The laptops: These are all intel, circa 2004 to 2008, and have Pentium M (Banias), core duo (Yonah), and core 2 duo (Penryn) processors.
The pups: X-slacko 3bx through 4.2, X-Tahr 1bx through 2.0, LxPupSc up to 17.01.25. Probably others but not tested 1:1.
The problem: System fan goes from nothing to full on with the slightest load or sometimes (with the Yonah) completely on its own with no use. acpi-cpufreq & governors are always applied, either ondemand or conservative. CPU temperatures are never over 45 degrees Celsius. All extraneous services have been eliminated and unused ports and services turned off in the BIOS. gvfsd-metadata is under control. CPU use in Lxtask at idle is 3 to 10%, depending on processor and pup.
Background: Intel introduced support for its P-State governor in the SandyBridge processor circa 2011. All of the above processors precede that by a wide margin.
The kernels I have used in these machines: 3.14.20, 3.14.56, 3.15.4, 3.17.x, 4.1.31. and 4.8.x through 4.9.4. All have intel_pstate=y in the DOTCONFIGs as do pretty much all of the post 3.x.x pup kernels I have looked at.
The solution: As suggested by the members above (sorry if I missed any), pass intel_pstate=disable as a kernel parameter as in the following Grub4Dos line.
Code: Select all
kernel /LxPupSc/vmlinuz pmedia=ataflash ignore=usb pdev1=sda1 psubdir=LxPupSc intel_pstate=disable pfix=copy ipv6.disable=1
It won't raise fans from the dead or tame real toasters but for me it made the load/temperature/fan use much more rational. I really don't know the mechanism for the p_state interference but it seems to over-ride my governor settings in the OS even though the processors don't support it.