the behaviour of thinkpad-acpi:
I noticed there was an awful lot of thermal grease on both the CPU and the GPU for the integrated heatsink/fan in my Thinkpad, I cleaned it, replaced this with a proper amount of thermal grease and temperatures are 10 °C lower since then.

similar issue for X200. thought it would be dirty fans, but apparently not?

On a T61p, after I set the fan level to full-speed and it is showing (and sounding like) ~6300 rpm, still the CPU temperature cannot be kept from growing beyond 95 ℃ when two processes are busy-looping. I am not using thinkfan.

To note, setting the fan level to 7 results in the screaming speed of ~3200 rpm. Something is fishy with these controls.
I have updated the BIOS to the latest version.

Since yesterday I started to use thinkfan with the patch applied from the Debian bug report. This does the trick for now, but I really would like to see a fix for "level auto" in thinkpad-acpi.

@Mikhail:
It seems common that level 7 (seems the highest) is indeed only halfway the full speed of the fan on a T61p. This has been the case ever since I got this laptop for Linux (3 years now) and is also described on the Thinkwiki webpage somewhere.
If you're not capable of controlling the temperature even with highest fan speed you should check your hardware; then it's not a Ubuntu/software bug. See also my post above.

I experience the same behaviour with my T400 - the system automatically shuts down once it reached 85°C due to the low fan speed.

I hit this bug today w/an x201s running Maverick. System shut down in the middle of running a high-CPU analysis job. It was a little frightening at first - I thought my machine had died. I think this issues should be raised in priority for a fix. In the mean time, I'll manually set the fan to disengaged when running jobs.

Issue :
Hav this problem while running videos like GoogleIO on several tabs, on chrome or firefox apps (adobe flash player installed), on my dell inspiron laptops: n5030(i3,4GiB), 1525(core2 duo3GiB), & on latitude e5420(i7-2620M, 8GiB), which on prolonged CPU usage(all cores) of over 100% just SHUTDOWN (processes killed).
My old dell inspiron-6400(dual core,4GiB), HP-530(dual core,2GiB), do go high on CPU usage, but get stable (on watch).
The Dell Desktop(Pentium D, 2GiB) works just fine (with other issue - wifi conn suddenly droppd).
All this... while the ancient HP Pavilion(AMD64Athlon) is handling 10.10 well & the ancient dell-celeron(128Mib) runs XUbuntu smoothly.

Resolution :
Waiting for the system to settledown (on startup), then, monitoring the CPU usage, using System-Monitor, & a lil patience has helped most times.

 Running one video and a few regular pages on the browser apps, jets the CPU to over 90~95% , then drops to around 30~40% and stabilized, though opening more links (one or more) shoots the CPU near perfect. At this point, I have been switching to the System-Monitor and just WAIT for the CPU history graph to come down.. It comes back to below 50%. Opening another app, like Eclipse, or Gimp takes the CPU usage to around 65~75% and comes back down to around 40~50%.
 For me, the pain point is tabbed-browsing. While opening more tabs, not scrolling through the pages seems to help get the CPU history graph back to <50%.

Hope the info helps the learned help me out here.

I experienced this problem (sudden shutdown due to overheating) on a ThinkPad X61. I worked around it by manually setting the fan speed higher when performing CPU-intensive tasks (e.g., installing an OS on a guest virtual machine).

Will now install thinkfan which should automate this.

I also had the temperature-related shutdown problems when running python and c++ colde on a Thinkpad X201 with Ubuntu 10.04. Installed cool_cpu Joseph Salisbury wrote on 2011-04-14 (see comment 9 above). I ran
>> cool_cpu.sh H
The read out from the cpu while at its peak stress while running c++ code I have had so far is:
----------------------------
Every 0.5s: cat /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal ; cat /proc/acpi/ibm... Sat Jul 16 11:24:47 2011

temperatures: 90 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
speed: 6013
level: disengaged
cpu MHz : 2667.000
cpu MHz : 1199.000
cpu MHz : 1199.000
cpu MHz : 1199.000
---------------------------
Running my code with level 7 did not do the trick and the computer quickly shut down.
The room temperature was about 22C and the computer was sitting on a wooden table (faster shut downs due to overheating). I was even able to work other things or run small python or c++ programs while running the code, which was, needless to say, impossible before.
Thank you Joe.

I can reproduce the issue on a t410s. In auto, the fan speed never goes much above 4000rpm, even though un unengaged it can reach ~6100rpm. This allows the temperature to raise to the security self-shutdown at 128C, e.g. when compiling big projects.

Also on x301, gets very hot, but not so hot it shuts down yet. I fear it's damaging my nearby batteries though.

Any chance to get this into Lucid LTS? Wondering if the patch proposed on http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=610722 works...

I would like to confirm that the same problem occurs on Ubuntu 10.04 on x201. While compiling a bigger project using make -j4, the temperature increased to 90+C while on auto. After that I forced disengaged mode manually, leading to the increase of fan speed and reduction of temperature.

I can confirm the problem on Ubuntu 10.10 on a Lenovo W500 with kernel 2.6.35-30-generic-pae-tuxonice (and every other recent kernel I've tried).

Can't boot with BIOS AC setting on Balanced, which would allow frequency scaling to kick in at lower temp to keep things cool.

Temp climbs up to >90C under full CPU load, because fan never goes to "disengaged" mode (~4900 RPM) when set to "auto." If I manually set to disengaged, then temp maxes out at 70C or so.

I did some more testing and have been able to reproduce this under Windows (both reimage from their restore partition and fully upgraded); I think this may be a hardware/BIOS problem. I sent mine in for repair today.

Any chance the fix in debbugs #610722 works? This seems to be a very serious hardware damage issue and nothing seems to have progressed?? If that fix works, can this be pushed out asap?

I have the same experiences as commetdog in comment #30 and Gert van Dijk in comment #20

The only way I can actually get the CPU cool is by running the fan at full-speed (~6000RPM). The other fan speeds only slow the heat increase.

I've patched thinkfan to allow level 127 (full-speed), and (thus far) added the following to thinkfan.conf:

...
(7, 54, 85)
(127, 75, 32767)

This means that once we hit 85C, the fan goes to full speed, and does not come back down until we're at or below 75C. And, as a general rule, those are the only two rules that get exercised by my system (T61p).

From the Debian bug report:
"I've just put thinkfan 0.7.3 on sf.net, which (I hope) will eliminate all problems with using 127 or -2147483648 as a fan level."

Is it possible to upload 0.7.3 for oneiric or backport the fix upstream to 0.7.1?

While this is considered a critical issue, the workaround (thinkfan) is affected by another bug and it still isn't fixed after almost six months... I have put a how-to online on how to patch&build&configure thinkfan for affected users not comfortable in building packages.
http://gertverdemme.nl/desktop/thinkpad/thinkfan_patch_overheating
Hope this helps.

Bug confirmed on 11.10 Oneiric with Thinkpad t60.

I sure wish a fix is released for this, since my laptop has become practically unusable since I upgraded to Natty.

$ uname -a
Linux mg-ThinkPad-T410 2.6.38-11-generic-pae #50-Ubuntu SMP Mon Sep 12 22:21:04 UTC 2011 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

$ top
top - 17:28:33 up 8 min, 2 users, load average: 0.19, 0.44, 0.34
Tasks: 199 total, 1 running, 197 sleeping, 0 stopped, 1 zombie

$ sensors
acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1: +80.0°C (crit = +100.0°C)

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 0: +74.0°C (high = +95.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)

coretemp-isa-0002
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 2: +74.0°C (high = +95.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)

thinkpad-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
fan1: 7312 RPM
temp1: +80.0°C

The BIOS setting is "Balanced" when the laptop is on AC Power.

