[CentOS] cpuspeed settings??

Nicolas Thierry-Mieg Nicolas.Thierry-Mieg at imag.fr
Thu Jun 17 15:29:39 UTC 2010


ken wrote:
> On 06/17/2010 04:16 AM Nicolas Thierry-Mieg wrote:
>> ken wrote:
>>> Hey, folks,
>>>
>>> Sometimes my workstation bogs down... slows to a crawl.  Using gkrellm,
>>> it's obvious the CPU is the laggard.  The top utility confirms: the load
>>> average gets up over 4 at times.  But this occurs when cpu stepping pegs
>>> the speed at 600MHz.  This processor is capable of 1.5GHz and when it's
>>> allowed to run at that speed, the load average is under 2, which is fine.
>>>
>>> So the question is: what's a good /etc/sysconfig/cpuspeed file?  This
>>> workstation is a notebook and it can get hot.  Of course I'd rather type
>>> on slow machine than a machine with a fried mainboard, so a report of a
>>> high temperature should kick in the governor and lower the speed.
>>
>> well, *is* the CPU really hot when cpuspeed slows it down? If it is then
>> there's no need to tweak /etc/sysconfig/cpuspeed , the defaults are
>> doing what you want.
>
> No,  The temperature can be relatively low and cpu is still stepped down
> to 600MHz, this while the load is over 3 (the cpu idle reads 1%).
>
>
>> Depending on your CPU you can monitor its temp with rpms from elrepo, eg
>> kmod-coretemp for some intels.
>
> I've been monitoring the temperature, cpu speed (governed), and other
> system factors for years with ondemand and gkrellm.
>
>
> The problem really is as I first stated.  And the solution-- good
> settings for /etc/sysconfig/cpuspeed-- is really what is needed (at
> least as far as can be discerned at this time).

OK.
can't help you much then, the defaults have worked well for me.

It could be useful to know what CPU you have, what governor you're using 
(/etc/init.d/cpuspeed status), and look at stuff in
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/ .

You could lower UP_THRESHOLD in /etc/sysconfig/cpuspeed , see what value 
you're currently using and lower that.
Or try another governor.



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