Running a program when computer enters/exits idle state
in [Debian]
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From: Klistvud on 2 Jun 2010 05:50 Howdie, fellow Debianites! I've bee all over uncle G to crack this one, but to no avail. In short: how would you go about launching a program when the computer is idle, and launching another program when the computer stops being idle? Specifically, I'd like my computer to switch CPU governors from powersave to performance and vice versa, with "cpufreq-set --governor foobar". What I've tried so far: * loadwatch: can make it switch governors when average load drops, but can't make it do zilch when average load rises (at that point loadwatch just *freezes* the target program, so it basically can't *do* anything) * xautolock: ditto. It has provisions for launching a program when X is idle (no keyboard/mouse activity), but has no provisions for launching anything when X *ceases* being idle * another approach I haven't been able to try out because of my very non-existent bash skills: writing a script to periodically parse/cut/grep the output of the "w" command and launch the corresponding CPU governor. Are there other -- preferably easier -- approaches to this? As you may see, I'm not being picky as to how "idle" is defined: it may be no X usage, it may be low average load, it may be no user activity, you choose. Why I need this: my Pentium IV uses the p4_clockmod cpu scaling module, which has a high latency. Using the (recommended) ondemand CPU governor yields a very noticeable lag and leaves the CPU at low clocks even when maximum performance is required. With the performance CPU governor, on the other hand, the things feel real snappy again, but the fans start to roar and heat to build up, so I'd really like it to switch to powersave when not in use. -- TIA, and excuse the verbosity (English is not my "mother's thong") Klistvud Certifiable Loonix User #481801 http://bufferoverflow.tiddlyspot.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST(a)lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster(a)lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1275471774.5543.1(a)compax
From: Carl Johnson on 2 Jun 2010 12:40 Klistvud <quotations(a)aliceadsl.fr> writes: > Howdie, fellow Debianites! > > I've bee all over uncle G to crack this one, but to no avail. In short: > how would you go about launching a program when the computer is idle, > and launching another program when the computer stops being idle? > Specifically, I'd like my computer to switch CPU governors from > powersave to performance and vice versa, with "cpufreq-set --governor > foobar". -- snip -- > Are there other -- preferably easier -- approaches to this? As you may > see, I'm not being picky as to how "idle" is defined: it may be no X > usage, it may be low average load, it may be no user activity, you > choose. > > Why I need this: my Pentium IV uses the p4_clockmod cpu scaling module, > which has a high latency. Using the (recommended) ondemand CPU governor > yields a very noticeable lag and leaves the CPU at low clocks even when > maximum performance is required. With the performance CPU governor, on > the other hand, the things feel real snappy again, but the fans start > to roar and heat to build up, so I'd really like it to switch to > powersave when not in use. Do you know what your actual latency is? When you have the ondemand governor selected, you can check by 'cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/sampling_rate' to get the latency in microseconds. You can write to that any value between 'sampling_rate_min' and 'sampling_rate_max' (in the same directory). I suspect any manual selection you figure out will be slower than that. On my Athlon II computer the default latency is 80000 (80msec) which is faster than I really need, so I actually slow it down a little. If you have multiple cpus or cores then you will need to change all of them. -- Carl Johnson carlj(a)peak.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST(a)lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster(a)lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87ocftpf72.fsf(a)cjlinux.localnet
From: Carl Johnson on 2 Jun 2010 13:00 I forgot to mention in my previous response that the kernel documentation has some information about the frequency governors. The 'linux-doc-*' debian packages have the kernel documentation, and the directory 'Documentation/cpu-freq/' contains the information that I used. You also might want to look at the 'conservative' governor. It will decrease speed slower, but it also increases speed slower. I have been testing FreeBSD and its driver seems to increase speed quickly, but drops it back down slowly. -- Carl Johnson carlj(a)peak.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST(a)lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster(a)lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87k4qhpe3z.fsf(a)cjlinux.localnet
From: Klistvud on 2 Jun 2010 17:40 Dne, 02. 06. 2010 18:33:21 je Carl Johnson napisal(a): > > Do you know what your actual latency is? When you have the ondemand > governor selected, you can check by 'cat > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/sampling_rate' to get > the latency in microseconds. You can write to that any value between > 'sampling_rate_min' and 'sampling_rate_max' (in the same directory). Thanx for the tip, Carl, I didn't know that. My actual latency appears to be 1 s. > I suspect any manual selection you figure out will be slower than > that. On my Athlon II computer the default latency is 80000 (80msec) > which is faster than I really need, so I actually slow it down a > little. No such luck here. My sampling_rate_min is 500000 (yes, half a second), so even lowering the latency from 1s to 0.5s, as you can imagine, doesn't help much: it still takes almost a second just to switch from one tab to the next in Iceweasel. While such common GUI tasks are so slow that I can almost hear them crying for help, my 3 GHz CPU remains stubbornly at 375 MHz (as checked via "watch cpufreq-info"). The ondemand governor obviously just can't be bothered. > If you have multiple cpus or cores then you will need to > change all of them. It would seem that on my system (Pentium IV HT @ 3GHz) I only have to change one CPU and the other follows suit. -- Thanx for your time, Klistvud Certifiable Loonix User #481801 http://bufferoverflow.tiddlyspot.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST(a)lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster(a)lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1275514528.6061.0(a)compax
From: Carl Johnson on 2 Jun 2010 18:20 Klistvud <quotations(a)aliceadsl.fr> writes: > Dne, 02. 06. 2010 18:33:21 je Carl Johnson napisal(a): >> >> I suspect any manual selection you figure out will be slower than >> that. On my Athlon II computer the default latency is 80000 (80msec) >> which is faster than I really need, so I actually slow it down a >> little. > > No such luck here. My sampling_rate_min is 500000 (yes, half a second), > so even lowering the latency from 1s to 0.5s, as you can imagine, > doesn't help much: it still takes almost a second just to switch from > one tab to the next in Iceweasel. While such common GUI tasks are so > slow that I can almost hear them crying for help, my 3 GHz CPU remains > stubbornly at 375 MHz (as checked via "watch cpufreq-info"). The > ondemand governor obviously just can't be bothered. My old Athlon 64 was similar to that, so I had a script setup to quickly switch to high speed, and a timout option. I would use that at times when I wanted to run several small programs so they would avoid the delay, but then if I forgot it would drop the speed back. They aren't very long, so I will list them here. Both of these must be run by sudo since cpufreq-set requires root permissions. I had buttons setup on the desktop panel so I could just press the fast button to run 'sudo fast -t 300' for 5 minutes of fast operation. That is definitely crude, but it worked for most things I wanted. I also had a slow program, but that was only because that cpu would sometimes get stuck in a faster speed. ---- start /usr/local/bin/fast --- #!/bin/sh unset timeout freq=`cpufreq-info -f` while getopts "t:" opt do case $opt in t)timeout=$OPTARG ;; *) echo usage: $0 [-t <seconds>] exit 1 ;; esac done cpufreq-set -g performance if [ $timeout ] then (sleep $timeout;ondemand)& fi exit 0 ---- end /usr/local/bin/fast --- ---- start /usr/local/bin/ondemand ---- #!/bin/sh cpufreq-set -g ondemand exit 0 ---- end /usr/local/bin/ondemand ---- -- Carl Johnson carlj(a)peak.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST(a)lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster(a)lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87d3w9ozgt.fsf(a)cjlinux.localnet
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