cpufrequtils + i8kctl (+ gkrellm?) = cpu temp based throttling?

[Scott Kitterman]

On Saturday 20 October 2007 14:16, Sai Emrys wrote:
> Hello all.
>
> I have a Dell Inspiron 600m running Kubuntu Feisty. I use cpufreq
> governor "conservative" to throttle my CPU (from .6 to 1.6 GHz) and
> i8kctl+gkrellm to control fan speed.
>
> However, I still have a major problem with overheating, to the point
> where my computer will stall for seconds (or minutes), effectively at
> a crawl, until it cools down. This despite using a laptop cooler
> tray/fan thingy.
>
> So my question: how could I get cpufreq to start throttling my
> processor, not just by load but also by its current temperature? It is
> alas counterproductive sometimes for the CPU to be at 1.6 even under
> 100% load, because at that speed, the temperature will get to 180F and
> things start to perform *worse* overall than they would if it were
> throttled.
>
> Ideally what I'd like to have is a combination of the conservative
> governor (in the case where temperature is within normal ranges), plus
> an extra override so that after certain temperature ranges, it caps
> more. E.g. at 150F it'd go max 1.2GHz, 165 = .8, 180 = .6. (I'm sure
> you can come up with some more intelligent scaling than that; I just
> made it up on the spot for example.)
>
> I'm not specifically attached to any of the programs given, but I like
> them and they've worked fairly well so far, except for this issue.
>
> Since I'm not on the ubuntu-motu list, I'd appreciate any solutions to
> be CCed to me at kubuntu at saizai.com or the from: address of this
> email.
>
> Thanks,
>  Sai
>
> P.S. Versions:
>
> $ uname -a
> Linux Piro 2.6.20-16-generic #2 SMP Sun Sep 23 19:50:39 UTC 2007 i686
> GNU/Linux $ apt-cache show cpufrequtils | grep Version
> Version: 002-2
> $ apt-cache show i8kutils | grep Version
> Version: 1.27
> $ apt-cache show gkrellm | grep Version
> Version: 2.2.9-1ubuntu2

You may have to boot with acpi=off for gkrellm to work.  I've been using it to 
work around a combination kernel/hal problem that affects my Latitude L400.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/hal/+bug/127773
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.22/+bug/127772

Are the relevants bugs for background on what I had to do.

Scott K


Scott K