Can't enable fan speeds in thermal settings with 570.86.16

[mcodax]

This seems very similar to an issue encountered 2 years ago (possibly related to: #94), but clicking "Enable GPU Fan Settings" doesn't stick and the fan speed sliders remain greyed out. Speeds are set to 0 rpm by default.

Dowgrading to 565.57.01 fixes the issue.

It's affecting two different PCs, but both of them have the same setup:

arch kernel: 6.13.2-arch1-1
nvidia: 570.86.16-5
nvidia-utils: 570.86.16-2
card: RTX 4070 Ti

[TsunamiMommy]

I can confirm that this is a permissions issue with the 570.86.15 and 570.86.16 drivers. You can enable/change fan settings only after opening the nvidia-settings app with root privileges. So currently any fan control must be done as root. Is this something that is intentional from Nvidia? Or is this a mistake in the permissions of the app?

[mcodax]

Thanks @TsunamiMommy. Can also confirm setting fan speeds with root works for me.

Also, just tested the newly released version (570.124.04) and it's still broken.

[TsunamiMommy]

Yup the issue extends to nvidia-smi too so it's likely something having to do with hardware access permissions.

[mcodax]

Just for reference in case it helps, this is the message I see when I try to change fan speeds after launching nvidia-settings from the console:

ERROR: The current user does not have permission for operation

Current versions:

nvidia-settings: 570.144-1
nvidia: 570.144-4
nvidia-utils: 570.144-3

[CummingCowGirl]

Just launched nVidia-Settings as root and set the fans to 80% to keep the GPU below 40 degrees and on reboot it resets. I opened the one file edited thermal and put 80 instead of 0 and again on reboot the fans were at 0. Now I can't check the box and set them to 80 even though the file looks to be back to what it was before I changed it.

Arch - update as of this morning
NVIDIA Corporation - GA106 [GeForce RTX 3060 Lite Hash Rate]

nvidia-settings: 570.153.02
nvidia: 570.153.02
nvidia-utils: 570.153.02

[mcodax]

This may help explain what we're seeing (from the 570.86.16 driver release in late Jan: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/details/240524/):

Updated the nvidia-settings control panel to use NVML rather than NV-CONTROL to control GPU clocks and fan speed. This allows related functionality to work when using Wayland, where the NV-CONTROL X extension is not available. Note that as a result, some operations which were previously available to unprivileged users, due to the privileges of the X server, may now require elevated privileges.

Ironically, changing from x11 to wayland doesn't fix the issue anyway (my earlier report was based on x11)

[gwindes]

Bumping this as still an issue. Tried workarounds with auto startup scripts to set the fan speed both Autostart Programs feature and SystemD on Linux Mint using the latest nvidia drivers 580. This is really annoying as with my 2070 Super the fans will turn off and on every 15-30 seconds and there's an audible click sound as the fans turn on from being off.

nvidia-settings also doesn't save the fan speeds set. So each restart you need to sudo nvidia-settings after each reboot and set the fan speeds.

[Sokoloft]

Yes, a fix to this would be nice. Also having the same issue on Arch with nvidia-settings 580.105.08-1. Having to type my root password each time I want to run my script to select a fan % is cumbersome.

[0pLuS0]

I've been having this issue too, on several different distros with the latest Nvidia 580.105.08 drivers, where I can't check Enable GPU Fan Settings I get this message;

ERROR: The current user does not have permission for operation

I need to be Root in order to do this! 👎