$ sudo powertop
Cn Avg residency P-states (frequencies)
C0 (cpu running) ( 0.0%) 2.54 Ghz 6.3%
polling 4.0ms ( 0.2%) 2.27 Ghz 0.2%
C1 mwait 0.1ms ( 0.3%) 1.60 Ghz 0.2%
C2 mwait 1.5ms (30.5%) 1333 Mhz 0.3%
C3 mwait 1.8ms (86.3%) 1199 Mhz 92.9%

Wakeups-from-idle per second : 721.6 interval: 5.0s
no ACPI power usage estimate available

Top causes for wakeups:
  53.3% (413.0) PS/2 keyboard/mouse/touchpad interrupt
  14.1% (109.2) plugin-containe
   8.7% ( 67.8) [mmc0, hda_intel, nvidia] <interrupt>
   3.5% ( 26.8) [iwlagn] <interrupt>

Personally, I think the nvidia drivers also have something to contribute to heat since the temperature skyrockets as soon as I watch a video (flash or otherwise)...

Guys, I have had same problems with all versions of Ubuntu (from 10.04 till 11.10). Used thinkfan to control and put in disengaged mode, the only way to cool things.

Funny end of the story, turned out to be the a dirty cooling unit. All thinkpads has quite good dissipating units, but they tend to be clogged extremely easily. Moreover, some dust get into my fan and was vibrating, so I disassembled entire dissipating block, cleaned tons of dust that was stuck in the dissipator, properly lubricated entire fan unit with some WD40 (circuit friendly), and the result is incredible. I live in the tropics and sometimes I use my T400 without AC. When doing normal activity, fan always throttle normally as it should do. If I use max performance, it will go to the top admitted by auto (which is never same as disengaged in thinkpads) and temperature will slowly increase and stay steady at no more than 70C (GPU too) even if room temp is nearly 30C.

Thinkpad fan is purely controlled by the BIOS. You can install all sort of utilities to manually control the speed, but nothing beats BIOS settings, that are working properly with a clean unit.

If anybody has the problem with a perfectly clean unit, then please report it here.

Forgot to mention: with stock ATI drivers (my PC has HD Radeon 3400), the GPU always stays above 60C even when resting, and CPU get some side heat from the GPU. But even on that configuration, the CPU is never going above 70C, because performance are less in 3D, so GPU always stay more or less the same. With fglrx driver, GPU always stay around 45~48C at rest, triggering the fan to throttle around the second-to-highest level, with high room temps.

I'm having the same issue with Oneiric in a Thinkpad x61. It usually shuts down when I'm watching movies. I did the workaround mentioned in the description (set fan level to disengaged) and could watch the whole movie with no shutdown. Fan level without level disengaged was ~4000 rpm and with disengaged enabled ~7000 rpm.

For me the overheating occurs both when working with the computer AND when the lid is closed. My computer is mostly on full load because of the work I do and the first situation is "manageable" (though dangerous).

The second issue when the lid closed is truly awful considered I put the computer in my bag AND it will overheat with no air to cool of the hardware. When I get home the computer is burning hot!

Cred to the Thinkpad (x201,i5) team! Most computers would have fried a long time ago with this bug active for so (too) long.

The Thinkpad computers should be REMOVED from the Ubuntu "supported hardware" site!

I also had this issue, but after applying thermal paste to the CPU fan, the 'auto' settings are sufficient to cool my notebook again. Maybe this is a helpful strategy for some affected users.

When I first had the problem, I got a new cooler unit from the lenovo support (with new thermal paste), but after a few month the problem appeared again. So I guess that the thermal paste suffers from the issue and thus applying new thermal paste may just be a temporal cure of the symptoms. Using thinkfan 0.7.3 works fine for me.

I can confirm that this also has passed on to Oneiric. Also, I think this constant low fan speed HAS indeed caused some system damage from long-term high temps.

I'm seeing periodic failures of the wireless card after the system has warmed up for a while. After doing some checking I noticed via sensors that the temps were hitting ~85 degrees C and hovering there with the fan set to auto. Since this doesn't adequately cool the machine down, I think it's caused the wireless card to become flaky (this is the second wireless card I've had in the machine).

I've since set the fan to disengaged and it's currently running on AC at ~5400 RPM and the system is MUCH cooler (around 70 deg C).

This morning, the system had heated up to 97 deg C before I realized what was going on. I've not hit the 100 deg threshold yet (or not in a long time) but my x201 is also a Core i5, so that may account for it not heating up as quickly as an i7 will.

i can confirm this, i was hoping that the kernel on Oneiric had some
fixes for us x201 users but i have also noticed that the threshold is
reached sooner than with the previous kernel.

my only question is:

anyone knows if this is also the case under debian?

im ready to migrate cause of this bug.

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 3:57 AM, Jeff Lane <email address hidden> wrote:
> I can confirm that this also has passed on to Oneiric.  Also, I think
> this constant low fan speed HAS indeed caused some system damage from
> long-term high temps.
>
> I'm seeing periodic failures of the wireless card after the system has
> warmed up for a while.  After doing some checking I noticed via sensors
> that the temps were hitting ~85 degrees C and hovering there with the
> fan set to auto.  Since this doesn't adequately cool the machine down, I
> think it's caused the wireless card to become flaky (this is the second
> wireless card I've had in the machine).
>
> I've since set the fan to disengaged and it's currently running on AC at
> ~5400 RPM and the system is MUCH cooler (around 70 deg C).
>
> This morning, the system had heated up to 97 deg C before I realized
> what was going on. I've not hit the 100 deg threshold yet (or not in a
> long time) but my x201 is also a Core i5, so that may account for it not
> heating up as quickly as an i7 will.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/751689
>
> Title:
>  Thinkpads overheat due to slow fans when on 'auto'
>
> Status in “linux” package in Ubuntu:
>  Confirmed
> Status in “linux” source package in Maverick:
>  In Progress
> Status in “linux” source package in Natty:
>  Confirmed
> Status in “thinkfan” package in Debian:
>  Fix Released
> Status in “linux” package in Fedora:
>  Unknown
>
> Bug description:
>  On my Thinkpad x201s with an i7, if I utilize all of the CPUs/hyperthreads, the machine can be made to overheat very quickly. This is because of the default level setting of 'auto' in /proc/acpi/ibm/fan. On 'auto', the fan only ever goes up to around 4500rpm, while in 'disengaged' mode it can go as high as 6400rpm. At 4500rpm, the CPU continues to climb until the system is forcibly shutdown at 100C. If I reload thinkpad_acpi like so:
>  $ sudo rmmod thinkpad_acpi
>  $ sudo modprobe thinkpad_acpi fan_control=1
>
>  Then I can set the fan to disengaged mode manually:
>  echo "level disengaged" > /proc/acpi/ibm/fan
>
>  With this setting, I can utilize all of the CPUs for an extended time
>  and not surpass 85C, still pretty hot but well under the 100C range.
>  Furthermore, setting to level '7' (the supposed max fan speed) runs
>  the fan at ~5300, well below the maximum fan speed.
>
>  In maverick this did not seem to be as much of a problem (perhaps
>  because of the lack of the big kernel lock in natty?).
>
>  Related bugs:
>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=675433
>  http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=610722 (against thinkfan package, but demonstrates that other x201 users are having the same problem)
>
>  ProblemType: Bug
>  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
>  Package: linux-image-2.6.38-7-...

Guys, in general there is no need to comment on bugs saying that it
happens to you too; that is what the affects me button at the top is
for. In the case of this bug, it is already quite well know that this
bug exists, and it is in the firmware of the laptop and therefore
affects all distributions of all versions of Linux. A workaround may
eventually be added to Ubuntu; if it is, this bug will be updated.

Why this ticket is now invalid ???? I've this problem, Debian released a fix (not working with me) and no clear solution is available. Please comment...

