Hardware - Should I use powersave stuff? shame - 30.10.2006, 12:35 Uhr Titel: Should I use powersave stuff?
Although my new comp came with windows xp installed I haven't touched it except to check it was ok after resizing the partition.
Well I was playing around with it today and noted all the powersave stuff.
I looked through my kantoix menus and noticed kpowersave and it seemes to be a similar sort of thing.
I've never used anything like that and always assumed it was for laptops.
I've been googling around a bit and I admint I find it all a bit confusing.
1) Is it just for laptops or any computer?
2) Is it generally a good idea to use powersave?
3) If so should I use kpowersave or something else?
4) If it is recommended for me to use it can someone point me to a good knowledge base for information?
Comp is an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
devil - 30.10.2006, 12:56 Uhr Titel: Should I use powersave stuff?
well, i use kpowersave to dynamically scale my cpu. kpowersave runs it on 800 mhz and scales to 2000 when needed.
kpowersave is default with RC4, dont remember if RC3 also.
its in kmenu - system
greetz
devil
shame - 01.11.2006, 00:52 Uhr Titel:
Could you explain how you do the cpu scaling?
I noticed on both suse and the kanotix livecd that cpu scaling was enabled and when I clicked on the tray icon is showed both processors at less half but on my kanotix install they are both at 100% and I cannot find any cpu scaling options anywhere.
Are any other packages needed as well as kpowersave? I may have inadvertantly removed something.
devil - 01.11.2006, 05:50 Uhr Titel:
what kanotix-version?
greetz
devil
shame - 01.11.2006, 09:23 Uhr Titel:
I'm using RC4, fully dist-upgraded as of last night.
devil - 01.11.2006, 10:34 Uhr Titel:
well, then kpowersave is in k-menu - system, ready and working.
if not, you deleted it.
greetz
devil
shame - 01.11.2006, 10:50 Uhr Titel:
Kpowersave is in kmenu and it does run, I just don't have the cpu scaling options when I right-click the tray icon. All other options are there.
Just in case it makes a difference, I'm running kanotix 32bit on AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
jbs1136 - 01.11.2006, 11:22 Uhr Titel:
Do you see the power plug icon in klick? right click on it and select "Dynamic" under "Set CPU frequency policy". That does it for me. I also am running 32bit kanotix but on AMD Athalon 64 3200.
john
shame - 01.11.2006, 19:56 Uhr Titel:
I'm not sure what you mean by klik.
When I right-click the kpowersave icon in the tray I get this -
h2 - 01.11.2006, 20:47 Uhr Titel:
You need to check your motherboard to make sure it supports this stuff completely. There may be a setting in the bios dealing with speed stepping etc, which must be enabled.
You are missing the 'Set CPU frequency policy' item, which is what enables the speed control. But you have everything else, which suggests that either your motherboard does not support it, or you have it disabled in bios without realizing it.
shame - 01.11.2006, 21:54 Uhr Titel:
The bios has very few options and nothing to control CPU, maybe HP crippled it?
If I boot into suse then the CPU frequency option is in the kpowersave right-click menu and it is also there if I boot the kanotix RC4 livecd. It's just in my installed kanotix that it's missing.
What particular daemons need to be running?
I have various things enabled (not by me) in rcconf that may be related. Maybe something is missing or conflicting -
acpi-support
acpid
athcool
powersaved
smartmontools
<EDIT>
By the way, I'm using the default 2.6.18-kanotix-1 kernel
shame - 03.11.2006, 11:34 Uhr Titel:
I don't know if this is causing the problem but I did notice an error to do with mounting /sys/ on boot. It was going to fast to read and the scroll lock key isn't doing anything.
It said FAILED at the end, though /sys is full of files, I don't know if that means it's mounted properly or not.
Here is the fstab entry
Code:
sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
<EDIT>
I just saw this thread - http://www.kanotix.com/index.php?name=P ... =sys+error
So it seems that isn't the cause.
shame - 04.11.2006, 00:34 Uhr Titel:
I just tried upgrading the kernel to 2.6.19-rc1-git5-kanotix-1 and the cpu scaling option is now in kpowersave and working.
Unfortunately, it is giving me major problems with my sound card so I've gone back to 2.6.18-1-kanotix-1 and cpu scaling is gone again.
So that would point to it being a kernel problem maybe?
Except it is the same kernel as the livecd in which it was working.
I just dunno.
<EDIT>
Ahh, I finally got it working. While inspecting all the log files for the umpteenth time I noticed something about needing a resume2= line in grub.
I added the line to point to my swap partition and now I have the cpu scaling option.
I could've sworn there was a resume2 line there so I must have removed it for some unknown reason.
