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hajime

macrumors G3
Original poster
Jul 23, 2007
8,174
1,414
Hello, I was using Linux on my MBP 2010 17" for two days. The area above the function keys was hot but it was dead silent. However, when I booted into Mac OS, even when the login screen showed up, it started to get noisy. After the login process was completed, it sounded like a jet engine. After a few minutes, it became quiet again. So, Mac OS is causing the crazy fan issue. What could be the issue? In the past, I have posted the activity monitor outputs but forum members could not find anything abnormal.
 
Hello, I was using Linux on my MBP 2010 17" for two days. The area above the function keys was hot but it was dead silent. However, when I booted into Mac OS, even when the login screen showed up, it started to get noisy. After the login process was completed, it sounded like a jet engine. After a few minutes, it became quiet again. So, Mac OS is causing the crazy fan issue. What could be the issue? In the past, I have posted the activity monitor outputs but forum members could not find anything abnormal.
If using Linux causes your device to run hot than it may be best to avoid using Linux to prevent critical components from cooking. Mac OS became quiet again after it was able to cool the laptop sufficiently. I recommend avoiding Linux if possible on that device in order to ensure longevity.
 
It sounds to me that Linux did not use the fans and your laptop got hot. When you rebooted into mocOS you heard the fans because the OS saw that the temperatures were very high so it used the fans to cool down the cpu/gpu. Sounds normal to me especially since the fans stopped after a while.
 
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Hopefully running Linux did not cause any permanent damage from overheating.
 
So it is actually problem with Linux rather than MacOS.
 
So it is actually problem with Linux rather than MacOS.

Yes, modern Mac's have a multitude of sensors that interact with both firmware and software. Likely the Linux distro is not picking up the right data points to spool up the fans. OS X and Mac's already run hot as Apple wants to present a quiet user experience, equally this is very tightly controlled. Best bet is to find app's that can monitor temperature & fan speed, to have a better picture of what's going on.

Q-6
 
You didn't say how much time there was between running Linux and then booting OS X. Was it an immediate reboot or transition from Linux to Mac or was the mac turned off for a while and cooled off prior to booting OS X?

There could have been some initial processing that OS X was doing, since it hadn't run for several days like indexing and updating, etc that caused the fans to turn on.
 
You didn't say how much time there was between running Linux and then booting OS X. Was it an immediate reboot or transition from Linux to Mac or was the mac turned off for a while and cooled off prior to booting OS X?

There could have been some initial processing that OS X was doing, since it hadn't run for several days like indexing and updating, etc that caused the fans to turn on.

After choosing reboot from linux, immediately switched to Mac OS X.
 
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