Victory achieved

[unixronin]

In the matter of the Inspiron 4100 fan/i8k problem, that is.  After poring through documentation and source code at some length, I made it through the [IMHO unnecessarily obfuscated by Ubuntu’s fear of root] procedure to install all the “dependencies” [the majority of them actually more sort of ‘suggestions’, really] and configure, build and install a custom kernel on Ubuntu, with 90% of the drivers and modules for devices and filesystems that are not present on that laptop and will never, ever be used disabled, with APM instead of ACPI, with a modified i8k module that never tries to mess with the Fn-keys, and with the undocumented required directives in the required (but optional!¹) /etc/i8kmon file divined from inspection of code. And lo, wonder of wonders, after spending only all day on it², the fans on the machine now run in a temperature-sensitive fashion as intended, and without disabling the keyboard and trackpad.

What’s more, startling though this might be, the machine booted at least 50% faster without having to probe several hundred assorted unused drivers and modules.  (But ubuntu really discourages you from building a custom kernel, unless you’re a developer.  They have reasons for this that they’re quite convinced are good, in complete contrast to most distributions I’ve ever used that tend to suggest that one of the first things you do after you finish installing is build a custom kernel configured for your hardware instead of continuing to use the generic one that has EVERYTHING turned on.)

Of course, by the time I got done with all this, the disk had overheated, and no sooner did I get the fixed laptop upstairs to cymrullewes than it went into thermal catatonia.  So I guess we’re still going to need to replace that disk. It’s slated for replacement with a 16GB SSD that should be faster, cooler, and of course silent, and with any luck draw less power.  Most importantly, it’ll no longer be at risk from minor drops; the laptop will now have no shock-sensitive mechanical moving parts and no protruding devices.

[1]  Optional, as long as you don’t actually care whether i8kmon ever starts, or are willing to start it manually yourself every time you boot the machine.  Because /etc/init.d/i8kmon will start /usr/bin/i8kmon if and only if the “optional” file /etc/i8kmon not only exists, but contains the undocumented directive ‘set config(daemon) 1’.

[2]  Most of which, true, was spent waiting for the kernel (and several hundred drivers that I didn’t need) to compile.  I actually stopped the kernel build three times to disable building of yet more unneeded drivers that I realized I had forgotten to disable.

Comments

[mrmeval.livejournal.com]

I'm called it screwbuntu for similar reasons. I want to get an Asus EEE PC but do not want to deal with screwbuntu or windows.

[masgramondou.livejournal.com]

Footnote [1] applies to other programs too, e.g. ddclient for dynamic dns and at least one other that escapes my memory right now

I don't think this is a ubuntu specific thing, possibly it's a debian hangover?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's even debian-specific. The i8kutils package was developed for debian, but doesn't seem to be tied to it.

At some later point I need to figure out whether it's the APM/ACPI issue or the attempt to frob the Fn-keys that's disabling the 4100 keyboard. My guess is it's actually an ACPI issue, but I modified i8k.o as well as a precaution because I wasn't sure; I figured I could try all the approaches at once, since both required building a custom kernel from source, and then, once I had it working, isolate the actual fix at leisure.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

The horror! The horror!

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it means my currently 40 page long urban fantasy novel can be opened and more written.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I hope (and expect) you had backups . . .

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

It's backed up, now. Through oversight, it wasn't when the disk first decided to go out to lunch.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Urk!

Some writers of my acquaintance have automated backup systems, even to off-site storage.

But they make more money at the game than I do.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

We have an automated backup system. There just isn't a client installed on the laptop at this time because I have no way of knowing whether it will be on the network or even running when the backups run. (Ubuntu, you see, has this intensely annoying thing of regarding network connections as something you only need when someone is actually logged in, so as soon as the console user logs out, it drops the network.)

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

Uhm, I do tend not to log out at all... I know, I know, bad user! I was remembering to save it each night to the HD and the netstore but then the netstore went kerpoof.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

doesn't really do any harm on *nix. :) It's Windows that you can't back up properly if someone's still logged in, because the logged-in user's registry hives are locked for exclusive access...

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

Also, the last time I had it backed up to the network storage the netstore died. This time before the disk croaked, it all got copied over to the netstore and he's said something about having fixed the netstore so if it dies my home directory is saved no matter what. Also, he just fixed the permissions so I could save to the netstore about 2 days before the HD died. So it is somewhat my fault for not immediately saving a copy on the netstore as soon as the permissions were correct.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

'Twas most annoying. I brought up the new storage box with the array configured as RAIDZ2, which can survive any two simultaneous disk failures and continue in degraded mode. So of course about three weeks after bringing it up, it had an overnight cascade failure of THREE disks...

The home directories were on the mirrored boot disks even then, though. It's just that you weren't actually using your home directory. (And I could have fixed the permissions problem sooner if I'd known you were still having a permissions problem.)