I found it, it seems that you need permissions for connecting to the display, and actually the display is like a tcp socket so you need to specifiy it.
(i know i'm clueless, but i can get rid of it by researching which is what i am doing hehe)
this works (as user live):
nvidia-settings -c :0 -a [gpu:0]/GPUFanControlState=1 -a [fan:0]/GPUTargetFanSpeed=60
but if i try to run it as root, it doesn't.
it seems that you cannot connect to the X display as root.
i have seen references that configuring xhost + will allows you to do that, now... where THE HELL will i put xhost + command on?? WTF?
i have no idea.
i'll keep diggin'it and post here.
but at least i can control the fan now from SSH (have to login as live though) but i wanted to automate it, and i can't until i found the way to run the command as root.
EDIT: progress!
as root:
edit /etc/profile and add this at the botom.
export XAUTHORITY=/home/live/.Xauthority
now i can run those commands as root via ssh, without the monitor connected
however, if i put them on rc.local, they don't work, damn!, what am i missing?