Let me ask one thing
Are you getting the same issue with both intel and amd processors

I had this problem on Maverick on a ThinkPad X201 tablet (computer overheating and rebooting), and as a workaround kept my computer underclocked (using the CPU frequency scaling applet for the GNOME panel). After using that way for a while (maybe for a few months to a year), I tried again a few months ago with normal CPU settings. The rebooting problem was fixed (presumably by some update): the CPU speed would now be throttled when the computer overheats (kicks in at about 82 degrees C), avoiding a reboot (when it hits 100 degrees). (Of course, the underlying problem of slow fans remains.)

I didn't see that problem but once the fan speed had some sort of glitch and went up to some extreme loud level (way more than 5000 RPM) and then it just fell back to 0 RPM (sensors) while the temperature was at the 45°C range. Usually my x40 just sits around with 0 RPM and it's not that clean since it's been in use quite some time. No problems getting even near to overheating with that device. Well, maybe that's another thing in summer.

This bug has broken my Lenovo T400. I have noticed it, but didn't expect it to be this bad.
I left my machine on and went to sleep, in the morning, the screen was frozen. I turned it of, but then my video card didn't work anymore. I have do disassemble my laptop and re-flow the video card using a heat gun.
Until fixed, I will be controlling my fan manually.

Appears to affect 12.04 on my W520. i7 processor, Nvidia video card.

This appears to affect me on an X220 i7, 11.10 Oneiric.

This bug seems to relate to the OS and not firmware for me. I was on 11.04 previously and did not have a problem. During high-load the fan would spin to a high RPM (don't know how fast since I never had reason to check it but certainly faster than on 11.10).

After upgrading to 11.10 I almost instantly found that the laptop becomes too hot to hold during high-load. Agree with others finding that "auto" mode will only run the fan at around ~4500rpm whereas "disengaged" will go to ~6300rpm.

4500rpm will allow the CPU to reach ~99/100C. 6300rpm will keep it < 80C while running the same workload.

I agree with KC: I didn't have this problem with 11.04.

Confirmed that this bug exists in 3.2.0-17-generic. When /proc/acpi/ibm/fan is set to auto, my x201 will overheat when running a kernel compile. The fan RPM will not increase automatically as the temperature increases.

This bug still persists in the latest mainline kernel: v3.3-rc6.

I can't confirm #52. (since it does NOT overheat / turn off)
i tested this with max CPU Load on all Cores for hours: fan never goes above 3350 and the temperature is at maximum 78 which is quite normal. (compared to other laptops i've seen - samsung etc.) Although some higher speed on the fan would probably utilize the turbo a bit more since the cpu clocks down if it's getting warm.

@eric

I was wondering why you set the status to Fix Released for this bug?

This bug is killing my T410 (i7 with Nvidia): large compilations or lots of KVMs cause an overheat and controlled shutdown:

Mar 14 09:14:03 azul kernel: [ 4601.067870] Critical temperature reached (128 C), shutting down.
Mar 14 09:14:03 azul kernel: [ 4601.071610] Critical temperature reached (128 C), shutting down.

This is affecting me too. I have a Thinkpad T420 and I realized there was a problem after nearly getting burned by touching the area near the fan on my laptop.

I'm running Ubuntu 11.10.

This bug is serious because it causes hardware damage/reduced life expectancy on hardware. For the time being, I need to uninstall Ubuntu and go back to windows so I don't wreck my machine!

I urge everyone experiencing this bug to get their hardware checked (hopefully under warranty). For me (X201 tablet), having the fan replaced (and I think thermal paste applied correctly) brought temperatures down from ≈60°C‒65°C idle and 80°C‒100°C (+shutdown) under full load, to <60°C under full load.

This is not to deny the existence of the software bug: the combination of overheating-prone hardware with the slow fan software bug is producing the obvious effects for at least some of those affected.

I can confirm this with a T60. I reinstalled from 11.04 -> 12.04 today, and I have not had these issues before.
Using thinkfan, I'm getting around 3700 RPM, and between 60-8* degrees, which keeps me running.

Also had to use thinkfan with my T400, it was rebooting quite easily when stressing the CPU.

Here is a perl based script (PD controller) to control the fan speed. You must have sensors installed. Use / modify at your own risk

Here is a perl based script (PD controller) to control the fan speed. You must have sensors installed. Use / modify at your own risk

I have same problem with Ubuntu 11.10 and 12.04 Beta on my X201 and T420. Problem does not appear with Fedora 15 and higher and also when using Debian with custom kernel. My laptop reaches critical state faster when docked.

I also had this problem repeatingly with different versions of Kubuntu. As it turns out, the reason for this, is not the fan, but rather a problem with the intel graphics driver which is not loaded correctly. On Kubuntu I always notice it when there is a problem to activate "Desktop Effects". Currently I am running Oneric and with Oneric adding "blacklist intel_ips" to the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf did the trick. Unfortunately I do not remember where I exactly found this trick. But it helps. Instead of having a basic 80-90 °C and sometimes more when the overheating appeared my CPU now has between 50-60°C, sometimes more, but overheating has not been a problem since then on my Thinkpad X201. I guess it will be again with the next Precise release, because new release of (K)Ubuntu always break a lot and need months until they are stable again. But for now everything is fine. I have to add that I am also running the Xorg-edgers ppa https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/ppa and a fresh kernel from there. But this alone did not help. Since I have lost the source of my information, I do not know if I forgot something, but I believe that is all.

I guess that's a different problem, in idle my CPU temperature (X201) is just about 50°C. So this bug is usually only relevant under load. And I don't have the problem anymore since I manually control the fan using thinkfan.

This bug affects Ubuntu 10.10, Maverick Meerkat. Maverick has reached end-of-life and is no longer supported, so I am closing the bug task for Maverick. Please upgrade to a newer version of Ubuntu.
More information here: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/2012-April/000158.html

The bug still affects ubuntu users with the latest release 12.04. My PC reboots after one minute of high CPU usage due to excessive heat (> 100°C). But I'm not sure it's only a problem with fan control.

I found several interesting things:
* whatever is the fan speed (disengaged and set manually to full speed with level 127) my PC still reboots after several minutes of high CPU (I didn't have this problem before 11.10)
* a full battery lasts half of the time (2h to 3h), compared to what it was with ubuntu < 11.10 (~5h)
* looking with powertop, I see
   * in frequency stats: the turbo mode of both CPU are usually equal to 33% (without no high CPU usage from my applications)
   * in device stats: lot of my PCI Device are running at 100%, which seems important

So I think we deal here with several bugs, one about the fan, but also one possibly with ASPM, which seems disabled on my computer:

$ dmesg | grep ASPM
[ 0.160380] ACPI FADT declares the system doesn't support PCIe ASPM, so disable it

Finally, I cannot say about openint the laptop and trying to remove the dust, as the computer belong to my work with guaranty yada yada.

I forgot to say that my computer is a lenovo thinkpad T500 - type 2082

New situation for me on 12.04 (have reported before). When using my video camera, for a web feed in firefox/google+ hangout, the computer heats up and restarts. However, I can watch a high def. movie in vlc or movie player without issues.

Even though this has been reported and fixed it seems the fix has not gotten propagated for other models of the IBM Thinkpads.
I have a IBM T60 and have been having the same issue for quite some time. First thought that it was something wrong with the hardware and then when I interrogated the logs I found the Critical temperature reached messages which took the system down.

