Fan controller ramps up too aggressively when level = LEVEL_WARM

[Strum355]

Im observing that as soon as a hard-drive reports reaching e.g. 41C (which is LEVEL_WARM terroritory), the fans spin up to 100% and sit there for about 10min before ramping back down to 20%. This is unfortunately fairly noisy for whats a relatively "ok" temperature 😅

This isnt an ask for an implemented solution, moreso documenting an observation. Im potentially fine with submitting a PR for it myself if this is deemed to be worth changing and/or if you've ideas on how this could be approached

systemd logs:

Apr 26 16:45:14 noah-wd-dl2100 sudo[389467]:     root : PWD=/ ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/nix/store/0lrmvl47as2gj3gyk2r6r67zzf9b2zzq-smartmontools-7.4/bin/smartctl -n idle,128 -A /dev/sdb
Apr 26 16:45:14 noah-wd-dl2100 sudo[389467]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root(uid=0) by (uid=0)
Apr 26 16:45:14 noah-wd-dl2100 sudo[389467]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Apr 26 16:45:14 noah-wd-dl2100 wdhwd[388562]: 2024-04-26 16:45:14,303 - wdhwlib.fancontroller - INFO - HardDiskDriveTemperatureMonitor(/dev/sdb): Level changed from 0 to 3 (current temperature is 41.00)
Apr 26 16:45:14 noah-wd-dl2100 sudo[389482]:     root : PWD=/ ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/nix/store/0lrmvl47as2gj3gyk2r6r67zzf9b2zzq-smartmontools-7.4/bin/smartctl -n idle,128 -A /dev/sda
Apr 26 16:45:14 noah-wd-dl2100 sudo[389482]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root(uid=0) by (uid=0)
Apr 26 16:45:15 noah-wd-dl2100 sudo[389482]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Apr 26 16:45:15 noah-wd-dl2100 wdhwd[388562]: 2024-04-26 16:45:15,006 - wdhwlib.fancontroller - INFO - HardDiskDriveTemperatureMonitor(/dev/sda): Level changed from 0 to 2 (current temperature is 39.00)
Apr 26 16:45:15 noah-wd-dl2100 wdhwd[388562]: 2024-04-26 16:45:15,463 - wdhwlib.fancontroller - INFO - FanControllerImpl: Setting fan speed to 30 percent
Apr 26 16:45:15 noah-wd-dl2100 wdhwd[388562]: 2024-04-26 16:45:15,507 - wdhwlib.fancontroller - INFO - FanControllerImpl: Alert level changed from 1 to 3
Apr 26 16:45:25 noah-wd-dl2100 wdhwd[388562]: 2024-04-26 16:45:25,619 - wdhwlib.fancontroller - INFO - FanControllerImpl: Setting fan speed to 40 percent
Apr 26 16:45:35 noah-wd-dl2100 wdhwd[388562]: 2024-04-26 16:45:35,775 - wdhwlib.fancontroller - INFO - FanControllerImpl: Setting fan speed to 50 percent
Apr 26 16:45:45 noah-wd-dl2100 wdhwd[388562]: 2024-04-26 16:45:45,931 - wdhwlib.fancontroller - INFO - FanControllerImpl: Setting fan speed to 60 percent
Apr 26 16:45:56 noah-wd-dl2100 wdhwd[388562]: 2024-04-26 16:45:56,086 - wdhwlib.fancontroller - INFO - FanControllerImpl: Setting fan speed to 70 percent
Apr 26 16:46:06 noah-wd-dl2100 wdhwd[388562]: 2024-04-26 16:46:06,239 - wdhwlib.fancontroller - INFO - FanControllerImpl: Setting fan speed to 80 percent
Apr 26 16:46:16 noah-wd-dl2100 wdhwd[388562]: 2024-04-26 16:46:16,392 - wdhwlib.fancontroller - INFO - FanControllerImpl: Setting fan speed to 90 percent
Apr 26 16:46:26 noah-wd-dl2100 wdhwd[388562]: 2024-04-26 16:46:26,544 - wdhwlib.fancontroller - INFO - FanControllerImpl: Setting fan speed to 100 percent
...
Apr 26 16:55:13 noah-wd-dl2100 wdhwd[388562]: 2024-04-26 16:55:13,795 - wdhwlib.fancontroller - INFO - FanControllerImpl: Setting fan speed to 100 percent
Apr 26 16:55:14 noah-wd-dl2100 sudo[391544]:     root : PWD=/ ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/nix/store/0lrmvl47as2gj3gyk2r6r67zzf9b2zzq-smartmontools-7.4/bin/smartctl -n idle,128 -A /dev/sdb
Apr 26 16:55:14 noah-wd-dl2100 sudo[391544]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root(uid=0) by (uid=0)
Apr 26 16:55:14 noah-wd-dl2100 sudo[391544]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Apr 26 16:55:14 noah-wd-dl2100 wdhwd[388562]: 2024-04-26 16:55:14,433 - wdhwlib.fancontroller - INFO - HardDiskDriveTemperatureMonitor(/dev/sdb): Level changed from 3 to 1 (current temperature is 31.00)
Apr 26 16:55:15 noah-wd-dl2100 sudo[391547]:     root : PWD=/ ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/nix/store/0lrmvl47as2gj3gyk2r6r67zzf9b2zzq-smartmontools-7.4/bin/smartctl -n idle,128 -A /dev/sda
Apr 26 16:55:15 noah-wd-dl2100 sudo[391547]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root(uid=0) by (uid=0)
Apr 26 16:55:15 noah-wd-dl2100 sudo[391547]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Apr 26 16:55:15 noah-wd-dl2100 wdhwd[388562]: 2024-04-26 16:55:15,125 - wdhwlib.fancontroller - INFO - HardDiskDriveTemperatureMonitor(/dev/sda): Level changed from 2 to 1 (current temperature is 30.00)
Apr 26 16:55:23 noah-wd-dl2100 wdhwd[388562]: 2024-04-26 16:55:23,931 - wdhwlib.fancontroller - INFO - FanControllerImpl: Setting fan speed to 89 percent
Apr 26 16:55:23 noah-wd-dl2100 wdhwd[388562]: 2024-04-26 16:55:23,975 - wdhwlib.fancontroller - INFO - FanControllerImpl: Alert level changed from 3 to 1
Apr 26 16:55:34 noah-wd-dl2100 wdhwd[388562]: 2024-04-26 16:55:34,066 - wdhwlib.fancontroller - INFO - FanControllerImpl: Setting fan speed to 79 percent
Apr 26 16:55:44 noah-wd-dl2100 wdhwd[388562]: 2024-04-26 16:55:44,203 - wdhwlib.fancontroller - INFO - FanControllerImpl: Setting fan speed to 69 percent
Apr 26 16:55:54 noah-wd-dl2100 wdhwd[388562]: 2024-04-26 16:55:54,340 - wdhwlib.fancontroller - INFO - FanControllerImpl: Setting fan speed to 59 percent
Apr 26 16:56:04 noah-wd-dl2100 wdhwd[388562]: 2024-04-26 16:56:04,475 - wdhwlib.fancontroller - INFO - FanControllerImpl: Setting fan speed to 49 percent
Apr 26 16:56:14 noah-wd-dl2100 wdhwd[388562]: 2024-04-26 16:56:14,612 - wdhwlib.fancontroller - INFO - FanControllerImpl: Setting fan speed to 39 percent
Apr 26 16:56:24 noah-wd-dl2100 wdhwd[388562]: 2024-04-26 16:56:24,749 - wdhwlib.fancontroller - INFO - FanControllerImpl: Setting fan speed to 29 percent
Apr 26 16:56:34 noah-wd-dl2100 wdhwd[388562]: 2024-04-26 16:56:34,886 - wdhwlib.fancontroller - INFO - FanControllerImpl: Setting fan speed to 20 percent

