laptop stand fan issue

[rudra-b]

Dear friends,
I bought a belkin stand for my laptop. the problem is the fan on the stand always runs.
What I want it to do is start the fan when the temperature is above some threshold and stop otherwise. i got this link: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ACPI_fan_control_script but not sure if it is good.
One more thing I am confuse about is my idea all over: that is if controlling the fan with temperature is good or let it run all the while.
what to do?

$uname -a
Linux roddur 2.6.32.10-90.fc12.i686.PAE #1 SMP Tue Mar 23 10:04:28 UTC 2010 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

[BugRocks1]

I don't think the Belkin coolers have programmable fans, the USB connection is just for power apparently.

Are you sure you can control the fan speed from it, maybe is a model not listed on their website, which have a one page owner's manual.

[CSchwangler]

I also have such a Belkin laptop stand and I am pretty sure it can't be controlled, not from Windows or any other OS. The fan is always on, except when you remove the power connection.

[rudra-b]

yeah...i know the fan is not controllable....what I was thinking of to disable the power of that given usb port

[aleph]

Originally Posted by rudra-b

yeah...i know the fan is not controllable....what I was thinking of to disable the power of that given usb port

It is possible, but not quite straightforward. The definitive guide on this topic is this one from the kernel documentation:

http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Docum...management.txt

tl;dr version:
You need to first identify the usb device number, and locate the corresponding directory under the pseudo-filesystem /sys/bus/usb/devices. There's a "power" subdirectory under the device's directory. By writing to files in this dir, you can control the power usage of the device. If you're using a kernel up to 2.6.32 you can write the word "suspend" in the file power/level to disable the power. I'm running F12 kernel 2.6.32.10-94 and I've tested this with a USB thumb disk ,and it seemed to work. But this feature is removed in more recent kernels.

And this must be done with certain privileges...

[rudra-b]

ah...thanks