/var/log/kern.log:May 12 18:29:59 MYCOMPUTER kernel: [ 1824.712245] Critical temperature reached (100 C), shutting down.
/var/log/kern.log:May 12 18:30:45 MYCOMPUTER kernel: [ 0.520844] Critical temperature reached (99 C), shutting down.
/var/log/kern.log:May 12 18:45:49 MYCOMPUTER kernel: [ 749.322262] thinkpad_acpi: temperatures (Celsius): 86 47 46 98 39 N/A 39 N/A 48 64 70 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
/var/log/kern.log:May 12 18:49:19 MYCOMPUTER kernel: [ 959.138235] thinkpad_acpi: temperatures (Celsius): 86 47 46 97 39 N/A 39 N/A 49 64 69 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
/var/log/kern.log:May 12 18:49:19 MYCOMPUTER kernel: [ 959.169196] thinkpad_acpi: temperatures (Celsius): 86 47 46 97 39 N/A 39 N/A 49 64 69 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
/var/log/kern.log:May 12 18:49:19 MYCOMPUTER kernel: [ 959.169682] Critical temperature reached (100 C), shutting down.
/var/log/kern.log:May 12 18:49:19 MYCOMPUTER kernel: [ 959.212381] thinkpad_acpi: temperatures (Celsius): 86 47 46 97 39 N/A 39 N/A 49 64 69 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
/var/log/kern.log:May 12 22:24:10 MYCOMPUTER kernel: [ 3996.049384] thinkpad_acpi: temperatures (Celsius): 87 47 41 90 45 N/A 45 N/A 45 57 62 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
/var/log/kern.log:May 12 22:33:46 MYCOMPUTER kernel: [ 4571.363315] thinkpad_acpi: temperatures (Celsius): 87 48 42 91 47 N/A 47 N/A 46 57 63 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
/var/log/kern.log:May 12 22:33:46 MYCOMPUTER kernel: [ 4571.363799] Critical temperature reached (100 C), shutting down.
/var/log/syslog:May 12 18:29:59 MYCOMPUTER kernel: [ 1824.712245] Critical temperature reached (100 C), shutting down.
/var/log/syslog:May 12 18:30:45 MYCOMPUTER kernel: [ 0.520844] Critical temperature reached (99 C), shutting down.
/var/log/syslog:May 12 18:45:49 MYCOMPUTER kernel: [ 749.322262] thinkpad_acpi: temperatures (Celsius): 86 47 46 98 39 N/A 39 N/A 48 64 70 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
/var/log/syslog:May 12 18:49:19 MYCOMPUTER kernel: [ 959.138235] thinkpad_acpi: temperatures (Celsius): 86 47 46 97 39 N/A 39 N/A 49 64 69 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
/var/log/syslog:May 12 18:49:19 MYCOMPUTER kernel: [ 959.169196] thinkpad_acpi: temperatures (Celsius): 86 47 46 97 39 N/A 39 N/A 49 64 69 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
/var/log/syslog:May 12 18:49:19 MYCOMPUTER kernel: [ 959.169682] Critical temperature reached (100 C), shutting down.
/var/log/syslog:May 12 18:49:19 MYCOMPUTER kernel: [ 959.212381] thinkpad_acpi: temperatures (Celsius): 86 47 46 97 39 N/A 39 N/A 49 64 69 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
/var/log/syslog:May 12 22:24:10 MYCOMPUTER kernel: [ 3996.049384] thinkpad_acpi: temperatures (Celsius): 87 47 41 90 45 N/A 45 N/A 45 57 62 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
/var/log/syslog:May 12 22:33:46 MYCOMPUTER kernel: [ 4571.363315] thinkpad_acpi: temperatures (Celsius): 87 48 42 91 47 N/A 47 N/A 46 57 63 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
/var/log/syslog:May 12 22:33:46 MYCOMP...

I've fallen back to kernel 3.0.0-17-generic.
This one is running much better.
With the latest upstream 12.04 kernel my system powered down every hour and so fast that I could not react.

After falling back to 3.0.0-17-generic things look much better. My system is up for two hours from now on. Temperature is constant between 50-60. Fan level is auto.

This one is really a pain.

I'm trying to see if even when the fan is max, the system is too hot.

To anyone: if you set your fan to max, is your system still too hot during heavy CPU charge and reboot ?

Reminder: to set your fan to max:
$ sudo rmmod thinkpad_acpi
$ sudo modprobe thinkpad_acpi fan_control=1
$ echo "level 127" > /proc/acpi/ibm/fan

Please report here as a comment.

This bug is in the top 20 of the most heated bugs and first critical of the most heated bugs and still no update about a fix ??!!

Kartoch: I would tend to agree. I cannot provide figures since I didn't capture the temperatures when everything was working however I feel that the system now runs MUCH hotter even with fans at full speed.

I use this laptop everyday and since the issue I find it too hot to have on my leg (even when the fan is on max). I have also noticed a decrease in battery life.

Does anyone know how to get power used by the kernel and/or by devices ?

not just ThinkPads, the older ones from lenovo too.

Same problem with Kubuntu 12.04 on ThinkPad W500. System went into thermal panic and shut down when doing an rsync copy onto an encrypted root filesystem.

Using cool_cpu.sh with level set to disengaged, the CPU speeds vary between 800 and 2534. Fan speed goes up to 4590. Temperature stays stable.

Sensor 1 seems to be CPU.

Interestingly I have a W520 that has never overheated running Kubuntu 10.10 (or previous versions), even under such heavy load that screen updates slowed down. So the W500 seems to be particularly problematic.

Also, the machine won't boot with the performance setting at "Balanced".

This might be related to this bug report:
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42858

Basically this is what I'm seeing on my i7 X220 - even though the CPU reaches 97 degrees with full speed fan - it stays in turbo mode no matter what, as verified with powertop. Maybe somebody now more about thinkpad throttling in turbo mode?

@Matthias the patch available in the comment number 5 of the bug report is already present in latest 12.04 kernel, so this is not the solution.

But strangely the symptoms seem very close. I've added a comment in the bug report:

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42858#8

I've discovered one more thing: the temperature does not exceed 75° when my laptop is on battery and so is not rebooting because of the overheating. Still my battery lifetime is not exceeding 2 hours when it was between 4 to 5 hours before ubuntu 11.10.

Lenovo T500, Core2 T9550 2.66GHz, Ubuntu 12.04.

On AC power:
- running CPU intensive processes (stress, virtualbox etc.) causes T500 to do thermal shutdown in about 2 minutes,
- BIOS setting "balanced" on AC power prevents OS from booting,
- manually setting fan speed to "disengaged" doesn't solve the problem, so this is not fan-speed related.

On battery power CPU doesn't overheat at all, even with "ondemand" frequency scheduler enabled.

In Windows 7 running CPU intensive processes (gaming etc.) for many hours doesn't cause such problems, so it is not hardware related.

In my opinion there is something wrong with CPU frequency scheduling support in GNU/Linux. High temperature should throttle CPU frequency or force using thermal-friendly frequency scheduler.

Temporary workaround.
Use indicator-cpufreq to throttle CPU frequency when using CPU intensive applications. Thinkfan may be also useful. When you can hear high fan speed (disengaged mode), manually throttle CPU frequency one step down.

@goomior exactly the same problem as me with the same laptop (T500). Could you give me your bios version and exact model number ?

ACPI: DMI detected: Lenovo ThinkPad T500
thinkpad_acpi: ThinkPad ACPI Extras v0.24
thinkpad_acpi: ThinkPad BIOS 6FET92WW (3.22 ), EC 7VHT16WW-1.06
thinkpad_acpi: Lenovo ThinkPad T500, model 20827TG

Lenovo T410s: still suffering from this bug.

Workaround as mentioned works:
Install indicator-cpuspeed speed down to 2400MHz. Running even during heavy load.

