Feedback on the Dell Inspiron 7559 - Pandora SKL

Hi,
1. may you provide more information of your hardware?
2. why are you so sure it is a kernel issue instead of a firmware issue?

Hello:
1. Hopefully this is enough, if you need any other info just f\write me what kind of?
peter@insp:~$ sudo lshw -short
[sudo] password for peter:
H/W path Device Class Description
====================================================
                          system Computer
/0 bus Motherboard
/0/0 memory 15GiB System memory
/0/1 processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz
/0/100 bridge Sky Lake Host Bridge/DRAM Registers
/0/100/1 bridge Sky Lake PCIe Controller (x16)
/0/100/1.1 bridge Sky Lake PCIe Controller (x8)
/0/100/1.1/0 display GM107M [GeForce GTX 960M]
/0/100/2 display Intel Corporation
/0/100/4 generic Intel Corporation
/0/100/14 bus Sunrise Point-H USB 3.0 xHCI Controller
/0/100/14/0 usb2 bus xHCI Host Controller
/0/100/14/1 usb1 bus xHCI Host Controller
/0/100/14/1/2 input USB Device
/0/100/14/1/3 input ActiveJet K-2024 Multimedia Keyboard
/0/100/14/1/4 multimedia Integrated_Webcam_HD
/0/100/14/1/5 communication Bluetooth wireless interface
/0/100/14.2 generic Sunrise Point-H Thermal subsystem
/0/100/15 generic Sunrise Point-H LPSS I2C Controller #0
/0/100/16 communication Sunrise Point-H CSME HECI #1
/0/100/17 storage Sunrise Point-H SATA Controller [AHCI mode]
/0/100/1c bridge Sunrise Point-H PCI Express Root Port #1
/0/100/1c.4 bridge Sunrise Point-H PCI Express Root Port #5
/0/100/1c.4/0 enp4s0 network RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller
/0/100/1c.5 bridge Sunrise Point-H PCI Express Root Port #6
/0/100/1c.5/0 wlp5s0 network Wireless 3165
/0/100/1c.6 bridge Sunrise Point-H PCI Express Root Port #7
/0/100/1c.6/0 generic Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
/0/100/1f bridge Sunrise Point-H LPC Controller
/0/100/1f.2 memory Memory controller
/0/100/1f.3 multimedia Sunrise Point-H HD Audio
/0/100/1f.4 bus Sunrise Point-H SMBus
/0/2 scsi0 storage
/0/2/0.0.0 /dev/sda disk 250GB Crucial_CT250MX2
/0/2/0.0.0/1 /dev/sda1 volume 449MiB Windows NTFS volume
/0/2/0.0.0/2 /dev/sda2 volume 99MiB Windows FAT volume
/0/2/0.0.0/3 /dev/sda3 volume 15MiB reserved partition
/0/2/0.0.0/4 /dev/sda4 volume 232GiB Windows NTFS volume
/0/3 scsi1 storage
/0/3/0.0.0 /dev/sdb disk 1TB TOSHIBA MQ02ABD1
/0/3/0.0.0/1 /dev/sdb1 volume 511MiB Windows FAT volume
/0/3/0.0.0/2 /dev/sdb2 volume 804GiB data partition
/0/3/0.0.0/3 /dev/sdb3 volume 122GiB EXT4 volume
/0/3/0.0.0/4 /dev/sdb4 volume 5009MiB Linux swap volume
peter@insp:~$ uname -a
Linux insp 4.4.10-040410-generic #201605110631 SMP Wed May 11 10:33:23 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
peter@insp:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Sky Lake Host Bridge/DRAM Registers (rev 07)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sky Lake PCIe Controller (x16) (rev 07)
00:01.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sky Lake PCIe Controller (x8) (rev 07)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Skylake Integrated Graphics (rev 06)
00:04.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Skylake Processor Thermal Subsystem (rev 07)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H USB 3.0 xHCI Controller (rev 31)
00:14.2 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H Thermal subsystem (rev 31)
00:15.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H LPSS I2C Controller #0 (rev 31)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H CSME HECI #1 (rev 31)
00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 31)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H PCI Express Root Port #1 (rev f1)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H PCI Express Root Port #5 (rev f1)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H PCI Express Root Port #6 (rev f1)
00:1c.6 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H PCI Express Root Port #7 (rev f1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H LPC Controller (rev 31)
00:1f.2 Memory controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H PMC (rev 31)
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H HD Audio (rev 31)
00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H SMBus (rev 31)
02:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM107M [GeForce GTX 960M] (rev a2)
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 10)
05:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 3165 (rev 79)
06:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTS522A PCI Express Card Reader (rev 01)

2. What else shoud it be? Because on windows fans are switched off correctly on the very same laptop. On any linux (I've tried *buntu, manjaro, suse and kernels 4.4~4.6RC7) once the fans are started to spin they are never switched off even when system is cool enough and idle. According the google I am not alone with this problem:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2319205&p=13464387#post13464387

Hi, thanks for your feedback.
Sometimes this is caused by bad or incorrect firmware binary. But I agree with you. It looks like a kernel issue rather than firmware.

