How Can I tell if I have a fan

I'm running Ubuntu 20.04 on an older Dell laptop, and recently, I noticed that it has been getting very hot. I tried running sudo pwmconfig, the output of which was;

Found the following fan sensors:
hwmon5/fan1_input current speed: 0 ... skipping!
There are no working fan sensors, all readings are 0.
Make sure you have a 3-wire fan connected.
You may also need to increase the fan divisors.

I am not sure if the fan works, nor how to start it and that is what I need to know.

1 Answer

I do not know how to start the fans - I even doubt that this is possible - but I know how you can query them:

Install the ipmi tools:

sudo apt-get install freeipmi

Then query all sensors:

sudo ipmi-sensors | grep FAN

which will give me on my system the installed fans with the rpm.