Control QNAP NAS Fan Speed in PVE

It’s getting hot in summer, the hard disks in my QNAP NAS are overheating. Since I’m using PVE, I can’t control the fan speed. Luckily, somebody has already solved this problem. Here is the guide.

Installing the 8528 Kernel Module

First, install the 8528 kernel module to get the fan speed information. In Linux, you can install the lm-sensors package to get the CPU and HDD temperature. You can run sensors command to see the temperature. However, the fan speed information is not shown. As the QNAP uses a ITE8528 embedded controller to control the fan speed, the lm-sensors package does not support it. qnap8528 provides a kernel module to support this controller. Gzxiexl created a a more conventient script to build, install and automatically load the kernel module. This script does not support PVE 9 currently, but I’ve created a PR. Before it’s merged, you need to install the kernel headers with apt install proxmox-headers-$(uname -r) and edit the Dockerfile to use debian:13 as base image. Then you can run the sudo build.sh.

After install the kernel module, the fan speed and NAS temperature appear in the sensors output.

root@pve:~# sensors
qnap8528-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
fan1:         834 RPM
temp1:        +42.0°C
temp6:        +41.0°C
pwm1:             62%

drivetemp-scsi-1-0
Adapter: SCSI adapter
temp1:        +44.0°C  (low  =  -5.0°C, high = +80.0°C)
                       (crit low = -10.0°C, crit = +85.0°C)
                       (lowest = +38.0°C, highest = +54.0°C)

The above output contains the drivetemp-scsi-1-0, which shows the hard disk temperature. It’s not shown by default, you need to load the drivetemp module with sudo modprobe drivetemp

Cooler Control

Second, Cooler Control can control the fan speed with customized fan speed curve, which is based on the CPU or HDD temperature. After install the debian package, don’t forget to edit the /etc/coolercontrol/config.toml to change the bind IP addresses. The service can be started with systemctl enable --now coolercontrold, and the web UI is available at http://<your-pve-host>:11987. There is a pretty dashboard to show CPU and HDD temperature in the web UI. By setting a fan speed curve profile, the fan speed can be controlled with the HDD temperature.

Now the hard disks can be kept in a safe temperature range.