under linux this laptop (acer aspire 9100) seems a lot noisier than xp, the fan always stays on even though the cpu seems to scale down, how do I solve this?

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 13
model name : Intel® Pentium® M processor 1.60GHz
stepping : 8
cpu MHz : 800.000
cache size : 2048 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss tm pbe up bts est tm2
bogomips : 1597.82
clflush size : 64


# cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_available_governors
ondemand conservative powersave userspace performance

# lsmod | grep acpi
acpi_cpufreq 8044 0
freq_table 4512 3 cpufreq_stats,cpufreq_ondemand,acpi_cpufreq
processor 30280 2 acpi_cpufreq

# uname -a
Linux localhost 2.6.24.4-laptop-1mnb #1 SMP Thu Mar 27 14:47:43 CET 2008 i686 Intel® Pentium® M processor 1.60GHz GNU/Linux


[moved from Laptops by spinynorman]

Have you got Kerry Beagle installed?

That always makes things work hard. If you have it switch it off and see if it gets quieter.

no there are no processes eating cpu cycles, it is idle mostly

Which version of MDV do you run? What is mnb kernel?

2008.1 spring (it is nearly final, only translation updates) and mnb is he new default kernel. Btw 2008.0 was as noisy.

Do you see a kernel module named "fan" loaded when you perform an lsmod ?

no i can modprobe ithowever
what I want to add that once in a while the fan does become quite after about 10 mins of booting into mdv but it will usually turn on again, most of the time the laptop does scale down to 800MHz

A minimal set of modules which should work in virtually any laptop and should be preloaded are ac, battery, button and fan.
There are other acpi modules, you can try loading any of them that might be useful, and check its status with "dmesg".

there other modules were already loaded but modprobing fan did not seem te reduce noise.

btw how can I set cpufreq governernor to conservative (w/o reverting to rc.local)? after everyboot it reverts to ondemand

# dmesg | grep ACPI
BIOS-e820: 000000001ffe0000 - 000000001fffffc0 (ACPI data)
BIOS-e820: 000000001fffffc0 - 0000000020000000 (ACPI NVS)
ACPI: RSDP 000E5010, 0014 (r0 INSYDE)
ACPI: RSDT 1FFFB30B, 0034 (r1 INSYDE RSDT_000 100 ABCD 10200)
ACPI: FACP 1FFFFB00, 0074 (r1 INSYDE FACP_000 100 0000 10200)
ACPI: DSDT 1FFFB970, 418E (r1 COMPAL EDL7x 1 INTL 2002036)
ACPI: FACS 1FFFFFC0, 0040
ACPI: APIC 1FFFFB90, 0068 (r1 STUPID MAPIC_00 30307830 ABCD 10200)
ACPI: SSDT 1FFFB517, 0235 (r1 PmRef Cpu0Ist 3000 INTL 20030522)
ACPI: SSDT 1FFFB33F, 01D8 (r1 PmRef Cpu0Cst 3001 INTL 20030522)
ACPI: DMI detected: Acer
ACPI: PM-Timer IO Port: 0x1008
ACPI: Local APIC address 0xfee00000
ACPI: LAPIC (acpi_id[0x00] lapic_id[0x00] enabled)
ACPI: LAPIC (acpi_id[0x01] lapic_id[0x01] disabled)
ACPI: LAPIC_NMI (acpi_id[0x00] high edge lint[0x1])
ACPI: LAPIC_NMI (acpi_id[0x01] high edge lint[0x1])
ACPI: IOAPIC (id[0x01] address[0xfec00000] gsi_base[0])
ACPI: INT_SRC_OVR (bus 0 bus_irq 0 global_irq 2 dfl dfl)
ACPI: INT_SRC_OVR (bus 0 bus_irq 9 global_irq 9 high level)
ACPI: IRQ0 used by override.
ACPI: IRQ2 used by override.
ACPI: IRQ9 used by override.
Using ACPI (MADT) for SMP configuration information
ACPI: Core revision 20070126
ACPI: Looking for DSDT in initramfs... error, file /DSDT.aml not found.
ACPI: bus type pci registered
ACPI: EC: Look up EC in DSDT
ACPI: Interpreter enabled
ACPI: (supports S0 S3 S4 S5)
ACPI: Using IOAPIC for interrupt routing
ACPI: EC: non-query interrupt received, switching to interrupt mode
ACPI: EC: GPE = 0x1d, I/O: command/status = 0x66, data = 0x62
ACPI: EC: driver started in interrupt mode
ACPI: PCI Root Bridge [PCI0] (0000:00)
PCI quirk: region 1000-107f claimed by ICH6 ACPI/GPIO/TCO
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0._PRT]
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0.PEGP._PRT]
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0.PCIB._PRT]
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKA] (IRQs 1 3 4 5 6 7 10 12 14 15) *11
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKB] (IRQs 1 3 4 *5 6 7 11 12 14 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKC] (IRQs 1 3 4 5 6 7 10 12 14 15) *11
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKD] (IRQs 1 *3 4 5 6 7 11 12 14 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKE] (IRQs 1 3 4 5 6 7 *10 12 14 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKF] (IRQs 1 3 4 5 6 7 *11 12 14 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKG] (IRQs 1 3 4 5 6 7 10 12 14 15) *11
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKH] (IRQs 1 3 4 5 6 *7 11 12 14 15)
pnp: PnP ACPI init
ACPI: bus type pnp registered
pnp: PnP ACPI: found 9 devices
ACPI: ACPI bus type pnp unregistered
PCI: Using ACPI for IRQ routing
ACPI: RTC can wake from S4
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:01.0[A] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:04.0[A] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1e.3[B] -> GSI 20 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
ACPI: PCI interrupt for device 0000:00:1e.3 disabled
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1d.7[A] -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1d.0[A] -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1d.1[B] -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1d.2[C] -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 20
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1d.3[D] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1f.1[A] -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 20
ACPI: WMI-Acer: Mapper loaded
acer_acpi: Acer Laptop ACPI Extras version 0.11.1
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1f.3[B] -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1e.2[A] -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 21
ACPI: CPU0 (power states: C1[C1] C2[C2] C3[C3] C4[C3])
ACPI: Processor [CPU0] (supports 8 throttling states)
ACPI Exception (processor_core-0816): AE_NOT_FOUND, Processor Device is not present [20070126]
ACPI: Power Button (FF) [PWRF]
ACPI: Lid Switch [LID0]
ACPI: Power Button (CM) [PWRB]
ACPI: Sleep Button (CM) [SLPB]
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1e.3[B] -> GSI 20 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:01.0[A] -> GSI 21 (level, low) -> IRQ 22
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:00.0[A] -> GSI 20 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
ACPI: AC Adapter [ACAD] (on-line)
ACPI: Video Device [GFX0_PCI0] (multi-head: yes rom: no post: no)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:02.0[A] -> GSI 22 (level, low) -> IRQ 23
ACPI: Battery Slot [BAT1] (battery present)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:04.2[B] -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 21
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:03.0[A] -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
acer_acpi: Acer Laptop ACPI Extras version 0.11.1
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:01:00.0[A] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16

I too have the fans working for a longer period time than used to be the case with my previous laptop. The CPU temperature is Ok, so I stopped worrying about this, though it clearly just a waste of the battery power.

Since the powermanagement in 2008 (and I presume in 2008.1) is control by kpowersave, you must tinker with it. On my laptop, I can only select Performance, Dynamic, and Powersave as CPU frequency policies. I wonder where have the other governors gone?