How to Silence Sony Vaio laptop fan Using Vaiofand

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Vaiofand is a Linux system daemon to tame the noisy fans of Sony Vaio laptops. These fans are permanently regulated by BIOS and thus do not allow for standard software management. Moreover, they are usually spinning at considerably higher rate than necessary and so generate excessive noise. Vaiofand monitors the system temperature and maintains the fan speed at user defined rate by constantly overruling the settings made by BIOS. Vaiofand can also make further adjustments to the fan speed when the temperature reaches user defined thresholds.

Vaiofand features

* Fully configurable through /etc/vaiofand.conf (temperature thresholds, desired fan speed, frequency of checks)
* Temperature being monitored at all times and fan automatically set to full speed if temperature approaches critical levels to prevent system damage
* Handling temperatures in degrees Celsius, Fahrenheit or even in Kelvins (hardcore physicists supported)
* Ability to run in suspended mode and save unnecessary CPU interrupts when temperature gets low enough for BIOS to slow down the fan by itself
* Full-fledged Unix daemon architecture, robust signal handlers, running in chrooted environment and with dropped privileges
* Running with slightly elevated priority to achieve more consistent cooling results
* Fast, efficient code in C
* Simple installation, including init scripts for major Linux distributions
* On-the-fly reconfiguration capability
* Debugging mode with logging into syslog to facilitate users' tuning

Supported hardware

Vaiofand needs the files /dev/sonypi and /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/fanspeed to be present in your system.

These files may be missing in some of the newest Vaio series. Kernel support for these lines is a bit lacking. Unfortunately vaiofand has absolutely no means of controlling the fan without the necessary support in the kernel.

For list of supported hardware and further information see the official website from here

Install Vaiofand in Ubuntu

For Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) Users

Open the terminal and enter the following command

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:vaiofand/ppa

For Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) users

Edit /etc/apt/sources.list file

gksudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following lines

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/vaiofand/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/vaiofand/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

Save and exit the file

For Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid) users

Edit /etc/apt/sources.list file

gksudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following lines

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/vaiofand/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/vaiofand/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main

Save and exit the file

For Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy) users

Edit /etc/apt/sources.list file

gksudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following lines

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/vaiofand/ppa/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/vaiofand/ppa/ubuntu hardy main

Save and exit the file

For Ubuntu 9.04,8.10 and 8.04 users need to add the gpg key using the following command

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys DAB23635

Update the source list

sudo apt-get update

Install vaiofand

sudo apt-get install vaiofand

If you want to configure edit /etc/vaiofand.conf file (temperature thresholds, desired fan speed, frequency of checks)

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