Heat issues on macbook air 6.2 2013 running Fedora 20

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BollyFlex

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Hi all,

So I've recently installed Fedora 20 on my macbook air 2013 on an SSD partition (got the mba second hand recently with the sole intention of running a linux distro to use for my development work). I'm building a browser game in HTML5 canvas and liked the form factor of the air, in spite of it being Apple which I generally despise as a company. It's all gone pretty well on the whole, most stuff works out of the box, some grief installing wifi drivers as I've seen is the norm but that's sorted now, I've even got the suspend/resume backlight bug fixed thanks to a home-brewed driver by Patjak. Not bad for a linux noob!

One rather serious problem remains however. The macbook does idle quite hot in Fedora (and other flavours I've tried from live USB), but this isn't too bad. BUT as soon as I fire up any GPU intensive application, such as my browser game (or even just youtube videos) the laptop rapidly becomes worryingly hot. Within 30 seconds its up to 80 degrees C. I realise these devices have a high operating temperature, but in OS X the same applications run happily at 48 degrees C for many minutes without the temperature rising.

I'm at my wits' end trying to solve this problem, I've tried everything I've been able to find online:

> mbpfan - fan control - this works but doesn't dent the temp rises by much
> powertop - couldn't really figure this one out but I changed a few of the recommended settings with no luck
> thermald (intel thermal regulation daemon for linux) - seemingly does nothing
> cpupower - I set the CPU to max 1.5GHz with NO effect on the temp rises at all
> intel_pstate - various settings, disabling turbo boost - no effect on temperature
> nvidia drivers - tried installing but they couldn't find a device (presumably because it's an intel HD5000 GPU)

I'm out of ideas, it's fairly clear to me at this point that it must be the GPU causing these rises in temperature, but why they happen under linux and not OS X escapes me. I really don't want to have to use OS X, please if anyone has any advice to solve this, I will be eternally grateful!
 


I have always found that Fedora runs hotter than other distributions. I used to have the same problems with my HP dv6 but found some of the same solutions you did. There are some things you may want to do:

1. Make sure that thermald is actually running:
as root (or sudo):
Code: 
systemctl status thermald
it should return something like this:
Code: 
● thermald.service - Thermal Daemon Service
  Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/thermald.service; enabled)
  Active: active (running) since Tue 2014-11-18 16:11:25 CST; 24min ago
Main PID: 336 (thermald)
  CGroup: /system.slice/thermald.service
          └─336 /usr/bin/thermald --no-daemon --dbus-enable
2. Make sure that you have the latest Intel graphics drivers:
https://01.org/linuxgraphics/downloads
3. Install a newer kernel if possible. I beleive Fedora 20 is using the 3.15 kernel that may not have full support of the newest Macbooks.
https://apps.fedoraproject.org/packages/kernel
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Kernel

4. Enable some Intel graphics power saving features. I have not found a wiki page for Fedora specifically that enables some of these features but here is a page that can help:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Intel_Graphics#Module-based_Powersaving_Options

Apple computers are known to overheat slightly. Unfortunately Apple seems to hate the idea of running anything but OS X on their computers so they make it difficult to use Linux on Macbooks. I don't have a Macbook otherwise I would have tested it by now.
 
Thanks! I will try your suggestions and let you know if it works :) Yeah Apple certainly make it tough...
 
I've tried everything you suggested but no luck unfortunately :( I tried manually configuring thermald with the XML config file but that seems to have no effect. Thermald is definitely running (I do have to set it running manually on startup though).

I had to upgrade the kernel to 3.17 so I could get the wifi card working so I think I'm pretty much up to date there. I have the latest intel linux graphics drivers installed and I've configured the GPU power saving options mentioned on the wiki you linked.

I don't get it, how can it run so cool under OS X but so hot under Linux? The macbook isn't exactly uncommon hardware, so I'd expect it to be better supported than this, even though linux is a general purpose OS. Especially considering Linus Torvalds used to use a macbook air :(
 
BollyFlex said:
I've tried everything you suggested but no luck unfortunately :( I tried manually configuring thermald with the XML config file but that seems to have no effect. Thermald is definitely running (I do have to set it running manually on startup though).

