Seeking Ubuntu help

[unixronin]

We seem to have run into a showstopper problem with Kubuntu er ... Xubuntu (my thinko) 9.04 on cymrullewes‘ Dell Inspiron 4100.  The problem was not, to my knowledge, present on 8.04.

The laptop has two cooling fans, one on the CPU, one on the video chipset.  On Ubuntu 9.04, the fans never start, and the laptop overheats.  We’ve found that this behavior can be fixed by installing the i8k module and using i8kctl to manually turn the fans on and off, or i8kmon --auto --daemon to automatically turn them on and off based on temperature.

There’s just one problem:  The moment the i8k module loads, the onboard keyboard and pointing devices are permanently disabled until the laptop is rebooted.  An external USB keyboard or external mouse work, but this somewhat defeats the point of a laptop.

So, the end result:  If you load i8k, the laptop is thermally stable, but unusable without an external keyboard.  If you don’t, it’s usable, but only until it overheats.

Any of my readers happen to know a solution to this problem that does not involve buying a newer laptop?

(Of course, I suppose we could always go back to 8.04 and just not let it update to 9.04 again.  I’m fairly sure this problem was not present on 8.04 ... but I’m not certain, because it’s not my laptop and I rarely use it.)

Comments

Re: Ubuntu fans

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I did have a suspicion this might be an ACPI problem, but only discovered it last night and haven't had a chance to pursue that avenue yet.