Boot messages related to think_acpi are as follows:
[ 26.215573] thinkpad_acpi: ThinkPad ACPI Extras v0.24
[ 26.215577] thinkpad_acpi: http://ibm-acpi.sf.net/
[ 26.215579] thinkpad_acpi: ThinkPad BIOS 6UET61WW (1.41 ), EC 6UHT31WW-1.12
[ 26.215581] thinkpad_acpi: Lenovo ThinkPad T410s, model 29249FG
[ 26.218353] thinkpad_acpi: detected a 8-level brightness capable ThinkPad
[ 26.219014] thinkpad_acpi: radio switch found; radios are enabled
[ 26.221446] thinkpad_acpi: rfkill switch tpacpi_bluetooth_sw: radio is blocked
[ 26.224631] thinkpad_acpi: rfkill switch tpacpi_wwan_sw: radio is unblocked
[ 26.227516] Registered led device: tpacpi::thinklight
[ 26.228760] Registered led device: tpacpi::thinkvantage
[ 26.230837] thinkpad_acpi: Standard ACPI backlight interface available, not loading native one
[ 26.230935] thinkpad_acpi: Console audio control enabled, mode: monitor (read only)
[ 26.232826] input: ThinkPad Extra Buttons as /devices/platform/thinkpad_acpi/input/input9

Kernel:
3.2.0-25-generic

@pfounds NO FIX HAS BEEN RELEASED, please set back the status change

For the record; this problem has gotten worse for me in Ubuntu 12.04.

Ubuntu bug-logs are filled with silly cleaning operations from admins (fix released/confirmed/closed bla bla bla post) compared to the actual interest and severity. If some of that time pushing buttons were spent at fixing things we could see an ~50% increase in production of Ubuntu.

This is of course not entirely fair, at times it seems very competent persons are at the job. Though often they vanish in thin air after a few posts. An honest option would also be to add; "now closing due to missing staff (by happy helping random admin guy/girl, I might be an carpenter so you know, cheers!)."

On the other hand, this bug has made me much better at memory/cpu optimizations when coding (to much load and the computer dies). I guess I should thank Ubuntu for that....

I'm also experiencing this issue on a Thinkpad T410s. I've found that I can use thinkfan and set the max fan level above 7 to get the fan to run at top speed. May not be ideal but beats having the machine shutdown due to overheating when the fan is not exceeding 4500 rpm at Level 7.

Here's my thinkfan.conf settings:

(0, 0, 55)
(1, 48, 60)
(2, 50, 61)
(3, 52, 63)
(4, 56, 65)
(5, 59, 66)
(127, 63, 32767)

Something has changed in the newest Ubuntu 12.04 kernel. Now it is possible to set up "Thermal Management" to "Balanced" when on A/C power in BIOS without making Ubuntu unbootable. This setting solves the overheating problem but you will loose some performance.

Details below (Thinkpad T500).
1. Running "stress -c 2 -i 2 -m 2" for several minutes now.
2. Temperature is not exceeding 65 degrees Celsius.
3. Thinkfan is on default settings.
4. CPU Frequency Governor is switching frequency between 800 MHz and 2660 MHz in about every second.

I think point 5. helps. When "Thermal Management" is set to "Maximum Performance" you always run on 2660 MHz when on A/C and under heavy load. This eventually leads to emergency thermal shutdown.

The problem is still not 100% solved. In Windows you can easily set up "Thermal Management" to "Maximum Performance" and never suffer from overheating.

Best regards.

I've been testing the following work around:
1) Set the thinkpad_acpi module to allow manual fan control (put the following in /etc/rc.local and run as root):
rmmod thinkpad_acpi
modprobe thinkpad_acpi fan_control=1
2) Run a script from cron every five mins to set the fan to disengaged if temp exceeds 80C
cat /usr/local/bin/temp_mon.sh
#!/bin/bash
temp=`grep temp /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal | awk '{print $2}'`
if [ ! -f /var/run/temp_mon.state ] ; then
    echo auto > /var/run/temp_mon.state
fi
state=`cat /var/run/temp_mon.state`
if [ $temp -gt 80 ]; then
    echo -n 'level disengaged' > /proc/acpi/ibm/fan
    if [ $state != "disengaged" ]; then
        logger "Fan state changed to disengaged"
        echo disengaged > /var/run/temp_mon.state
    fi
else
    echo -n 'level auto' > /proc/acpi/ibm/fan
    if [ $state != "auto" ]; then
        logger "Fan state changed to auto"
        echo auto > /var/run/temp_mon.state
    fi
fi

3) put the following in /etc/cron.d/temp_mon
*/5 * * * * root /var/run/temp_mon.state

4) Test with something like yes > /dev/null and watch for temparature/fan changes.

This isn't ideal, but it does allow a compromise between fans always spinning and thermal shutdown. Let me know if you see any issues with the script (code at https://github.com/theothertom/thinkpad-temp_mon)

How is this report incomplete? Please provide specifics on what you feel this report is lacking.

[I am not a dev] I would say that the report is not imcomplete, but rather fixed. I had this bug for a long time, but since oneric there are no problems at all. So may be the imcompleteness has something to do with the fact that it is not clear if the bug report still affects people who use unsupported versions of Ubuntu or if it still happens with new versions of Ubuntu which Thinkpads/which configurations it affects. For those still affected and running a still supported version of Ubuntu I would suggest to start with a new and clean bug report.

It's not fixed for me - x201s running 12.04.1. I have to disengage the fans before running VMware or doing large compilations or my laptop will overheat and shut down.

On Lenovo T500 the problem is also not fixed. Even with 12.04.1. Need to use customized thinkfan to avoid overheating.
-----Original Message-----
From: tnhh <email address hidden>
Sender: <email address hidden>
Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2012 08:49:39
To: <email address hidden>
Reply-To: Bug 751689 <email address hidden>
Subject: [Bug 751689] Re: ThinkPads overheat due to slow fans when on 'auto'

It's not fixed for me - x201s running 12.04.1. I have to disengage the
fans before running VMware or doing large compilations or my laptop will
overheat and shut down.

--
You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
report.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/751689

Title:
  ThinkPads overheat due to slow fans when on 'auto'

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
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It is not fixed for me: T500, 12.04.1 _LTS _. It causes severe overheating and crashes on a regular basis. I even had problems installing 12.04 due to crashes during the installation. Some things I observed on my laptop:

- it is an OS specific bug: Windows works fine on my laptop
- the problem got worse from 10.04 to 12.04: I see approx. 10 degrees higher idle temperatures
- with Windows, higher fan RPMs seem to be available (below the very noisy full-speed) from what I can hear
- for me, the overheating problem seems to be severe only with discrete graphics (ATI) enabled
- I have thinkfan configured and running, but still have crashes (considerably less than without though)

It seems the debian bugfix fixes only a workaround (full-speed mode for thinkfan).

May be, in the past that was something that helped me, you should check your startup-logfiles for messages that indicate problems with the graphic driver. I am not expert, so I can not tell you exactly what I did, but it turned out that Ubuntu used a fall back graphics driver instead of the real one, which caused the system to be slower and also caused the overheating. I can not remember exactly, but in one Ubuntu version I googled the error message and found instructions to fix it. In another version I just learned about the xorg-edgers-ppa with the newest versions of graphic drivers (and also fresh kernels). That helped very much and I am running them ever since (but on my x201 I do not have over heating without xorg-edgers)
You may also check, if your system is using Thinkpad-ACPI instead of ACPI. This should happen automatically. Otherwise you need to enforce it on system startup. Do not ask me exactly where, just google it, that was what I did.

What also helps temporarily: Remove the battery if you work on AC.

Found this "bug" and I think I have something to say, or watch this topic.

I am using a T430 with Nvidia display. When I first installed Ubuntu 12.04 I feel that the fan is really blowing out hot air, but I can't comment on the fan speed.
After I installed Bumblebee (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bumblebee) (a replacement for Nvidia Optimus), it seems to be able to switch off the Nvidia card so that the temperature is lowered greatly.
But if I run `optirun glxgears` for about two minutes, the display card is working and the temperature rises, according to `/sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0`, to at most `55000` (55 deg Celsius?) and the fan speed is around `3800`. Normally the temperature should be 45 and fan speed 3400.

