[SOLVED] Telling the cpufreq governor about available frequencies

Baufo · 2011-11-15 09:26:25

I was trying to set up CPU frequency scaling on my Thinkpad x201s Laptop

$ uname -p
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU L 620 @ 2.00GHz

After modprobing acpi-cpufreq and cpufreq_ondemand, adding

governor="ondemand"

to /etc/conf.d/cpufreq and starting the cupfreq daemon I got (for all cores)

# cpufreq-info 

analyzing CPU 0:
  driver: acpi-cpufreq
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0 1 2 3
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0
  maximum transition latency: 10.0 us.
  hardware limits: 1.20 GHz - 2.00 GHz
  available frequency steps: 2.00 GHz, 2.00 GHz, 1.87 GHz, 1.73 GHz, 1.60 GHz, 1.47 GHz, 1.33 GHz, 1.20 GHz
  available cpufreq governors: ondemand, performance
  current policy: frequency should be within 1.20 GHz and 1.20 GHz.
                  The governor "ondemand" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency is 1.20 GHz (asserted by call to hardware).

And what cpufreq-info tells is exactly what it does: the frequency stays at 1.2 GHz disregarding CPU load.
Thus I tried to add

min_freq="1.20GHz"
max_freq="2.00GHz"

to /etc/conf.d/cupfreq but trying to restart the daemon gave me (again for all cores)

0Error setting new values. Common errors:
- Do you have proper administration rights? (super-user?)
- Is the governor you requested available and modprobed?
- Trying to set an invalid policy?
- Trying to set a specific frequency, but userspace governor is not available,
   for example because of hardware which cannot be set to a specific frequency
   or because the userspace governor isn't loaded?

Modprobing cpufreq_userspace didn't change anything.

I would be grateful for any ideas what I might be doing wrong.

Last edited by Baufo (2011-11-15 16:03:20)

twilight0 · 2011-11-15 10:10:05

Did you try to comment min_freq and max_freq, so that they can be autodetected? Is the daemon running?

Baufo · 2011-11-15 10:16:41

twilight0 wrote:

Did you try to comment min_freq and max_freq, so that they can be autodetected?

Yes, that is what lead to both the minimum and that maximum being detected as 1.2 GHz.

twilight0 wrote:

Is the daemon running?

Yes.

Stebalien · 2011-11-15 14:19:01

The key line is "asserted by call to hardware". This may (or may not) help: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_w … cy_scaling.

Baufo · 2011-11-15 16:00:38

This was exactly my problem. I was using a 65W power supply without a battery. After plugging in the battery it scales from 1.2 to 2.0 GHz.

Many thanks!

Arch Linux

#1 2011-11-15 09:26:25

[SOLVED] Telling the cpufreq governor about available frequencies

#2 2011-11-15 10:10:05

Re: [SOLVED] Telling the cpufreq governor about available frequencies

#3 2011-11-15 10:16:41

Re: [SOLVED] Telling the cpufreq governor about available frequencies

#4 2011-11-15 14:19:01

Re: [SOLVED] Telling the cpufreq governor about available frequencies

#5 2011-11-15 16:00:38

Re: [SOLVED] Telling the cpufreq governor about available frequencies

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