Package up for adoption

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=948521

https://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/rfa

I8KUTILS

OVERVIEW

i8kutils is a collection of utilities for controlling the fans on some Dell laptops. The utilities are entirely built upon the dell-smm-hwmon kernel module, which has to be loaded before they can work.

The i8kutils package includes the following utilities:

• i8kctl, a command-line utility for interfacing with the kernel module.
• i8kmon, a temperature monitor with fan control capability.

Since 2011 (kernel version 3.0), the kernel module exports temperature and fan data over the standard linux hwmon interface. If you are running a recent enough kernel, you might want to take a look at the lm-sensors project. In order to access fan sensors using i8kctl, kernel version 5.19 or greater is required.

All Dell laptops handle fan control through the BIOS, but on some models this feature does not work properly. i8kmon does essentially the same job as the BIOS is supposed to do.

LICENCE

This software is released under the terms of the GNU General Public Licence, see COPYING for details.

THE KERNEL MODULE

The documentation of the dell_smm_hwmon kernel driver can be found here.

The driver accepts the following parameters:

• ignore_dmi=1

  • forces the driver to load on unknown hardware

• force=1

  • forces the driver to load on unsupported/buggy hardware
  • might cause problems since it also disables all blacklists for buggy hardware, use only when ignore_dmi=1 is not enough

• fan_mult=

  • overrides the fan speed multiplicator

• fan_max=

  • overrides the maximum fan state.

You can specify the module parameters when loading the module or as kernel option when booting the kernel if the driver is compiled statically.

To have the module loaded automatically at boot you must manually add the line "dell-smm-hwmon" into the file /etc/modules or use the modconf utility. For example:

$ cat /etc/modules
# /etc/modules: kernel modules to load at boot time.
#
# This file contains the names of kernel modules that should be loaded
# at boot time, one per line. Lines beginning with "#" are ignored.
dell-smm-hwmon

Any module parameters must be specified in /etc/modprobe.d/dell-smm-hwmon.conf. To force dell-smm-hwmon to load on unknown hardware, the above file should contain the following line:

options dell-smm-hwmon ignore_dmi=1

THE I8KCTL UTILITY

The i8kctl utility provides a command-line interface to the dell-smm-hwmon kernel driver. When invoked without arguments the program reports the readings of all fan and temperature sensors exposed by the driver.

In order to modify fan speeds, the utility requires root privileges.

The program can take an optional argument which can be used to select only one of the items and to control the fan status.

The sensors utility from lm-sensors provides similar data.

PREREQUISITE

i8kutils depends on Tcl and the logger module in tcllib, which may not installed by default on your system. You can install them depending on your distro.

Ubuntu

sudo apt install tcl
sudo apt install tcllib

Arch Linux

sudo pacman -S tcl
sudo pacman -S tcllib

Gentoo

sudo emerge --ask dev-lang/tcl
sudo emerge --ask dev-tcltk/tcllib

BUILDING

To build the programs enter the following commands:

meson setup build --prefix="/usr"
cd build

INSTALLATION

To install i8kutils, enter the following command:

sudo meson install

You must then manually install the provided init scripts if necessary. For enabling i8kmon to read the battery status, you must also install 'acpi', otherwise i8kmon will assume that it always runs on ac power.

TESTING

To execute some basic tests, enter the following command:

meson test

This will execute some basic tests and print the results. Please note that those tests only test the tcl modules used for hardware access, not the applications itself.

CONTRIBUTORS

• Pablo Bianucci pbian@physics.utexas.edu

  • support for /proc/acpi

• David Bustos bustos@caltech.edu

  • patches for generating keyboard events

• Jonathan Buzzard jonathan@buzzard.org.uk

  • basic information on the SMM BIOS and the Toshiba SMM driver
  • Asm code for calling the SMM BIOS on the I8K. Without his help this work wouldn't have been possible.

• Karl E. Jørgensen karl@jorgensen.com

  • init script for i8kmon daemon

• Stephane Jourdois stephane@tuxfinder.org

  • patches for correctly interpreting buttons status in the i8k driver

• Marcel J.E. Mol marcel@mesa.nl

  • patches for the --repeat option in the i8kbuttons (obsolete on Abr 30, 2014) util

• Gianni Tedesco gianni@ecsc.co.uk

  • patch to restrict fan contol to SYS_ADMIN capability

• David Woodhouse dwmw2@redhat.com

  • suggestions on how to avoid the zombies in i8kbuttons (obsolete on Abr 30, 2014)

• Vitor Augusto vitorafsr@gmail.com

  • fixes for the freeze bug at i8kmon, general update and bug fixes

• Massimo Dal Zotto dz@debian.org

  • initial developer

and many others who tested the driver on their hardware and sent reports and patches.

No credits to DELL Computer who has always refused to give support on Linux or provide any useful information on the I8K buttons and their buggy BIOS.

---

Massimo Dal Zotto dz@debian.org