I am not really sure, but do all of you have the problem because of the Nvidia card being kept on? I don't seem to get the problem normally.

(Well, the hard disk DOES get hot... but the fans doesn't seem to really help, though it seems a little bit hotter than in Windows?)

Hello Billy,

I see you have changed the bug to "Fix Comitted". I'm wondering, where do I find information on this fix?

reverting on "Confirmed" until more information is available.

I can confirm this bug on a ThinkPad W510.

Fan issues here too on my Thinkpad Edge.

Is this bug still present in 12.10 ?

This bug was filed against a series that is no longer supported and so is being marked as Won't Fix. If this issue still exists in a supported series, please file a new bug.

This change has been made by an automated script, maintained by the Ubuntu Kernel Team.

@jsalisbury:
Are you serious? This has been confirmed on 12.04 as indicated at the top of the report. Last I checked 12.04 was an LTS release and supported.

Can anyone confirm this bug is still present in 12.10 ?

yes, I am still experiencing overheating in 12.10 while doing some heavy number crunching with all the cores active (Thinkpad X201i with i3 processor).

@Jamin W. Collins,

Only the Natty series should have been marked as "Wont Fix".

I am still experiencing this problem on my Thinkpad X201 using 12.10 x86_64.

[ 11.835859] thinkpad_acpi: ThinkPad ACPI Extras v0.24
[ 11.835861] thinkpad_acpi: http://ibm-acpi.sf.net/
[ 11.835862] thinkpad_acpi: ThinkPad BIOS 6QET69WW (1.39 ), EC 6QHT33WW-1.14
[ 11.835864] thinkpad_acpi: Lenovo ThinkPad X201, model 3626A14
[ 11.840344] thinkpad_acpi: detected a 8-level brightness capable ThinkPad
[ 11.842060] thinkpad_acpi: radio switch found; radios are enabled
[ 11.842896] thinkpad_acpi: possible tablet mode switch found; ThinkPad in laptop mode
[ 11.842912] thinkpad_acpi: This ThinkPad has standard ACPI backlight brightness control, supported by the ACPI video driver

Maybe this dmesg snippet gives you some hints:

[ 9.618507] intel ips 0000:00:1f.6: CPU TDP doesn't match expected value (found 25, expected 29)
[ 9.619390] tpm_tis 00:0b: TPM is disabled/deactivated (0x6)
[ 9.620441] intel ips 0000:00:1f.6: IPS driver initialized, MCP temp limit 90

Im still experiencing this bug. Bug related to Alexander info, appears to be the same or very similar bug to this one (affects many vendors) https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/636045

Confirmed on thinkpad T61. For me this bug is actually new! I experience it only since an upgrade from Ubuntu 12.04 to 12.10 with kernel v3.5. Before I didn't have it.

Confirmed (again) on Thinkpad X220. It would really be nice if not every newer kernel I install overwrites my thinkfan settings, this is the 3rd time this happens, now on Kernel 3.5.0-20, 12.10. Really very annoying.

I've put a wiki page on thinkwiki about this problem:

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_with_Overheating_then_reboot_since_Ubuntu_11.10

Please complete, add your machine and test every solution before reporting.

If you cannot edit the page, please send me your comments here.

I have a T410 and Ubuntu 12.10. All Updates applied.

I did the manual kernel module load and set the fan to disengaged.

With the script here provided I see:

Every 0.5s: cat /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal ; cat /proc/... Wed Jan 16 11:09:39 2013

temperatures: 95 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
speed: 4951
level: disengaged
cpu MHz : 2667.000
cpu MHz : 2667.000
cpu MHz : 2399.000
cpu MHz : 1999.000

Top was 97°C

Fan never goes higher than the value shown... ~4950rpm.

Just tried thinkfan with its default settings

The level goes up to 7... that is around 4,5k rpm.

Eventually the Temperatre goes above 100°C - last I saw was 101°C and system shuts down.

ii thinkfan 0.8.1-1 amd64 simple and lightweight fan contro

I did another run without thinkfan and manually set the speed to "disengaged"

Top was 100°C and 4972rpm.

I watched the output of the script closely and I notived, that around 95°C the CPU throtteling kicks in and lowers the Speed from 2,6GHz to 1,2GHz. At atound 85°C it goes again to 2,6GHz. So the CPU goes faster and slower as temperature rises and falls. I guess I can kill my system faster by using GPU in addition (by just browsing the web...)

I assume that eventually at 95°C the thremal throtteling of the CPU speed is a tick to late and the fans dont respond in addition not quite as swiftly to deliver those 4970tpm that causes the >100°C. Which leads to the emergency shutdown.

From my point of view, the system is in constant thermal edge as it has to lower its speed due to overheating. I would love to see the system not exceed the temperature which would lead to speed throtteling. Which leads to the question, can a faster fan speed meet such a desired temperature and the ultimate question, why does the fan not go faster?

As of now, to make this clear, NONE of the provided solutions work. So I can't use my system for something fancy like converting a 30MB WMV with h264encoder.

So to get my job done, I capped the max cpu scaling...

It's a 2.6GHz CPU, So I went down to 2.4GHz as maximum. But left anything else to they way it is by default. That still leads to a temperature of 95°C but way slower so when the cpu scaling then kicks in the cpus are cooler way faster as they are not at 2.6GHz when speed gets reduced... but thoses 95°C get hit pretty often, so I lowered it to 2,26GHz and it still hits 95°C... but not that fast.... so I lowered it to 2,13GHz

temperatures: 94 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
speed: 4518
level: auto
cpu MHz : 1199.000
cpu MHz : 1199.000
cpu MHz : 2133.000
cpu MHz : 2133.000

That way the system operates stable at 93-94°C

Just another run of my task at hand which looks cpuwise like this:

temperatures: 94 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
speed: 4544
level: auto
cpu MHz : 2133.000
cpu MHz : 2133.000
cpu MHz : 2133.000
cpu MHz : 2133.000

I rather have my CPUs at 21/26 (80%) of their power than having them to cool down to 85°C at 1,2GHz until they get up to 2,6GHz just to see them overheat at fall back to 1,2GHz... which in the end leads to about an average of 2,1GHz ;)... but eventually shuts the system :(

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 1/16/2013 5:54 AM, Phoenix wrote:
>> From my point of view, the system is in constant thermal edge as
>> it has
> to lower its speed due to overheating. I would love to see the
> system not exceed the temperature which would lead to speed
> throtteling. Which leads to the question, can a faster fan speed
> meet such a desired temperature and the ultimate question, why does
> the fan not go faster?

You would have to ask IBM why they keep designing broken laptops.

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I have working fan control using this page to get fan control working in the first place:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=836958

and once I could use 'full-speed' to set the fan speed I moved on to thinkfan.

Using thinkfan I just have the max heat level set at "level disengaged" (in quotes), and everything is working perfectly. My x201 sounds like a jet engine exactly as I want it to during encodes! :)

Hi,
I have the same problem on my TP R60.

Adding (127, 66, 32767) at the end to /etc/thinkfan.conf lead me to have the fan running at disengaed by auto. This results in seltem having temparute over 85°C.

Further I found, that the VID is to high by default. If I set the governer to userspace 1.833GHz and reduce the VID using
wrmsr -p0 [1] 0x0199 0x0b20
The temparature goes not over 65°C.

The governer "ondemand" switches the MSR 0x199 between 0x0613, 0x081c, and 0x0b28. This 0x0b28 should be reduced to 0x0b20 and every thing would fine.

As a workaround, I use

sudo pm-powersave

which decreases the temperature from more than 100C to about 92C when running computations on two+two cores (t410 here).

Note also that I run pm-powersave every 60s, otherwise, the pm-powersave settings are lost and temperatures climb again.

