vaiofand project homepage
Vaiofand is a Linux system daemon to tame the noisy fans of Sony Vaio laptops. These fans are controlled directly by the BIOS and thus do not allow for standard software management. Moreover, Vaio fans are usually spinning at considerably higher rates than necessary and so generate excessive noise. Vaiofand monitors the system temperature and maintains the fan speed at user defined rate by constantly overruling the settings made by the BIOS. Vaiofand can also make further adjustments to the fan speed when the temperature reaches user defined thresholds.
features
- Fully configurable through /etc/vaiofand.conf (temperature thresholds, desired fan speed, frequency of checks …)
- Temperature being monitored at all times, and fan automatically set to full speed if temperature approaches critical levels to prevent system damage
- Debugging mode with logging into syslog to facilitate users' tuning
- Ability to run in suspended mode and save unnecessary CPU interrupts when temperature gets low enough for the BIOS to slow down the fan by itself
- On-the-fly reconfiguration capability
- Full-fledged Unix daemon architecture, robust signal handlers, running in chrooted environment and with dropped privileges
- Running with slightly elevated priority to achieve more consistent cooling results
- Fast, efficient code in C
- Simple installation, including init scripts for major Linux distributions
- Handling temperatures in degrees Celsius, Fahrenheit or even in Kelvins (hardcore physicists supported)
download
Please note that this software is specific for Linux as it depends on certain features of the Linux kernel. Unfortunately, it will not work on other operating systems.
vaiofand 0.7.2 (21 August 2010)
- source tarball (22.1 KiB; easy to compile, see README for installation instructions.)
- Ubuntu
- Debian and its derivatives
- i386 package (23.8 KiB)
- amd64 package (24.4 KiB)
- Arch Linux
- i686 package (19.4 KiB)
- x86_64 package (20.3 KiB)
- source package on AUR
supported hardware
Vaiofand uses the SNY6001 (aka Sony Programmable I/O Control, SPIC or SonyPI) ACPI device to control the fan. However, not all Vaio laptops include this device, and even if they do, the devices do not always have the same feature set. Therefore, before you install vaiofand, make sure that the file /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/fanspeed is present on your system. If it is not the case, then your laptop does not allow for any kind of fan management.
- model lines known to work: PCG-C, VGN-BZ, VGN-S, VGN-SZ, VGN-T, VGN-TX, VGN-TZ, VGN-UX
- model lines known not to work: PCG-K, VGN-AR, VGN-BX, VGN-C, VGN-CR, VGN-CS, VGN-FE, VGN-FS, VGN-FW, VGN-FZ, VGN-SR, VGN-TT, VGN-Z, VPC-CW, VPC-EB, VPC-F, VPC-M
Sony has recently made some major changes to their laptops' BIOS and ACPI. It seems that none of the currently produced model lines do support any kind of fan management.
If you have any additions (you can confirm a line either to work or not to) or corrections to the above list, please submit them to the bug tracker or to the e-mail address below.
An ultimate test how to check whether vaiofand will work for you is to run
echo 255|sudo tee /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/fanspeed
If that makes the fan spin considerably faster (at least for a while), you are good to go. Otherwise, vaiofand will never work with your laptop.
usage
Vaiofand is a system daemon, and as such it runs in the background. It reads all its settings from /etc/vaiofand.conf, and it can be manipulated (started, stopped or reloaded) through the init script (/etc/init.d/vaiofand on Debian-like systems). Vaiofand-monit is a subsidiary tool to vaiofand. It can be invoked from the command line interface to monitor the system temperature and the fan activity.
license
Released as open source under ISC License.
Copyright © 2009–2010 David Jurenka <enable JavaScript to see e-mail>
contact
Please use the bug tracker or the above e-mail address for submitting your comments, suggestions and bug reports.