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@Cavsfan systemd is not suitable for starting a service that needs X (nvidia-settings needs X to work properly). If you're not using headless system, you could use the DE's startup settings. For headless system, you might consider starting X, setting the DISPLAY environment, and then start nvfancontrol.

@Foucault, no I did not but, now I have and along with a conf file it's working!

I just could not get the systemd unit to startup at boot.

I could start it, enable it but, it still did not start when I booted up.

So, I just added it to Xfce Applications > Settings > Session and Startup and it's working fantastic!

Cheers and thank you! :-)

Have you enabled Coolbits ?

I got it, just didn't save it as ~/.config/systemd/user/nvfancontrol.service

Then it started just fine but, I am getting this error:

Jul 04 17:47:11 ArchLinux nvfancontrol[32423]: INFO - NVIDIA driver version: 396.24

Jul 04 17:47:11 ArchLinux nvfancontrol[32423]: INFO - NVIDIA graphics adapter #1: GeForce GTX 980 Ti

Jul 04 17:47:11 ArchLinux nvfancontrol[32423]: ERROR - Could not update fan speed: XNVCtrl QueryAttr(COOLER_MANUAL_CONTROL) failed; error 0

Jul 04 17:47:13 ArchLinux nvfancontrol[32423]: ERROR - Could not update fan speed: XNVCtrl QueryAttr(COOLER_MANUAL_CONTROL) failed; error 0

Jul 04 17:47:15 ArchLinux nvfancontrol[32423]: ERROR - Could not update fan speed: XNVCtrl QueryAttr(COOLER_MANUAL_CONTROL) failed; error 0

I probably do not have a driver component installed?

Add it to your ~/.config/systemd/user and check if it's working with

systemctl --user start nvfancontrol

and

systemctl --user status nvfancontrol

If the service is running properly you can permanently enable it upon login with

systemctl --user enable nvfancontrol

More details on systemd user units here

Sorry for posting here but, is there a wiki for installing this? I've installed it and have a Nvidia Geforce 980 ti and need the fans of course. I just do not how to get it to work. I copied the systemd file into /.config/systemd/user but do not know how to enable it. Thank you in advance!

You made it start upon login not upon boot. You could have similarly created a systemd user unit and place it in /home/YOURUSERNAME/.config/systemd/user. Then you could enable it with systemctl --user enable nvfancontrol.service. Here is a minimal systemd unit to do so

[Unit]
Description="NVIDIA Dynamic fan control"
After=graphical.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/path/to/nvfancontrol

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

No concerns here, just wanted to say thanks a ton for making a simple, easy to use, and effective program. Using this with my Gigabyte GTX 1060 and it's working absolutely flawlessly. Cheers and thanks again.

This is more complicated than it sounds. It is impossible to use xnvctrl (the library that controls the GPU) without an X server. So at the very least the program must be run after the graphics environment has been brought up. So graphical.target should be a better candidate instead of multi-user.target. If you run nvfancontrol as root after graphical.target it might work. However once you log in your desktop the display will probably re-initialised or a new one will be set up (for example GDM does that; if you check $DISPLAY you'll see that is :1 rather than :0). In any case nvfancontrol will be killed once this happen and you will have to start it again. This is an inherent limitation of the way the NVIDIA driver works. There is a hacky way [0] to fake a GPU context however it still involves spinning up an X server so again similar limitations apply. I'm wondering if it is possible to have a different X server always running (etc. in :50) and bind nvfancontrol there but I haven't tested that yet. It might or it might not work.

[0] https://sites.google.com/site/akohlmey/random-hacks/nvidia-gpu-coolness#TOC-Faking-a-Head-for-a-Headless-X-Server

You're right; wrong installation permissions