vaiofand, fan controller | Linux tools for Sony Vaio

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
On-the-fly reconfiguration capability
Simple installation, including init scripts for major Linux distributions
Fast, efficient code in C
NEW: vaiofand can now handle overheating systems as well and make the fan spin faster to ensure proper cooling

download

Please note that this software is specific for Linux as it depends on certain unique features of the Linux kernel. Unfortunately, it will not work on other operating systems.

vaiofand 0.10.1 (1 October 2011)

source tarball (23.0 KiB)
Ubuntu
- Ubuntu package repository (PPA)
Debian and its derivatives
- i386 package (27.2 KiB)
- amd64 package (28.2 KiB)

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, PCG-F, PCG-GR, PCG-R, PCG-SR, PCG-TR, VGN-A, VGN-B, 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-NR, VGN-NW, VGN-SR, VGN-TT, VGN-Z, VPCCA, VPCCW, VPCEA, VPCEB, VPCEG, VPCEH, VPCF, VPCM, VPCS, VPCSA, VPCW, VPCYA, plus apparently all the models currently manufactured

Sony has recently made some major changes to their laptops' BIOS and ACPI. It appears that none of the currently manufactured 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 email 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 and configuration

Vaiofand is a system daemon, and as such it runs in the background. It reads all its settings from /etc/vaiofand.conf. This file is continuously monitored, and any changes made to it are picked up immediately without the need to restart the daemon.

Hence, an easy, interactive and GUI-like way to tweak the settings is to press Alt + F2 and type gksudo gedit /etc/vaiofand.conf (assuming your desktop environment is GNOME, on KDE SC run kdesudo kate /etc/vaiofand.conf). Every time you make a change in the file and save it, vaiofand will detect it and instantly reload the settings.

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.

contact

Please use the above email address for submitting your comments, suggestions and bug reports.