fan running...ACPI problem?

[hansjoakim]

hello,

i'm a linux newbie, so go light on me i'm using mandrake 10.1 (2.6.8 kernel) on a centrino laptop. i have noticed that the fan runs all the time; usually just a low whirr, but it speeds up when some cpu-intensive stuff is going on. i have win xp installed (dual boot), which runs with NO fan at all most of the time. i have enabled the cpufreq stuff, and am using the "ondemand" frequency scaling governor. my cpu runs at 600 MHz most of the time (out of a total of 1.4 GHz), so that should not generate heat. overall it seems to be pretty cool, but i have NEVER experienced that the fan is completely off.

when i go to the /proc/acpi directory there is a fan/ directory, but it's empty (as is the thermal_zone/ directory). i get:

$ acpi -V
No support for device type: thermal
AC Adapter 1: on-line

is there some fan module or something that is not loaded with ACPI? i have read several threads about fan/ACPI problems, but not found any solutions to my problem. any response greatly appreciated!

hans joakim.

[hansjoakim]

oh, by the way; i have noticed that there are some .ko files in the /lib/modules/.../kernel/drivers/acpi/ directory (fan.ko, processor.ko, etc...). i am not sure what to do with them... i've tried insmod'ing them manually, but i still get the same error message when i type:

$ acpi -V
No support for device type: thermal
AC adapter 1: on-line

if there's some lack in hardware support, what about upgrading ACPI/kernel?

[hansjoakim]

perhaps there's some lack of support for my fan in ACPI? what about switching to APM, would that make things better/worse?