smx10fanctl

smx10fanctl is a fancontroller for Supermicro boards using IPMI raw commands. I created this project because I wanted a quieter homeserver. Supermicro motherboards expect high RPM fans and fans that have at least 600RPM.

I am using a Noctua NH-U12DXi4 CPU cooler which has a minimal RPM of 300. When the CPU is around 20 to 40 degrees Celcius, it will start to ramp up the fans because the Supermicro motherboards have thresholds set. This means that the motherboard demands the fans are running at least a certain amount of RPM (you can check those thresholds in your IPMI interface).

You can lower the thresholds to 0 for example, but Supermicro motherboards are sometimes reading 0 RPM, I can't find an explaination why Supermicro reads 0RPM, but the internet is full of problems with Noctua fans and Supermicro motherboards. Because the motherboard reads 0RPM, it will start to ramp up the fans as well. This happens over and over again, which is really annoying. Therefore I created this CLI tool to control the fan speeds on the OS based on the CPU temperature.

This tool will only work on Linux distributions.

Tested on

I have developed this cli tool with the following hardware/software.

• Supermicro X10SRH-CF
• Intel Xeon 2680 V4
• Proxmox 6.3.1

The cli tool may or may not work on x8/x9/x11 motherboards as well. Feel free to report back to me if you have tried this.

Installation

$ sudo apt install lm-sensors
$ sudo pip install smx10fanctl

Systemd

smx10fanctl supports an auto command option, which will adjust fan speed automatically. You can combine this with a systemd service, so smx10fanctl is started at boot. To do so, execute the following:

### Copy the systemd unit file
$ sudo curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/haijeploeg/smx10fanctl/main/smx10fanctl.service -o /etc/systemd/system/smx10fanctl.service

### Check the path to smx10fanctl and adjust it in the service file if the path differs from below example
$ which smx10fanctl
/usr/local/bin/smx10fanctl
$ sudo vim /etc/systemd/system/smx10fanctl.service

### Configure file mode on the service file
$ sudo chmod 644 /etc/systemd/system/smx10fanctl.service

### Enable and start the systemd service
$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload
$ sudo systemctl enable --now smx10fanctl.service

Configuration

To configure the application make sure that one of the following files exists:

/etc/smx10fanctl/smx10fanctl.yml
~/.config/smx10fanctl/smx10fanctl.yml
~/.smx10fanctl/config/smx10fanctl.yml
~/.smx10fanctl.yml
./.smx10fanctl.yml

The application will read those configuration files in that order. So ./.smx10fanctl.yml will overwrite /etc/smx10fanctl/smx10fanctl.yml'. For a full list of options and their description see .smx10fanctl-example.yml in this repository.

Development

This project includes a number of helpers in the Makefile to streamline common development tasks.

Environment Setup

The following demonstrates setting up and working with a development environment:

### create a virtualenv for development
$ make virtualenv
$ source env/bin/activate


### run smx10fanctl cli application
$ smx10fanctl --help

FAQ

My fans are still ramping up after using this tool, is this normal?

Supermicro boards are taking a threshold into account. You need to lower these thresholds to run the fans on a low RPM, e.g. 300RPM. You can lower those thresholds by using the following command.

NOTE: adjust FAN1 with the corresponding FAN port on your server.

$ ipmitool sensor thresh FAN1 lower 50 100 200

This will lower the non-recoverable setting to 50 (this will cause the RAMP up), the lower critical value to 100 and the lower non-critical value to 200. In the future you can do this with smx10fanctl.