[michaelroland]

Thanks for reporting. I'm indeed fully aware of that and had started to mitigate this issue in the branch temperature-hysteresis. I'm using those adaptions for quite some time now, together with this config:

# System fan
fan_speed_normal=50
#fan_speed_increment=10
#fan_speed_decrement=10

Unfortunately, I did not put too much effort into properly evaluating if those changes work as expected (NAS is not in audible distance ;-) ), hence not merged to main yet. Feel free to try them out and report back.

[Strum355]

For the time being Ive just patched the threshold to 50C as a temporary workaround (which of course I managed to breach today 🙃 but thats fair enough). Ill checkout that branch, thanks 👍

[Strum355]

Hm the branch doesn't appear to help. I still get a full ramp up to 99% fan speed as soon as HDD temp breaches FanController.LEVEL_WARM + hold_threshold. I guess what Im looking for is something more akin to a fan ramp curve as a function of temp -> speed %/rpm, so that fan speed is bounded by the temperature

[michaelroland]

Did you also set the normal fan speed to 50% in your config (see config above)? I observed over the last 3 weeks and it seems to work for me (PR4100 with 2 of 4 bays in use though).

Regarding your idea of fan ramp as direct function of temperature: That's quite dangerous and 41 °C is already rather high for a disk. I would still want a slower fan ramp up than currently implemented though.