Re: Systems running hot?

On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 06:27:40PM -0800, Doug Barton wrote:
> Paul G Webster wrote:
> > tried running powerd on it?
> 
> I was not running powerd, but I just enabled it with:
> performance_cx_lowest="HIGH"
> performance_cpu_freq="HIGH"
> economy_cx_lowest="HIGH"
> economy_cpu_freq="HIGH"
> 
> If I'm reading the rc.conf man page correctly, that will give me the
> benefit of good performance while at the same time dropping the cpu
> frequency and power usage when idle?

The last two look rather counterintuitive to me.

On my laptop, I merely use:

g1-119(6.4-S)[1] grep powerd /etc/rc.conf
powerd_enable="YES"     # Run powerd to lower our power usage.
powerd_flags="-a adaptive -b adaptive -n adaptive"      # Flags to powerd (if enabled).
g1-119(6.4-S)[2] 

And CPU freq clmbs to 2400 quite quickly on starting a "make buildworld",
while stayng low when the CPU isn't neede so much:

g1-119(6.4-S)[2] tmon

Sat Dec 19 18:36:38 PST 2009 51.5C 450 
Sat Dec 19 18:36:48 PST 2009 50.5C 600 
Sat Dec 19 18:36:58 PST 2009 50.5C 450 
Sat Dec 19 18:37:08 PST 2009 51.5C 600 
Sat Dec 19 18:37:18 PST 2009 51.5C 300 
Sat Dec 19 18:37:28 PST 2009 52.5C 600 
Sat Dec 19 18:37:38 PST 2009 53.5C 450 
Sat Dec 19 18:37:48 PST 2009 54.5C 450 
Sat Dec 19 18:37:58 PST 2009 54.5C 450 
Sat Dec 19 18:38:08 PST 2009 55.5C 600 

(For anyone who might care:

g1-119(6.4-S)[3] cat bin/tmon
#! /bin/sh

while (true)
do
  echo ""
  (date && sysctl -n hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.temperature dev.cpu.0.freq) | \
    tr '\012' ' '
  sleep 10
done
g1-119(6.4-S)[4] 

The extent to which that works depends on quite a bit, and I didn't
make it fancy enough to do any sort of checking: it works for my
purposes.)

> Any other suggestions are welcome.

I tend to use default values unless I have a reason to change them. :-}

Peace,
david
-- 
David H. Wolfskill				david_at_catwhisker.org
Depriving a girl or boy of an opportunity for education is evil.

See http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/publickey.gpg for my public key.