How do I get fan control working?

The package lm-sensors might be what you are looking for.

And as you suggested fancontrol .

Be sure that all the fans that you are trying to control via software have the 4 pin connector.

"A PWM capable fan is usally connected to a 4-pin connector (pinout: Ground, +12V, sense, control)."source

When I run pwmconfig which is a part of fancontrol I get

/usr/sbin/pwmconfig: There are no pwm-capable sensor modules installed It will guide you if you have compatible hardware.

Here are some scripts to use in conjunction with that generated config file. I assume that you could set a higher value here.

label fan1 "Side Fan"
set fan1_min 1000
label fan2 "PSU Fan"
set fan2_min 1000
label fan5 "CPU Fan"
set fan5_min 1000

But as I said, I can't test this myself, since my hardware don't support it, I can control my fans from the bios, but it's a grade of 3. I use it for keeping my fan's slow and silent.

You'll most likely be able to solve your problem with something else overriding your i8kctl fan commands by the method given in this answer. For completeness, I'll include some general notes on fan control on Dell laptops, and full instructions for i8kutils.

What probably won't work

Two common and straight-forward means of controlling the fan on laptops are through ACPI and through PWM pins, however, unfortunately:

• Dell laptops lacks ACPI fan control capability (*1)

  • as a consequence, trying with ACPI boot parameters and the like will fail

• Dell Latitude laptops, as far as I know, lack pwm controllable fans (*2)

  • as a consequence, the fancontrol/pwmconfig program won't work

Use i8kutils

However, there's a package called i8kutils that is written to control the fan on Dell Inspiron laptops through SMM BIOS. Several users report success on their Dell Laitude laptops as well (I'm one of them, on a Dell Latitude E7440) - however, a trick is often needed to get rid of interfering BIOS fan control. You suffer from that as well according to a previous comment.

Install i8kutils:

$ sudo apt-get install i8kutils

Try it:

$ i8kfan 2 2     # set to max speed
$ i8kfan 0 0     # set to 0 speed

...and listen to see if it works.

Disable BIOS fan control

If it works, but somewthing else is fighting back on the setted speed (reported by many users on Dell Latitude laptops), this is due to scheduled SMM sessions setting the fan speed back. Luckily there is a way to disable BIOS fan control by writing to SMM registers.

Warning: see the warning in top of smm.c. This method will write to SMM registers. However, I've seen no user reports on this causing trouble. Also, all reports on trying this have indicated success in disabling the BIOS fan control.

i8kutils includes the source of a program smm but the i8kutils package does not include the compiled binary. What we'll do is to download the source code of i8kutils, compile the program smm, and run it with an apropriate argument to disable BIOS fan control by writing to SMM registers.

Download packages needed for building:

$ sudo apt-get build-dep i8kutils

Download i8kutils source code, extract and enter directory (exact names depending on i8k version):

$ apt-get source i8kutils
$ tar xvf i8kutils_1.33.tar.gz
$ cd i8kutils-1.33/

Compile smm:

• If on a 32-bit system:

   $ make
  

  (Above will execute gcc -g -O2 -Wall -I. -o smm smm.c.)

• If on a 64-bit system:

   $ gcc -g -O2 -Wall -I. -o smm -m32 smm.c
  

Run smm with argument 30a3 to disable SMM fan control:

$ sudo ./smm 30a3

Now, BIOS fan control should be disabled. Try by setting speeds with i8kctl, listen for the fan and make sure the speed persists.

Note: This is a setting that will persist reboots and power-off's. BIOS fan control can be enabled again with $ sudo ./smm 31a3.

*1: I've seen an official source on this, can't find it right now. If you want to verify that your hardware lacks it, follow instructions here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingACPI

*2: for verifying this, run pwmconfig: sudo apt-get install fancontrol, sudo pwm-config will tell if a pwm-capable fan is present or not

Note about smm

smm is no longer included in latest i8kutils. If your distribution already upgraded to the latest version, you'll have to fetch an older version manually. The version 1.41 contains smm, while 1.43 no longer contains it.

As of 1.42, smm is provided as a kernel module only.

You can obtain 1.41 on i8kutils launchpad page.

i8kutils works for controlling the fan of my Dell Vostro 3350 laptop.

# For Dell laptop only:
$ sudo apt-get install i8kutils 
$ i8kfan 1 2 # Set the left-fan at low speed(1); the right one at high speed(2).

Ok, this might not be the answer you are looking for, but my overheating problems were solved, when removed the dust by putting a vacuum cleaner on the ventilation inlets. If you experience overheating at low cpu-frequencies, this might be worth a try. Be aware that maybe small parts may get sucked in. If you are lucky this method might solve you overheating problems.