[SOLVED] CPU governor set to 'powersave' instead of 'performance' at b

zenlord · 2015-12-30 11:42:18

Hi, yesterday I finally found out why my laptop had become so sluggish: at every boot, the CPU was scaled down to 798Mhz, being the lowest available step for my Intel core2duo CPU.

I had already installed laptop-mode-tools and have enabled it with systemctl. Yesterday, I configured it to run in 'performance' mode instead of 'ondemand', both on AC and on battery. Restarting the laptop-mode.service sets the CPU governor correctly to 'performance'. The driver in use is 'acpi_cpufreq', the CPU is an Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P7550 @ 2.26GHz (fam: 06, model: 17, stepping: 0a).

These are the entries for laptop-mode in the journal:

-- Reboot --
dec 30 12:01:04 mbp-vvh systemd[1]: Starting Laptop Mode Tools...
dec 30 12:01:04 mbp-vvh systemd[1]: laptop-mode.service: Unit cannot be reloaded because it is inactive.
dec 30 12:01:04 mbp-vvh systemd[1]: laptop-mode.service: Unit cannot be reloaded because it is inactive.
dec 30 12:01:04 mbp-vvh systemd[1]: laptop-mode.service: Unit cannot be reloaded because it is inactive.
dec 30 12:01:04 mbp-vvh systemd[1]: laptop-mode.service: Unit cannot be reloaded because it is inactive.
dec 30 12:01:04 mbp-vvh laptop-mode[618]: Laptop mode
dec 30 12:01:04 mbp-vvh laptop_mode[423]: Laptop mode
dec 30 12:01:04 mbp-vvh laptop-mode[623]: enabled, active
dec 30 12:01:04 mbp-vvh laptop_mode[423]: enabled, active
dec 30 12:01:05 mbp-vvh systemd[1]: laptop-mode.service: Unit cannot be reloaded because it is inactive.
dec 30 12:01:05 mbp-vvh systemd[1]: laptop-mode.service: Unit cannot be reloaded because it is inactive.
dec 30 12:01:05 mbp-vvh systemd[1]: laptop-mode.service: Unit cannot be reloaded because it is inactive.
dec 30 12:01:05 mbp-vvh systemd[1]: laptop-mode.service: Unit cannot be reloaded because it is inactive.
dec 30 12:01:05 mbp-vvh systemd[1]: laptop-mode.service: Unit cannot be reloaded because it is inactive.
dec 30 12:01:05 mbp-vvh systemd[1]: laptop-mode.service: Unit cannot be reloaded because it is inactive.
dec 30 12:01:05 mbp-vvh systemd[1]: laptop-mode.service: Unit cannot be reloaded because it is inactive.
dec 30 12:01:05 mbp-vvh systemd[1]: laptop-mode.service: Unit cannot be reloaded because it is inactive.
dec 30 12:01:05 mbp-vvh systemd[1]: laptop-mode.service: Unit cannot be reloaded because it is inactive.
dec 30 12:01:05 mbp-vvh laptop_mode[423]: Device "eth0" does not exist.
dec 30 12:01:05 mbp-vvh systemd[1]: laptop-mode.service: Unit cannot be reloaded because it is inactive.
dec 30 12:01:05 mbp-vvh systemd[1]: laptop-mode.service: Unit cannot be reloaded because it is inactive.
dec 30 12:03:42 mbp-vvh systemd[1]: Stopping Laptop Mode Tools...
dec 30 12:03:43 mbp-vvh laptop-mode[7233]: Laptop mode
dec 30 12:03:43 mbp-vvh laptop_mode[7193]: Laptop mode
dec 30 12:03:43 mbp-vvh laptop-mode[7234]: disabled, not active
dec 30 12:03:43 mbp-vvh laptop_mode[7193]: disabled, not active
dec 30 12:03:43 mbp-vvh laptop_mode[7193]: Device "eth0" does not exist.
dec 30 12:03:44 mbp-vvh systemd[1]: Stopped Laptop Mode Tools.
dec 30 12:03:44 mbp-vvh systemd[1]: Starting Laptop Mode Tools...
dec 30 12:03:45 mbp-vvh laptop_mode[7844]: Laptop mode
dec 30 12:03:45 mbp-vvh laptop-mode[7892]: enabled, active
dec 30 12:03:45 mbp-vvh laptop_mode[7844]: enabled, active
dec 30 12:03:45 mbp-vvh laptop_mode[7844]: Device "eth0" does not exist.
dec 30 12:03:46 mbp-vvh systemd[1]: Started Laptop Mode Tools.

The only thing I can think of, is a race condition between daemons setting the governor, but grepping through both /etc/ and my /home/-dir does not reveal any textfiles contiaining the words 'governor' or 'powersave'.

Can anyone point me in the right direction where I could look for? I have 'pm-utils', 'cpufreq' installed and some years ago, I also used 'powerdown'.

Thx!

Last edited by zenlord (2016-02-11 22:45:57)

fdservices · 2016-01-01 12:17:46

Restarting the laptop-mode.service sets the CPU governor correctly

What does

# systemctl status laptop-mode

say before and after restarting it?

Andrew

fdservices · 2016-01-01 12:26:20

I saw this in the wiki:

Starting with kernel 3.9, the new pstate power scaling driver is used automatically for modern Intel CPUs instead of the other drivers below. This driver takes priority over other drivers and in fact is inbuilt as opposed to being a module. This driver is currently automatically used for Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge type CPUs. If you encounter a problem while using this driver, add intel_pstate=disable to your kernel line. You can use the same user space utilities with this driver but cannot control it.

if it helps

Andrew

zenlord · 2016-01-02 13:10:28

Thank you for your replies - much appreciated!

