Who keeps changing the cpufreq scaling_governor?

Asked by Philipp Kohlbecher

If I change the cpufreq scaling_governor by issuing

 echo powersave > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor

as root, the governor is reverted to 'userspace' after a while. Which daemon is responsible for doing this? How can I keep it from doing that? Or, preferably: How can I change the scaling_governor using the Gnome GUI?

Thanks for taking the time to look at this!

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Cesare Tirabassi (norsetto) said :
#1

>How can I change the scaling_governor using the Gnome GUI

In a terminal give this command:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure gnome-applets

give your password, enable the suid bit for gnome-applets and then add the CPU frequency scaling applet to a panel.
If you left click on it you can now graphically choose your governor.

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Philipp Kohlbecher (xt28) said :
#2

Thanks, Cesare. That solved one of my problems.

The other one remains, though: After changing the scaling governor
through the Gnome applet, it reverts to "ondemand" after a while as well.

Does anyone know which program / daemon / setting / whatever is
responsible for this? And how I can stop it from doing that?

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Cesare Tirabassi (norsetto) said :
#3

The only know I know of (unless you installed something esle) is powernowd.
Try with sudo /etc/init.d/powernowd stop if it stops getting changed.

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Jason Ribeiro (jrib) said :
#4

I experienced a similar problem. After editing /etc/init.d/powernowd to start with "powersave" instead of "ondemand", my computer still started with "ondemand" as the scaling governor. This began happening after I installed ubuntu-desktop on a xubuntu system. Like the original poster, I would reset the scaling governor to "powersave" by issuing

 echo powersave > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor

but it would be reset back to "ondemand" by some mystery process.

This seems to have been done by "laptop-tools-mode". After editing /etc/laptop-mode/laptop-mode.conf and changing all the governors to "powersave", the scaling governor is no longer reset.

It still boots with "ondemand" though and I have not yet found out what is doing that.

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Jason Ribeiro (jrib) said :
#5

ok, one other suspect I found: gnome-power-manager . I edited the keys /apps/gnome-power-manager/cpufreq_ac_policy and /apps/gnome-power-manager/cpufreq_batter_policy using gconf-editor to "powersave" instead of "ondemand".

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Martijn van Maurik (combro2k) said :
#6

Thanks Jason Ribeiro for the useful tip!
It works flawless now. What I did to disable the handling of gnome-power-manager completely is to wipe the text away (ex. ondemand to "")
then cpufreqd can handle the rest. It works flawless now :)

Ciao!

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