Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2008 17:45:49 -0700 From: David Wolfskill <david@catwhisker.org> To: Alexandre Sunny Kovalenko <gaijin.k@gmail.com> Cc: freebsd-acpi@freebsd.org Subject: Re: How/why would dev.cpu.0.freq_levels change??!? Message-ID: <20080630004549.GI13924@bunrab.catwhisker.org> In-Reply-To: <1214779416.925.17.camel@RabbitsDen> References: <200806281738.40672.jhb@freebsd.org> <20080629003216.3AA074500E@ptavv.es.net> <20080629185738.GG13924@bunrab.catwhisker.org> <1214779416.925.17.camel@RabbitsDen>
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--k9xkV0rc9XGsukaG Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Sun, Jun 29, 2008 at 06:43:36PM -0400, Alexandre Sunny Kovalenko wrote: > I am coming in late in the thread, so if I have misunderstood your > problem, I do apologize. Not at all; thank you for your suggestions! > ... > > * As you can see, this can lead to the "interesting" situation that the > > current CPU frequency is higher than the maximum "available." > >From my (somewhat limited) understanding of the ACPI spec, BIOS can > change _PSS object (one containing available clock frequencies) and > issue notification to the OS to reevaluate said object. There is no > requirement that BIOS change current CPU frequency while doing that. OK; I confess ignorance on that score: I'm posting to -acpi because I rather suspect that ACPI is (at least) profoundly implicated in what's going on, if not responsible for it. > You can try to dump your ASL and see if anything there messes up with > _PSS and then issues Notify (xxx.CPU0, 0x80) on the same breath. Killing > that piece of ASL dead should ensure constant CPU frequencies set. ???You > can post your ASL someplace where I can get to it, I just could not > promise that I'll understand it much better than you. I ran sudo acpidump -dt -o >laptop.i8200.dsdt >laptop.i8200.asl and placed the results in www.catwhisker.org:~david/public_html/FreeBSD/, so <http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/FreeBSD/laptop.i8200.asl>; and <http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/FreeBSD/laptop.i8200.dsdt>; should work. I just tried it from my laptop (sick as it is), and the MD5 hashes matched. They are: g1-60(6.3-S)[6] md5 laptop.i8200.* MD5 (laptop.i8200.asl) =3D 7c83c27ad30bbd0957f10a5a3ffc90e5 MD5 (laptop.i8200.dsdt) =3D c290ab9be7c97eb7ae98523a5f5a4ddc g1-60(6.3-S)[7]=20 > > * The phenomenon is not limited to when I run RELENG_6; in an effort to > > avoid the continuous fan whine, I tried running RELENG_7 for a while, > > and encountered a recurrence rather quickly. :-( > If it is the mechanism, I have described above, I would expect it to > behave similarly under RELENG_6 and RELENG_7. Right. Until I had encountered it as reported above, I hadn't seen an occurrence of the phenomenon under either RELENG_7 or HEAD. > > * I tried firing up the Dell diagnostics; they reported OK for each of > > the CPU & motherboard fans at high speed, but when the diags tried to > > switch to low speed, they reported that the fans only went down (from > > 10-11K RPM) to about 7K RPM instead of 5K RPM.=20 > I just emptied can of compressed air into all of the orifices of my > ThinkPad X60 with the end result of average running temperature dropping > about 7C and fan speed reduced appropriately. I am surprised no one > suggested this yet. Well, in fairness, the reported temperature is quite low: I get reports (from sysctl hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.temperature) of around 85C for extended periods during a "make buildworld," but the reported temperature when this sort of thing occurs is around 45C. On the other hand, this did just start happening recently -- within the last 4-5 days. > > I still don't know what the problems are, but it's apparent that > > something outside FreeBSD's control is misbehaving. Given that, I > > suppose it would be unreasonable to expect FreeBSD to compensate > > in an attempt to enforce rationality. :-( > Why not -- I had powerd patch (now obsolete) to compensate for the > excess of the thermal paste under the CPU heatsink -- the sky is the > limit. Hmmm.... > > Which still leaves me wondering what type(s) of evasive actions > > make sense: I've become rather accustomed to using a laptop with a > > 1600x1200 screen, and finding another laptop similarly-equipped > > (but newer) at a reasoonable price that will run FreeBSD well appears > > to be somewhat of a challenge. I'm open to suggestions. > If you are looking for suggestion on the replacement laptop model -- > ThinkPad T42p (aftermarket) should fit the bill nicely, otherwise, see > above. Thanks for the suggestion; I will look into it. > > Maybe I should just see if the local laptop repair place can fix it. :-( > ... or start with the canned air. Well, I did just disassemble the whole thing -- it's actually a somewhat curious mix of a couple of used i8200s plus a handful of spare parts I've bought. I managed to remove some dust & a few cat hairs, but there was no effective change in beavior. I tried swapping my disk drive for the one that came with it (and which has Windows XP on it). At first, the phenomenon (fans full on; CPU throttled to half-speed) wouldn't recur, but eventually, it seems to have done. (At least I could tell that the fans were full on and that the machine was often marginally responsive to (e.g.) mouse movements.) I have no idea how to find out about ACPI stuff (or much of anything else) in a Microsoft environment -- I did this in preparation for bringing the machine to a repair shop: I figured they'd want the Microsoft environment (and unless the problem existed there, it wouldn't be "real"), and I certainly didn't want to entrust my FreeBSD disk to their tender mercies. :-{ Thanks again for the suggestions so far. Peace, david --=20 David H. Wolfskill david@catwhisker.org I submit that "conspiracy" would be an appropriate collective noun for cats. See http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/publickey.gpg for my public key. --k9xkV0rc9XGsukaG Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (FreeBSD) iEYEARECAAYFAkhoLLwACgkQmprOCmdXAD2czQCfa7vec186dyAD1qBFxWf/L0XH N2MAn1zB+wI/sEilAgaDqy06iQrc0euj =eo7G -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --k9xkV0rc9XGsukaG--
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