[Wiltshire] Linux 2.6.28, ondemand governor and nice 19 processes

[Richard Reynolds]

BTW whats does your cpufreq-info say?

Can you set limits still with cpufreq-set?

2009/2/22 Richard Reynolds <richard at uberpussy.net>:
> Have you rolled your own kernel or used a Gentoo one? It could be that
> the default options have changed. Fire up your kernel config and check
> the settings, sounds like it isn't kicking in at all.
>
> It may also be the case that your CPU is an unlucky one this update as
> there are various instances where the governor code doesn't work due
> to CPUs own governors etc. It may well be fixed in the next
> incarnation
>
> 2009/2/22 Robert <RobertCL at iname.com>:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I'm hoping someone will be able to help with a problem I've been
>> experiencing ever since I upgraded to 2.6.28
>>
>> I run Boinc (seti at home, etc) as a background process on my quad core
>> server at a nice level of 19 and I'm using the ondemand CPU governor.
>>
>> Before upgrading to 2.6.28 processes running at nice 19 didn't cause the
>> CPU frequency to step up, so it ran at it's lowest clock speed, which
>> was perfect because it "saved" power and kept temperatures down.
>>
>> Since upgrading to 2.6.28, however it seems that this is not the case.
>> So running Boinc causes all my CPU's to run at full clock speed all of
>> the time, which I don't want - not only because it generates more heat
>> and uses more power, but it also seems to interfere with processes
>> running at higher nice levels, which I never really had a problem with
>> before.
>>
>> I've tried everything I can think of to get back to the previous
>> behaviour, but I'm at a bit of a loss what to search for or where to ask
>> about this!  Some (useful?) output below.
>>
>> As a workaround, I've currently limited the CPU time in the Boinc
>> manager to only use 50% of the available CPU's which means that 2 cores
>> run at 2.4GHz and two run at 1.6GHz, but this doesn't seem to be the
>> right solution and still causes the box to run hotter than if both idle
>> at 1.6GHz all the time
>>
>> Any suggestions appreciated!
>> Robert.
>>
>>
>> robert at quad ~ $ cat /proc/version
>> Linux version 2.6.28.4 (root at quad) (gcc version 4.1.2 (Gentoo 4.1.2
>> p1.1)) #6 SMP PREEMPT Sun Feb 8 12:42:20 GMT 2009
>>
>> robert at quad ~ $ cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu?/cpufreq/scaling_governor
>> ondemand
>> ondemand
>> ondemand
>> ondemand
>>
>> robert at quad ~ $ cat
>> /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu?/cpufreq/ondemand/ignore_nice_load
>> 1
>> 1
>> 1
>> 1
>>
>> robert at quad ~ $ cat /proc/cpuinfo |grep MHz
>> cpu MHz         : 1600.000
>> cpu MHz         : 2400.000
>> cpu MHz         : 1600.000
>> cpu MHz         : 2400.000
>>
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>