Sorry, forgot to add true at the end of the command line: I use
 watch -n60 sudo pm-powersave true

This change was made by a bot.

For me at least it turned out to be a hardware problem. After getting the fan replaced I'm not experiencing this problem at all.

Updating the BIOS on my X201s seems to have reduced the system temperature. Not sure why since the changelog for 1.40-1.15 only says "Embedded Controller update will modify battery charge algorithms to balance battery charging and lifespan."

http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail.page?LegacyDocID=MIGR-74983

Vacuum cleaner fixed the problem for me. My Thinkpad x201i was reaching 100C temperature regularly after only a few minutes of full load. I removed keyboard and cleaned the cpu cooler with a vacuum cleaner. Maybe it could be done by cleaning the cpu cooler venhole only from the outside.

Now I never reach temperatures over 85C even with closed lid in the docking station and after prolonged time on full load. Standard cpu temperature is ~ 60C.

+1 on "Vacuum cleaner fix"!
Thinkfan still has to "disengage" for high loads, but during summer it got to the point where the T410 would regularly throttle the CPU down to 1.2GHz cause of to much heat. That doesn't happen after vacuuming anymore. System can run for hours at full speed (with fan disengaged).

Jamie Strandboge, this bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? If so, could you please test for this with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ .

If it remains an issue, could you please run the following command in the development release from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal), as it will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report:

apport-collect -p linux <replace-with-bug-number>

Also, could you please test the latest upstream kernel available following https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds ? It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Please do not test the daily folder, but the one all the way at the bottom. Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please comment on which kernel version specifically you tested. If this bug is fixed in the mainline kernel, please add the following tags:
kernel-fixed-upstream
kernel-fixed-upstream-VERSION-NUMBER

where VERSION-NUMBER is the version number of the kernel you tested. For example:
kernel-fixed-upstream-v3.11-rc5

This can be done by clicking on the yellow circle with a black pencil icon next to the word Tags located at the bottom of the bug description. As well, please remove the tag:
needs-upstream-testing

If the mainline kernel does not fix this bug, please add the following tags:
kernel-bug-exists-upstream
kernel-bug-exists-upstream-VERSION-NUMBER

As well, please remove the tag:
needs-upstream-testing

Once testing of the upstream kernel is complete, please mark this bug's Status as Confirmed. Please let us know your results. Thank you for your understanding.

I can confirm this is still happening on Ubuntu 13.04 x64 on my Thinkpad R500. The thinkfan improves, but doesn't solve the issue, so does cleaning the inside from dust.

I will try to install the new ubuntu release.

best
Tristan

Tristan Nakagawa, if you have a bug in Ubuntu, the Ubuntu Kernel team, Ubuntu Bug Control team, and Ubuntu Bug Squad would like you to please file a new report by executing the following in a terminal while booted into a Ubuntu repository kernel (not a mainline one) via:
ubuntu-bug linux

For more on this, please read the official Ubuntu documentation:
Ubuntu Kernel Team: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeam/KernelTeamBugPolicies
Ubuntu Bug Control and Ubuntu Bug Squad: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/BestPractices
Ubuntu Community: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs

When opening up the new report, please feel free to subscribe me to it.

Please note, not filing a new report would delay your problem being addressed as quickly as possible.

Thank you for your understanding.

I have been working since my first comment on this bug using the fan speed set to max, with the result that my fan is no de facto dead and I had to get a replacement heatsink assembly ...

I will happily test using the instructions for Jamie above, so we can get this fixed before Saucy release ...

All,
Had this issue with x201:
-sudden shut down
-temp going to 95c
-language stickers piling off cause of the warm -))

Took a huge vacuum cleaner & attached it to the upper left side where the fan resides
Since than temp never went over 55c even when the unit is under heavy load.

All the best - Drukman.

Thinkpad X201i, was running fine for a couple of years under 10.10, upgraded to 12.04, now the machine is overheating and shutting down regularly.

Overheating experienced while running test suites or while watching video, Skype video calls, or Firefox Flash plugin activity.

15:20 jean@klippie:~$ uname -a
Linux klippie 3.8.0-33-generic #48~precise1-Ubuntu SMP Thu Oct 24 16:28:06 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
15:22 jean@klippie:~$ dmesg | grep ASPM
[ 0.230873] ACPI FADT declares the system doesn't support PCIe ASPM, so disable it
[ 0.366429] pci0000:ff: ACPI _OSC support notification failed, disabling PCIe ASPM
[ 0.380548] ACPI _OSC control for PCIe not granted, disabling ASPM

Alexander List / Jean Jordan, if you have a bug in Ubuntu, the Ubuntu Kernel team, Ubuntu Bug Control team, and Ubuntu Bug Squad would like you to please file a new report by executing the following in a terminal while booted into a Ubuntu repository kernel (not a mainline one) via:
ubuntu-bug linux

For more on this, please read the official Ubuntu documentation:
Ubuntu Bug Control and Ubuntu Bug Squad: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/BestPractices#X.2BAC8-Reporting.Focus_on_One_Issue
Ubuntu Kernel Team: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeam/KernelTeamBugPolicies#Filing_Kernel_Bug_reports
Ubuntu Community: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs#Bug_reporting_etiquette

When opening up the new report, please feel free to subscribe me to it.

Please note, not filing a new report would delay your problem being addressed as quickly as possible.

No need exists to comment here at this time. After reading the above documentation in it's entirety, if you have further questions or comments, you are welcome to redirect them to the appropriate mailing list or forum via http://www.ubuntu.com/support/community/mailinglists , or you may contact me directly.

Thank you for your understanding.

@penalvch, mine is not a new report, just a data point on this issue ongoing since 2011-04-06, and before that on Bug #370173 since 2009-05-01, still unresolved.

I suspect opening a new (duplicate) bug will not help matters. That said `apport-collect` wouldn't let me add info to this report, so I added my info at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-lts-raring/+bug/1254576

To trigger this issue I installed Ubuntu 12.04, updated to the present.

For me the issue is fixed in Saucy, by doing a few things. I am not sure if it is the combination or one of them did the trick:
- Installing: intel-microcode -> Update of the CPU-Firmware
- running thinfan with the attached configuration (note: you must look for more detailed installation instructions on the net, the sensor settings are for a X201 only. You need to adjust them for other machines)
- installing i965-va-driver
- I also have updated my Bios to the latest version. But this was a while ago and did not help. But it may contribute to it.

Before that I had an average temperature of 80 and quite often sudden peaks leading to 100 and a shutdown. Now I have a permanent temperature below 60 and only a few peeks above. What I am sure of is that it did not help to have thinkfan installed, did not help alone.

I have to note that I am running a x201 and have an SSD. Switching from a hardrive to SSD did not change a thing. So I assume this "solution" works also with a harddrive.

Before having this solution it helped to remove the battery to prevent the overheating from happening.

Incomplete is a nice decription for "no one is caring.". Fact is that in (K)Ubuntu's default installation this bug appears and is very annoying. For me it is also a fact, that the problem can be solved, by the procedure I have described. Unfortunately I can not tell which one did the fix. But it means the default installation for Thinkpads can be fixed.

Mark, so your hardware and problem may be tracked, could you please file a new report with Ubuntu by executing the following in a terminal while booted into a Ubuntu repository kernel (not a mainline one) via:
ubuntu-bug linux

For more on this, please read the official Ubuntu documentation:
Ubuntu Bug Control and Ubuntu Bug Squad: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/BestPractices#X.2BAC8-Reporting.Focus_on_One_Issue
Ubuntu Kernel Team: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeam/KernelTeamBugPolicies#Filing_Kernel_Bug_reports
Ubuntu Community: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs#Bug_reporting_etiquette

When opening up the new report, please feel free to subscribe me to it.

Thank you for your understanding.

Helpful bug reporting tips:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs

It isn't don't care so much as it is that the bug lies in the laptop's bios, not linux.