I have (for now) disabled laptop-mode controlling my CPU, and I have enabled cpupower. I read somewhere that cpufreq-utils would become deprecated in favor of cpupower, which is why I chose to try out this solution. The last 2 boot-attempts were succesful, but this doesn't mean that the problem is gone, as I witnessed also some correct boots before making these changes.

Re: your second suggestion - The relevant CPU is a Core2Duo P7750, so no Sandy Bridge, nor Ivy Bridge. Thx anyway - I'll put this thread on hold for now and report back in a little while.

zenlord · 2016-01-08 07:48:24

Still no dice

* I have disabled laptop-mode.service to rule out the possibility that this was resetting something.
* I have inserted a hardcoded line into the cpupower script to set the governor to 'performance' and verified in the logs that this is actually performed:

# journalctl --boot | grep cpu
jan 08 08:38:20 mbp-vvh kernel: Initializing cgroup subsys cpuset
jan 08 08:38:20 mbp-vvh kernel: Initializing cgroup subsys cpu
jan 08 08:38:20 mbp-vvh kernel: Initializing cgroup subsys cpuacct
jan 08 08:38:20 mbp-vvh kernel: setup_percpu: NR_CPUS:128 nr_cpumask_bits:128 nr_cpu_ids:2 nr_node_ids:1
jan 08 08:38:20 mbp-vvh kernel: PERCPU: Embedded 32 pages/cpu @ffff88013fc00000 s92824 r8192 d30056 u1048576
jan 08 08:38:20 mbp-vvh kernel: pcpu-alloc: s92824 r8192 d30056 u1048576 alloc=1*2097152
jan 08 08:38:20 mbp-vvh kernel: pcpu-alloc: [0] 0 1 
jan 08 08:38:20 mbp-vvh kernel:         RCU restricting CPUs from NR_CPUS=128 to nr_cpu_ids=2.
jan 08 08:38:20 mbp-vvh kernel: RCU: Adjusting geometry for rcu_fanout_leaf=64, nr_cpu_ids=2
jan 08 08:38:20 mbp-vvh kernel: cpuidle: using governor ladder
jan 08 08:38:20 mbp-vvh kernel: cpuidle: using governor menu
jan 08 08:38:20 mbp-vvh kernel: HPET: 4 timers in total, 0 timers will be used for per-cpu timer
jan 08 08:38:20 mbp-vvh kernel: ledtrig-cpu: registered to indicate activity on CPUs
jan 08 08:38:21 mbp-vvh kernel: ACPI: acpi_idle registered with cpuidle
jan 08 08:38:21 mbp-vvh systemd[1]: Starting Apply cpupower configuration...
jan 08 08:38:21 mbp-vvh cpupower[412]: Setting cpu: 0
jan 08 08:38:21 mbp-vvh cpupower[412]: Setting cpu: 1
jan 08 08:38:21 mbp-vvh systemd[1]: Started Apply cpupower configuration.
jan 08 08:38:23 mbp-vvh kernel:  nvidia_bl(O+) nvidia(PO) input_leds hid_appleir joydev mousedev hid_apple bcm5974 usbhid hid bnep snd_hda_codec_cirrus snd_hda_codec_generic msr nls_utf8 nls_iso8859_1 nls_cp437 vfat fat mac_hid evdev applesmc led_class input_polldev wl(PO) snd_hda_intel uvcvideo snd_hda_codec videobuf2_vmalloc videobuf2_memops videobuf2_core coretemp v4l2_common snd_hda_core videodev media snd_hwdep kvm_intel kvm cfg80211 snd_pcm snd_timer pcspkr snd shpchp soundcore forcedeth nv_tco drm i2c_nforce2 uas usb_storage battery sbs acpi_als kfifo_buf sbshc industrialio acpi_cpufreq fjes ac processor button sch_fq_codel vboxdrv(O) btusb btrtl btbcm btintel bluetooth rfkill ip_tables x_tables firewire_ohci firewire_core crc_itu_t ehci_pci ohci_pci ohci_hcd ehci_hcd usbcore usb_common sr_mod cdrom pata_acpi

So, at 8:38:21, the cpupower-script is called and executed and after that, the kernel-modules are loaded, including the acpi_cpufreq-module that is required to set the governor...

zenlord · 2016-02-11 22:45:13

OK, problem solved. Some leftover udev-rule (from the powerdown package) caused all of this.

Sorry for the noise.

Arch Linux

#1 2015-12-30 11:42:18

[SOLVED] CPU governor set to 'powersave' instead of 'performance' at b

#2 2016-01-01 12:17:46

Re: [SOLVED] CPU governor set to 'powersave' instead of 'performance' at b

#3 2016-01-01 12:26:20

Re: [SOLVED] CPU governor set to 'powersave' instead of 'performance' at b

#4 2016-01-02 13:10:28

Re: [SOLVED] CPU governor set to 'powersave' instead of 'performance' at b

#5 2016-01-08 07:48:24

Re: [SOLVED] CPU governor set to 'powersave' instead of 'performance' at b

#6 2016-02-11 22:45:13

Re: [SOLVED] CPU governor set to 'powersave' instead of 'performance' at b

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