What is the intended use of this project in connection to nbfc?

[agramian]

Does this project allow nbfc to control the fans of an MSI laptop?
If yes, do you have an nbfc config you are using with your machine?

I tested the ISW-Modern project which uses acpi_ec to control the fans for an MSI laptop and while it does work, every boot requires recreating the /dev/ec file and restarting the service. I'm guessing this has to do with ec_sys being deprecated on newer kernel versions.

I'm trying to understand if I can use this project to control MSI laptop fans with nbfc which I would prefer using over ISW-Modern. Any help is appreciated. Thank you!

[to268]

Hi,

Does this project allow nbfc to control the fans of an MSI laptop?

The project is essentially a Python wrapper around a NBFC tool, which enables you to control some notebook fans out of the box, but not for MSI laptops (when i've checked ~2/3 years ago, it was either not supported or I have not found found how to use it). The NBFC project has a tool called ec_probe which allows you to directly interact with the EC Firmware.

If yes, do you have an nbfc config you are using with your machine?

I haven't bother creating an NBFC config (if it does not exists already), and I prefer using a standalone tool rather than a service (since i have easy root access with my user).
Currently the addresses used in the EC Firmware is hardcoded as constants in the script, rather than in a config file, because I wanted to have this feature working fast and I have no idea how the script will work on others MSI laptop (I assume that the addresses doesn't change as a per model basis, which I think it does anyway). So I'll probably add a config file (which is fairly easy to do).

I tested the ISW-Modern project which uses acpi_ec to control the fans for an MSI laptop and while it does work, every boot requires recreating the /dev/ec file and restarting the service. I'm guessing this has to do with ec_sys being deprecated on newer kernel versions.

That's also why I have created this script in the first place, since I wasn't able to make this tool work. My guess is that the ec_probe tool is probably still relying on the ec_sys kernel module at the end of the day, but it still works on a recent Linux kernel (I'm currently using the 6.4.8 version and the script still works). ec_sys is probably deprecated because interacting with the EC Firmware is slow and I think you can use the SuperIO chip instead (probably since NBFC has predefined config files for SuperIO chips (and maybe only SuperIO chips)).

TLDR: You can try by installing MECC with make install (as root), and run mecc (as root), which will print you the help menu (maybe I need to document that), and try if everything works.
If not, send me (in an issue, here or by email) your MSI laptop model, what doesn't work and the output of the mecc dump command, and we'll try to figure this out.

I have a few thing to improve on the project to make it more accessible with better documentation, a config file and maybe a service/daemon.

Reach out to me if you have any questions/concerns.
Hope it helps!

[agramian]

Thanks for the prompt and thorough response!

After your message I upgraded to the latest available kernel version (6.4.9) since you mentioned you were using 6.4.8.
Previously I was using the LTS kernel version (5.14.21).
Now several of the projects are working properly with my laptop.

I have decided to use MControlCenter since it has a GUI.

The only issue I have found (with all of the projects) is that fan speed settings below 40% (~2350 RPM on my machine) are not respected.
I searched around and it seems that others experience the same issue and are claiming that MSI has set a minimum fan speed in the firmware.
In the msi-ec project, I noticed there is an rt_fan_speed_base_min value defined and I tried writing a lower value with ec_probe however it doesn't seem to change anything.

Anyways, just wanted to report back since you had replied to my original question and because you mentioning the kernel version you were using allowed me to get the fan control working,

Thanks again!

[to268]

I have decided to use MControlCenter since it has a GUI.

I heavily use the CLI, It just makes sense for me to have a CLI tool (eg: disable the cooler boost automatically when I've finished compiling when I'm AFK), but of course my use case is not yours 😉.

I searched around and it seems that others experience the same issue and are claiming that MSI has set a minimum fan speed in the firmware.

That is probably why you can't lover your fans speed, They probably have some mitigations in place to avoid damaging your hardware.

Anyways, just wanted to report back since you had replied to my original question and because you mentioning the kernel version you were using allowed me to get the fan control working,

That's always good to know, thanks.