Arch Linux

m4chine

Member

Registered: 2019-02-03

Posts: 7

cpupower - boot not reflecting /etc/default/cpupower governor

As the title suggests, I've read and configured cpupower according to Arch CPU Frequency Scaling but my configured governor is not used at boot.

cat /etc/default/cpupower 
# Define CPUs governor
# valid governors: ondemand, performance, powersave, conservative, userspace.
governor='performance'

# Limit frequency range
# Valid suffixes: Hz, kHz (default), MHz, GHz, THz
#min_freq="2.25GHz"
#max_freq="3GHz"

# Specific frequency to be set.
# Requires userspace governor to be available.
# Do not set governor field if you use this one.
#freq=

# Utilizes cores in one processor package/socket first before processes are 
# scheduled to other processor packages/sockets.
# See man (1) CPUPOWER-SET for additional details.
#mc_scheduler=

# Utilizes thread siblings of one processor core first before processes are
# scheduled to other cores. See man (1) CPUPOWER-SET for additional details.
#smp_scheduler=

#  Sets a register on supported Intel processore which allows software to convey
# its policy for the relative importance of performance versus energy savings to
# the  processor. See man (1) CPUPOWER-SET for additional details.
#perf_bias=

# vim:set ts=2 sw=2 ft=sh et:

After boot, checking cpupower-gui, the governor currently in use is 'Schedutil'.

cpupower is enabled and was started on boot:

systemctl status cpupower
○ cpupower.service - Apply cpupower configuration
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/cpupower.service; enabled; preset: disabled)
     Active: inactive (dead)

Ensuring everything starts correctly:

systemctl start cpupower
systemctl status cpupower
● cpupower.service - Apply cpupower configuration
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/cpupower.service; enabled; preset: disabled)
     Active: active (exited) since Sun 2025-04-13 12:24:13 PDT; 14s ago
 Invocation: b7168d4849094ccfbb8bc886ef159cbc
    Process: 5096 ExecStart=/usr/lib/systemd/scripts/cpupower (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   Main PID: 5096 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   Mem peak: 1.7M
        CPU: 12ms

Apr 13 12:24:13 hostname systemd[1]: Starting Apply cpupower configuration...
Apr 13 12:24:13 hostname systemd[1]: Finished Apply cpupower configuration.

And, I can change the governor policy to 'Performance' in cpupower-gui and it is immediately reflected in the Current freq. for each of the CPUs.

What am I missing?

Last edited by m4chine (2025-04-13 21:58:03)