Fan profiles, temperature monitoring and battery charge limiting for MSI laptops on Linux, from the terminal. Everything OpenFreezeCenter does, without the window.
- Fan profiles — Auto, Basic (the auto curve shifted by an offset) and Advanced (your own curve), plus Cooler Booster as an independent toggle.
- Fan curve editor — set all seven CPU and seven GPU points, from the menu or in one command.
- Live monitoring — CPU and GPU temperature, fan RPM, minimum, maximum and a rolling 60 second graph drawn in text.
- Battery charge limit — stop charging between 50% and 100%.
- An interactive menu when you want one, and a plain command for every action when you would rather script it.
The two programs share ~/.config/openfreezecenter/config.json, so a machine
with both installed has one set of fan curves, not two.
openfreezecenter-lite status — what is set, the curve in force, and the
sensors right now:
openfreezecenter-lite monitor — temperatures, fan RPM, the extremes and a
rolling graph, redrawn in place:
Run it with no command and it opens a menu, with the fan curve editor behind option 3:
- Python 3.5 or newer — no PyGObject, no GTK, no
pip, no virtual environment - A kernel with the
ec_sysmodule (every mainstream kernel has it) - Secure Boot disabled, so the module can be loaded
sudo
That is the whole list, which is the point: the GUI needs GTK 4.14 and so
rules out Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 12, RHEL 9 and anything older. This runs on all
of them, and on current releases just as well. It is equally at home over SSH,
on a serial console, or in a terminal with no colour and no Unicode — the
display drops back to ASCII on its own, or with --ascii if you want to force
it.
Version 6 no longer needs the ECTweaker package: it talks to the embedded
controller through debugfs directly. Nothing is installed from the internet.
Download and unpack the release, then, as your normal user:
chmod +x install.sh./install.shIt enables EC read/write, installs the program in /opt/openfreezecenter-lite
and puts openfreezecenter-lite (short form ofc-lite) on your path. Re-run
it any time to update. If the EC could not be enabled without a reboot the
script says so — disable Secure Boot, reboot, then start the program.
To remove everything it installed:
./install.sh --uninstallYou can also just run it out of the folder, with no installation at all:
sudo ./OpenFreezeCenter-Lite.pyWith no command it opens a menu:
openfreezecenter-liteIt asks for your password through sudo, because reading and writing the
embedded controller needs root. The first run asks two questions — which side
of Intel's 11th generation your processor is on, and where the auto fan curve
should come from — and remembers the answers.
To look around on any machine, with no MSI hardware involved:
openfreezecenter-lite --simulateEvery menu action is also a command, so fan control can go in a script, a keyboard shortcut or a cron job.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
status |
settings, the curve in force, and a sensor reading |
monitor |
live temperatures and fan speeds until Ctrl-C |
profile [auto|basic|advanced] |
select a profile; no argument shows the current one |
profile basic --offset 10 |
Basic is the auto curve shifted by this much |
booster [on|off|toggle] |
Cooler Booster, on top of whichever profile is set |
curve --cpu 0,40,48,56,64,72,80 |
set the seven advanced CPU points (--gpu likewise) |
curve --copy-from-auto |
start the advanced curve from the auto one |
curve --read-from-ec |
store the curve the firmware is holding as Auto |
battery 80 |
stop charging at 80% |
apply |
write the saved settings to the EC again |
setup |
re-run the first-run questions |
config [show|path] |
print the settings, or where they live |
Useful flags: --simulate, --ascii, --no-colour, and for monitor
--interval, --count, --plain and --json. They work before or after the
command name. status --json and monitor --json print machine-readable
output on stdout and nothing else, so both pipe cleanly:
openfreezecenter-lite monitor --json -i 5 | tee temperatures.jsonlThe EC forgets the profile when the machine powers off. On a systemd system the installer leaves a unit that writes it back at boot; it does nothing until you turn it on:
sudo systemctl enable openfreezecenter-lite.serviceSettings live in ~/.config/openfreezecenter/config.json, owned by you rather
than root. A config.py from an older version is migrated automatically on
first run and left behind as config.py.migrated.
The hardware section holds the EC register addresses. Only touch it if you
are porting a model that is not listed below — and please open a pull request
if you get one working.
- Your old
config.pyis imported automatically; nothing to do by hand. - Cooler Booster is now a toggle, not a fourth profile. It layers on top of whichever profile is selected, so you can leave Advanced set and still boost.
- Basic now means "the auto curve plus an offset", which is what the old config comment described. The previous build applied the offset to an all-zero curve instead, so Basic drove the fans to roughly the offset value at every temperature — near-silent, and much hotter than intended.
ECTweakeris no longer used, so the virtual environment is gone. Once you are happy, delete the oldOFC-lfolder and itsbin/,lib/andpyvenv.cfg.- The program no longer reboots your machine to enable EC access;
install.shloads the module there and then.
- MSI GP76 11UG
- Ubuntu
ISSUE # [CPU] - [LAPTOP MODEL] - [LINUX DISTRO]
Example: ISSUE # i7-11800H - MSI GP76 11UG - UBUNTU 24.04
Please put suggestions under the Feedback discussion tab.
- Fan control
- Temperature and RPM monitoring
- Advanced and Basic control without hand-editing a file
- Battery threshold