> It isn't don't care so much as it is that the bug lies in the laptop's bios, not linux.

I'm not competent to say whether it's in the bios, but for the sake of discussion I can accept that. But it's noticeable that some of the reports here are indicating that things were better in the past, then got worse with later revisions of Ubuntu. Doesn't that indicate that, regardless of "where the bug lies", there is the possibility of working around it outside the bios? Phillip, I don't feel you should dismiss Mark so hastily.

That all said, clearly it's a problem that will be difficult for developers to reproduce, and which factors such as exact hardware revision, bios revision, thickness of fluff in the fan duct (!) and much else will all influence. Good accurate reporting will be needed.

As others have noted, the workaround is to set the fan to disengaged mode so that it runs at full speed. As for it previously being worse; in some cases it sounds like there may have been less dust in the fan at an earlier time, and in others, various changes over time may have caused the cpu to work harder and generate more heat. The bios is supposed to respond to more heat by ramping up the fan speed, but reports indicate this is broken and the bios won't go over 4000 rpm unless you override it with the disengaged state.

@Philipp: With my "solution" which works for, there is no need to run the fan on disengaged. At the moment e.g. the fan is not running at all and I am happy with 44° Celsius which rather low. But when I am stressing the system more, the temperature hardly ever rises above 60° Celsius. Then the fan is running, but definitely not on full speed. Before that I was seldomly below 80° and I often had the system quickly rising towards 100°. Unfortunately I can not say what really did the trick. But I am quite sure the Bios can only contributed with a small factor. I updated the Bios months before the other things and there was only a little improvement. I rather suspect that installing the installing "i965-va-driver" and a newer kernel did something. I suspect this, because the overheating mostly only happened when I was doing things which stressed the gpu (watching movies, encoding video). At least in my installation the "i965-va-driver" was never installed by default.

That driver allows using the GPU for video encoding/decoding, which reduces the load on the cpu during those activities, and thus, the heat it generates. A heavy load will still cause it to overheat because the real bug is that the bios does not speed up the fan correctly when it does get too hot.

Stopped using x201. However a friend i support has x201 with 14.04 and it still breaks badly.

"because the real bug is that the bios does not speed up the fan correctly when it does get too hot."

"status: Fix Released → Confirmed"

As usual faulty arguments are reason enough to dismiss bugs. It works on Windows. It has worked better on various releases. However, no fix has ever been released. No work (technical) has ever been made to solve this bug. It is for sure in the design of Ubuntu and Linux drivers. The "fixes" work for minor loads, though not for heavy stress on the computer. Noise in relation to fixes is another issue.

Cheers

Anders, you can try installing the 'thermald' package; it might be a reasonable bandaid.

Lenovo R61i, type 7650, Intel Core Duo T5450, Ubuntu 14.04: my fan is always stuck around 3000RPM, whatever the temperature. I've reached 75/80°C, which is relatively hot, considering lmsensors shows 85°C as crit temp.

Andre, thank you for your comment. So your hardware and problem may be tracked, could you please file a new report with Ubuntu by executing the following in a terminal while booted into a Ubuntu repository kernel (not a mainline one) via:
ubuntu-bug linux

For more on this, please read the official Ubuntu documentation:
Ubuntu Bug Control and Ubuntu Bug Squad: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/BestPractices#X.2BAC8-Reporting.Focus_on_One_Issue
Ubuntu Kernel Team: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeam/KernelTeamBugPolicies#Filing_Kernel_Bug_reports
Ubuntu Community: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs#Bug_reporting_etiquette

When opening up the new report, please feel free to subscribe me to it.

Thank you for your understanding.

Helpful bug reporting tips:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs

Bug report filled: Bug #1325298.

@Seth Arnold thank you. Will try with my friends comp.

The same problem in Lenovo B560.
I'm leave using ubuntu since the last two wersions hoverheated my computer, and today, whith the 14.10 installed I have exactly the same problem (maybe worster).

Alejandro Agustin, thank you for your comment. So your hardware and problem may be tracked, could you please file a new report with Ubuntu by executing the following in a terminal while booted into the default Ubuntu kernel (not a mainline one) via:
ubuntu-bug linux

For more on this, please read the official Ubuntu documentation:
Ubuntu Bug Control and Ubuntu Bug Squad: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/BestPractices#X.2BAC8-Reporting.Focus_on_One_Issue
Ubuntu Kernel Team: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeam/KernelTeamBugPolicies#Filing_Kernel_Bug_reports
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/Policies/DuplicateBugs
Ubuntu Community: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs#Bug_reporting_etiquette

When opening up the new report, please feel free to subscribe me to it.

As well, please do not announce in this report you created a new bug report.

Thank you for your understanding.

Helpful bug reporting tips:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs

Can any of you old timers tell if this bug will break my new Thinkpad X201S? And I should buy Windows 10 instead?

This issue is occuring for me since a very long time; using Windows the fans have a much higher speed setting compared to using Linux and the thinkpad-acpi driver. However, since the use of Maverick I experience a lot more automatic shutdowns, triggered by thinkpad-acpi, due to overheating. Before, I was using Karmic and also experienced it sometimes.

When monitoring the temperatures manually and setting a fan speed accordingly the CPU is cooled properly, but thinkpad-acpi never triggers higher CPU fan speeds even when > 95 °C! That is, in my opinion, a bug.

I'm having this issue on my T61p - C2D T9300 w/ Nvidia QuadroFX 570M. Both need quite a lot of cooling, especially when using the docking station (less ventilation, more isolation on the bottom).

That's why I don't think this issue is specific for one Thinkpad model, but occuring as soon as you start using thinkpad-acpi, also in older versions of Ubuntu. And yes, it's a universe piece of software not part of the core of Ubuntu, but this should really be fixed as it might cause hardware failures.

I think running a user space software daemon as a workaround is rather 'dirty'.

More hardware related, but still not justifying the behaviour of thinkpad-acpi:
I noticed there was an awful lot of thermal grease on both the CPU and the GPU for the integrated heatsink/fan in my Thinkpad, I cleaned it, replaced this with a proper amount of thermal grease and temperatures are 10 °C lower since then.

[https://www.bountysource.com/issues/1033632-lenovo-thinkpad-x201s-overheat-due-to-slow-fans-when-on-auto .]

In response to #161. Since 14.04 at least both my X201 Core i5 and X230 Core i7 no longer reach thermal shutdown. It appears that the reason is that the CPUs are more aggressively down-clocked as temperature rises.

No explanation? Just High Importance, and then Won't Fix?

John, note that the 'high -> won't fix' comes from importing Red Hat's bugzilla statuses.

Furthermore, this bug has been such a dumping ground that it's probably best to ignore this bug entirely and file a new issue if you're still seeing problems.

Thanks

I know it is long time since this was opened, however herewith I want to declare that this problem still exists nowadays in all Thinkpad line and it is not related to Linux.

From all what I have learned so far there is only one conclusion:

Lenovo is capping its fans to keep their products at low noise intentionally with the penalty of lower performance. This problem is getting annoying as more powerful a CPU is as it needs more cooling. No Linux OS is controlling the fans by default and it is obvious it is not Ubuntu or any other fault. It is simply Lenovo is hindering any OS to use higher fan speeds.

JFYI in my situation the maximum disengaged fan in a Thinkpad Extreme is about 7800 rpm, however highest auto level is at 4800 rpm. thinkpad_acpi is offering level 7 max which equals to this 4800 rpm. Please note thinkpad_acpi is depending on registers which only offer levels but no fixed speed.

For me personally this is a bad design decision and will go into the equation of vendor choice for the next purchase but who cares.

PS: As a last there is a pulse setup thinkable which keeps the desired fan rpm at a certain level by alternating between full and highest, but this is a far off topic here.