Please file a bug report against this issue on Launchpad so the developers of Ubuntu community could help you directly.
Besides, the other people could benefit from your bug report as well, like the ubuntuforums you pasted, but in a more formal way.
Please see:
https://launchpad.net/bugs/

I experience the same behavior with the fans on my Dell Inspiron 7559. I've created a bug report on Lauchpad and linked it to this report.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1602888

Just a FYI
we have an user reported a similar of issue[1] on a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 before, and the problem was solved by upgrading the IMEI firmware, maybe it worth a try.

[1] https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu-certification/+question/293087

Unfortunately, Dell offers no "IMEI firmware." They do have an IMEI driver, which I reinstalled under Windows. But this made no difference. This is a Windows driver and of course would have no bearing on anything under Ubuntu.

I googled for intel IMEI firmware, but I don't really find anything. Intel has a page with IMEI downloads, but it seems to be all Windows drivers. I don't see any firmware. So I'm not sure what the person who posted the Lenovo Thinkpad bug means.

The imei firmware is the firmware that allows AMT/Vpro remote management. If your machine does not have it, then that is unlikely to be the issue. Can you please check the output of powertop, and upload a text capture of the idle stats tab? This can usually be accomplished by copying and pasting the output into a text file which can be uploaded.

I'm specifically wanting to check if your cpu reaches low-power core, and low-power package states.

I have noted that in powertop, the CPU package does not get past C2. I don't see a way to upload a text file on this question, but here is the output from the idle stats tab: http://pastebin.com/gXwFgrsC

Hello, here's my powertop output, running on kernel 4.7-RC7
http://pastebin.com/NYTQTHX6
I remember, I had similar values on 4.6.4, if needed I can paste it too, but currently I do not want to reboot.

Yes these both are very likely to be firmware related issues. There are known issues with skylake and power management. It appears this is mostly related to the power management of the sata controller. Please confirm that you have a sata device in the machine and not an nvme?

peter@peter-Inspiron-7559 ~ $ lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 232,9G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 450M 0 part
├─sda2 8:2 0 100M 0 part
└─sda3 8:3 0 232,4G 0 part /
sdb 8:16 0 931,5G 0 disk
├─sdb1 8:17 0 446M 0 part
├─sdb2 8:18 0 66M 0 part /boot/efi
├─sdb3 8:19 0 804,1G 0 part
│ └─truecrypt1 254:0 0 790G 0 dm /media/truecrypt1
└─sdb4 8:20 0 127G 0 part
peter@peter-Inspiron-7559 ~ $ dmesg | grep -i nvm
peter@peter-Inspiron-7559 ~ $

Also this
peter@peter-Inspiron-7559 ~ $ dmesg | grep -i sata
[ 0.000000] ACPI: SSDT 0x00000000775B3A38 000315 (v01 SataRe SataTabl 00001000 INTL 20120913)
[ 2.145653] ahci 0000:00:17.0: AHCI 0001.0301 32 slots 2 ports 6 Gbps 0x3 impl SATA mode
[ 2.151391] ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m2048@0xdf433000 port 0xdf433100 irq 319
[ 2.151395] ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m2048@0xdf433000 port 0xdf433180 irq 319
[ 2.459276] ata2: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
[ 2.459297] ata1: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
[ 1194.435752] ata2: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
[ 1194.435780] ata1: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
[ 1382.410432] ata2: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
[ 1382.410461] ata1: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)

If you need any other output, I'll be glad to paste if it helps to resolve this annoying issue.

Which firmware are we talking about?

My Inpsiron 7559 has the same. An m.2 ssd, and a sata hard disk.

I removed the m.2 drive. Issue still present

I removed the sata HDD. Issue still present

Replaced the HDD with a Crucial MX200 SSD. Issue still present.

So I don't think it's the actual drive firmware...

This issue is not with the sata drives themselves, but with the sata controller. The current theory is that the sata controller which sits in the platform controller hub *(the chip next to the cpu), is not entering low power states, and that is causing the cpu itself to not be able to enter low package states (pc states). This is typically controlled by firmware, and acpi table entries.

If you start powertop and hit tab till you are on the tunables tab, can you please turn all the tunables to good, and see if you are able to reach anything lower. Typically turning all of these on will allow the package to reach pc3. I'd just like to get that verified.

Thank you.

I can confirm that with all tunables set to good it does indeed reach pc3. http://pastebin.com/WXKubjRU