The thermald (Thermal Daemon) is a Linux background service developed by Intel to proactively monitor and control CPU temperatures. It operates by reading thermal sensors and aggressively throttling CPU frequencies or engaging cooling fans to prevent the processor from hitting its critical thermal trip point (TCC activation). While absolutely vital for modern, thin-and-light laptops with constrained cooling solutions, thermald is completely superfluous—and potentially detrimental—on enterprise-grade rack servers. Rack servers rely on massive, high-RPM fan arrays managed entirely by the motherboard’s Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) and BIOS, rendering OS-level thermal throttling unnecessary and a potential cause of unpredictable performance drops.
This guide explains how to completely disable the thermald daemon in Ubuntu Server.
Stop and Disable the Thermal Daemon
To ensure your server’s CPU runs at maximum sustained performance governed solely by hardware limits, we must halt the software daemon and remove it from systemd’s control.
- Log into your Ubuntu Server via SSH or local console using an account with
sudoprivileges. - First, stop the active service to terminate its polling loop immediately:
sudo systemctl stop thermald.service - Next, disable the service so it does not initialize during the next system boot:
sudo systemctl disable thermald.service - To absolutely guarantee that the daemon cannot be invoked by another dependent service or D-Bus activation, mask the unit:
sudo systemctl mask thermald.service
Verify the Deactivation
By masking the service, you have effectively severed thermald from the operating system without needing to uninstall the package, which is useful if you are managing a unified image that deploys to both servers and edge laptops.
To verify the lockdown is successful, run the following command to check the status of the unit:
systemctl status thermald.serviceThe output will clearly state that the service is masked (symlinked to /dev/null) and the Active state will read inactive (dead). Your Ubuntu Server will no longer attempt to software-throttle the CPU, leaving all thermal management entirely up to the robust BMC and physical hardware limits.