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Showing posts with the label modules

CPU Fan Control on ThinkPad Laptop

I have a Lenovo ThinkPad laptop that occasionally displays error messages about "Hardware events/THERMAL EVENTS" during times of high CPU usage.  This is a scary set of messages in the journal logs that could prophecy a short life span of the CPU if neglected; at times I've suspected that it may have been the culprit of system crashes, though, I won't go into further details on that here. It's worth noting that the performance improves and error messages subside after one disassembles the laptop and cleans out the heat sink; maybe even properly applies a fresh coat of thermal compound on it.  This improvement, however, never lasts too long as the dust accumulates within the heatsink area again. I can recall reading anecdotal evidence of this problem from other ThinkPad owners on the Lenovo forums and other places when I first came across these scary messages on my system.  Those owners running Linux on their laptops offered explanations a

Ricoh SD-Card Reader and Linux

The linux kernel adds the benefit of making firmware drivers available for a large number of widely-used hardware devices and components. This provides great convenience and ensures portability and sane defaults across the various OS distributions. The open-source nature of the Linux kernel, however, relies on the hardware manufacturers to make the firmware and/or drivers available to the Linux community; a process that can be frustratingly slow at times, depending on the hardware manufacturer. Furthermore, once the driver is included in the kernel, it falls on the various OS distributions to make the kernel or a patch to the kernel available for the users to install. The functionality of rarely-used hardware like a multimedia card reader (SD-card reader) are often overlooked by users until the day when they try to use the device. Usually, the kernel will load the necessary modules for the device to function properly during the boot-up process. Though, if an SD-card is not p