Smart CPU mode.. huh?

[Peter Bailey]

        I have my bogomips listed on my login screen and I was about to
log in, and I noticed it was at 131.07.  I thought, no way.  Normally it's
at 264.60.  I remembered I turned on Smart CPU mode, which is supposed to
slow the cpu down when it's not being used.  I'm just wondering what is
up.  I can understand the CPU being slowed up, but if it's calculating
bogomips, I would expect there to be some calculation and with that I
would expect the processor to speed up.  It's at half speed though, less
than that.  I enabled idle cpu calls in the kernel, and I'm wondering if
they go together, or if having one is good enough.  The idle cpu calls are
the ones that are supposed to use the idle call instead of no-op when
there's nothing happening.  I realize that's a lot when I forget to
suspend or if I start playing some music and dump a 
{ sleep 10m ; apm --suspend } & exit
to my console.  MPG123 only takes 6% cpu or something ridiculously small
for a task that you can't make happen on a 486 without sacrificing
quality.  Heh, yeah, top easily takes more cpu when I manually update two
times a second or so.

Like I say, I'm just curious about what exactly Smart CPU does (I have
long since deleted all the online manuals--oopse, but they probably didn't
even give a technical explanation) and if having a calculated 131.07
bogomips when actual is 264.60 will do anything drastic.  I know some
things use bogomips for timing.  I also wonder if the CPU is always slower
(for less battery consumption or something).  I'll have to start turning
it on when I am unplugged.  Most of the time my computer is plugged in
though.

Also, if anyone solved the loss of time problem with standby mode, please
let me know.  I am going to disable standby next time I boot (heh, next
week or so).  I also notice that sometimes when I'm writing in an editor
or reading mail or in lynx for a while, my hard drive and fan stop.  I
really likes.  When I got this computer, I was like, wow.. it's so quiet.
I can hardly hear it.  Now it's seeming pretty loud.  I'm not sure if
lubrication is wearing down or I'm just getting used to it, but it is
fairly annoying.  If anyone knows what changes the timing of the harddrive
and fan powersave, please let me know.  If there's a utility that makes it
happen I'll shove a sticky bit on it and use it frequently or even one
that sets it (maybe apmd does, I can't find it though).

One last thing.  I had consd running for a while, and I set up the
Spawn_Console keymap thing so that I could just push a key to jump to the
next non-logged in console or make a new one if none were open.  I was
like, this is cool.  I have CTRL-ALT-DEL set to suspend instead of reboot
(I like it, it's pretty nice actually--it would be nicer if suspend to
disk worked though) and I was looking for a program or something that
would kind of duplicate the effect and do things when the keymapped thing
was happened.  Like, a program that would wait for some defined
keymappings and run a program whenever it happened.  I'm thinking to
myself that there is one stock in Linux, but I don't know what it is. If
there's one anyone knows about, please, fill me in.  If people don't
understand what I mean, I'm talking about having a key defined in my
keymap file, then whenever that key is pressed, run a program or somehow
do something else.  I realize the security risk here, but I could rig a
script to see if I'm logged in somewhere first and then run the program as
me if I am.  I don't think any of my roommates are megahackers though, as
only one of them even knows what Linux is.  I don't have a whole lot of
incredible information except some bad code and phone numbers.  I do have
a beats per minute counter in exceptionally bad C with a metronome and
everything.  I even added comments as I was going to upload it somewhere,
but then realized that no one really wants one.  I have it though.


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