I had to upgrade the kernel to 3.17 so I could get the wifi card working so I think I'm pretty much up to date there. I have the latest intel linux graphics drivers installed and I've configured the GPU power saving options mentioned on the wiki you linked.

I don't get it, how can it run so cool under OS X but so hot under Linux? The macbook isn't exactly uncommon hardware, so I'd expect it to be better supported than this, even though linux is a general purpose OS. Especially considering Linus Torvalds used to use a macbook air :(
Click to expand...
Linus still uses his Macbook I think. I am not sure what else can be done, like I said I don't have a Macbook to test. By the way, to enable thermald at startup:
Code: 
systemctl enable thermald

And you shouldn't have to edit the XML configuration for thermald, it is automatic.
 
ryanvade said:
Linus still uses his Macbook I think. I am not sure what else can be done, like I said I don't have a Macbook to test. By the way, to enable thermald at startup:
Code: 
systemctl enable thermald

And you shouldn't have to edit the XML configuration for thermald, it is automatic.
Click to expand...
After looking around the internet I found quite a few promising leads with Fedora 21 you may want to try it instead. I also think there are other Linux distributions that may offer better thermal settings.
 
Thanks for the suggestions :) I didn't realise Fedora 21 was out, I'll definitely give it a go and see if it makes a difference. I did try Ubuntu briefly but found it was running even hotter than Fedora, I was running it from a live USB though (I wouldn't think that would make a difference but who knows). I'm certainly not bound to any particular distro so I will give some others a try. I've been looking at Manjaro lately too.

Edit: If anyone has recommendations for a cool-running distro they will be gladly received!
 
Last edited:
Just an update, I tried running Fedora on a trial of Parallels desktop for OS X, and the heat problem remains even on the VM... I really expected virtualisation to eliminate the problem but apparently I was wrong.
 
BollyFlex said:
Just an update, I tried running Fedora on a trial of Parallels desktop for OS X, and the heat problem remains even on the VM... I really expected virtualisation to eliminate the problem but apparently I was wrong.
Click to expand...
If the system is running hot with OS X then either you have a model that just runs hot (Macbooks are known for this) or your system is having some serious heat issues. Running Fedora in a VM will not cause the system to overheat by itself. (With Fedora in a VM, it does not have direct connections to the hardware. OS X still has control ) You may want to take your Macbook to an Apple store and ask them to check it out.


By the way, would you record the temperatures of the computer when it runs hot and post them here? On Linux you can use lm-sensors:
Code: 
sudo yum install lm_sensors.x86_64
Code: 
sudo sensors-detect
Code: 
watch sensors

Temperatures around 35-45 C are normal. And if you could also record the cpu usage as well with SysStat:
Code: 
sudo yum install sysstat.x86_64
Code: 
sar -u 2 20
You can even enable the sysstat-collect service to collect data while you use Fedora and then use the sysstat-summary service to give you the summary.

Both sets of statistics will help.
 
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I'm kind of late to this thread, but I have Linux (Mint - a nice distro, I recommend the cinnamon desktop) running on my MacBook Pro nice and cool after doing this:

- Install macfanctld

- Configure the values in etc/macfanctl.config (you need to open this file with sudo rights in order to edit). I altered the preconfigured values the following way: increased fan_min to 2500 from 2000, degreased all floor and ceiling temperature values by 8.

Good luck! Also, when you install that distro, you want to select the Nvidia driver in Driver Manager
 
If you have yosemite before installing fedora (dual boot or standalone) you will have an acpi interrupt storm typically on gpe66 and in my case it was gpe66 and gpe4E. You will need to disable these two as they are making your cpu be in c0% state (active) almost 100% of the time. I wrote about it on my blog frankshin(dot)... can't post the direct link yet, or just google around for more info. Good luck.
 
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