Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> On Mon, 19 Jun 2006 00:06:57 -0400, Chapman Flack
>>code, we have now taken over fan control from the bios?
> 
> This has been a major concern of mine -- different vendors seem to have
> different attitudes towards cooling control.

Naturally it's been a concern of mine too -- partly because of course
the laptop vendor never documents the stuff, so I'm never quite sure
what I should expect to happen, or what to check if it doesn't -- which
is why I tend to glance at the fan after any update that seems to have
changed hw management code.

But this time it looks like I was overanxious, and made two hasty
observations:

1. the iic0 and piixpm0 line was not new in this dmesg, but came with
   an earlier -current update since which the fan had definitely worked.

2. to be safe, I rebooted to an older kernel where I knew the fan worked,
   and did a bunch of computation until it started, then booted the new
   kernel and the fan did start shortly, so it seems it is working,
   probably without any functional change, and I just hadn't let it get
   hot enough.  (I generally figure about the time I can feel the heat
   radiating off the keyboard to my face is when it starts, but that's
   hardly quantitative.)

Sorry for the false alarm.  Now I'll go ahead and try the new ACPI stuff.

-Chap