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. Currently my /etc/sysconfig/cpuspeed has no variables defined (it's been this way at least since Apr 24) and I don't know what the number ranges and other values for them might be. Thanks. -- Find research and analysis on US healthcare, health insurance, and health policy at: <http://healthpolicydaily.blogspot.com/>
On 6/16/2010 1:47 PM, 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. > > Currently my /etc/sysconfig/cpuspeed has no variables defined (it's been > this way at least since Apr 24) and I don't know what the number ranges > and other values for them might be.Chances are that it is really your disk io that is the problem. Linux likes to count iowait time as CPU time. What do sar or vmstat say about your wait time? -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com
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. Depending on your CPU you can monitor its temp with rpms from elrepo, eg kmod-coretemp for some intels.