How do I setup cpufreqd on a PIII-M laptop?

lumix · 06-29-2007, 01:58 PM

Try as I may, I can't find any information about how to set up cpufreqd for MY application. Reems of paper could be spent on this topic I would have thought to be rather limited in scope, but alas none that just get me going.

How do I set up this %$#@! thing? I just want my cpu to kick down to 800 MHz or whatever, when it's usage is low.

I have cpufreqd installed...now what?

Thanks.

jschiwal · 06-29-2007, 02:43 PM

Is the daemon running? Which desktop are you running?

Enter in the command "/usr/bin/cpufreq-info" to get information on the speed and governer used.

Quote:

set up cpufreqd for MY application

So you want to run it from an application you wrote?
sudo /usr/bin/cpufreq-set -f 800M
should change the frequency. You could add this command to /etc/sudoers so that you can run it as a normal user from your application.

lumix · 06-29-2007, 03:09 PM

"Application" in the general sense of the word. I'm using Kubuntu (i.e. KDE), but I didn't think that cpufreqd was desktop sensitive...is it?

sudo cpufreq-set yields "command not found"

Have said this, what is the difference between cpufreq and cpufreqd? I'm trying to use the latter. And, yes, the cpufreqd (not cpufreq) daemon is running.

jschiwal · 06-29-2007, 05:00 PM

No, it shouldn't matter which desktop you are running. I've used /usr/bin/cpufreq-set -f 800 from a virtual terminal outside of the desktop environment. There is a kde applet that you can use to set power profiles: "Performance", "Dynamic" or "Power Saving". On my laptop, this selects either 2.2Ghz or 800MHZ. From the shell I can use 1.8 Ghz.

You might want to check if you have the dbus daemon installed, and if it is running. Maybe also an acpci package as well.

And check if you have the programs /usr/bin/cpufreq-info and /usr/bin/cpufreq-set. Maybe your system puts them in /usr/sbin/ instead.

You may also need to modprobe a kernel module if it isn't built-in. My laptop uses an AMD-64 processor so my module is different.

I just looked on my system, the cpufreq-info and cpufreq-set are supplied by a separate package from the daemon. ( cpufrequtils )
Maybe you have a similar package.

I took a look at a kernel package:

Code:

/lib/modules/2.6.18.8-0.1-default/kernel/drivers/cpufreq
/lib/modules/2.6.18.8-0.1-default/kernel/drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq_conservative.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18.8-0.1-default/kernel/drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq_ondemand.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18.8-0.1-default/kernel/drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq_powersave.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18.8-0.1-default/kernel/drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq_stats.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18.8-0.1-default/kernel/drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq_userspace.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18.8-0.1-default/kernel/drivers/cpufreq/freq_table.ko

If you can locate the kde program that gives you the panel control, you will probably end up installing other packages that you need as well.

...

I just looked at kpowersave. It uses HAL and acpci instead of a cpufreq daemon. Things may be different for Kubuntu.