Levi Smith wrote:
On 4/28/06, DJA <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
It sounds like your laptop is working pretty much as it should. ACPI
controls both fan speed and CPU throttling based on several factors,
such as load and heat. How well ACPI works on your laptop depends very
much on how recent the software controlling it is. Generally, the more
recent the kernel, the better ACPI works - assuming your laptop is
supported (doing
cat /proc/acpi/info may give some clues).
Are you referring to the "obvious" options in the BIOS such as shut-down
temps? or are these functions that are just built into the ACPI that take
care of things without any obvious front-end?
There are things that ACPI manages which have no user-accessible
interface in the BIOS. Those are controlled by a file unique to each
motherboard, and sometimes to each single laptop using that mobo, called
the DSDT. Here's more info: http://acpi.sourceforge.net/dsdt/index.php
ANYWAY... My laptop works just fine in Windows, but in Mepis it starts
out fine, but at some point it starts lagging incredibly badly. Generally
at that point the CPU is at 100%.
But is the CPU running at full speed?
Dunno, but it sure seems doggedly slow. And some apps like kicker that
take up about 3% normally, seem to be taking up about 30% at that point...
There are ways of finding out what the current throttling point is. But
I can't remember where to look. /proc/acpi? I know that Gnome has an
applet which tells you what speed your CPU is currently running. Windows
will also let you look at that.
The Pentium M in my laptop usually runs at about 70% speed until I do
something like compile or run a game (e.g. FarCry). When the CPU speed
increases, I can also hear both CPU and Graphics Card fans speed up.
This is all controlled through ACPI based on the code in your DSDT file.
One of the problems with this file is that it is very often compiled
with Microsoft's ASL compiler. That compiler is known to be very
forgiving if given bad code (e.g. syntax errors, bad parameters, etc.):
it happily compiles bad code anyway. However Linux is not at all
tolerant of that same bad code - and that causes it to barf on many DSDT
files. One solution for many is to disassemble the DSDT, fix any errors,
and recompile it with Intel's compiler which is ASL-compliant. Again,
more info is at the URI above.
[A]nd the memory seems to be used more than it should (like sometimes
>> it's got almost 500MB used with nothing open),
but I can't really see anything that's using the processor or memory
(at least not in ksysguard or top).
Since trying athcool yesterday it seems to work better, but not
flawless like it used to...
Maybe the thermal trip points need to be tweaked. Maybe that's what
Athcool is doing; or is it just running the fan faster/more? At the risk
of being insulting, are you keeping all the fan ducts clear when you are
using the laptop?
From what I read on athcool, it's simply allowing the cpu to idle
down or some such thing during idle periods. Whereas without it, it's basically
running full-on all the time. (at least in linux)
Even with it on, I never hear the fan slow down like it does in Windows...
Is it possible I'm somehow more stressing the cpu and it's overheating
and slowing to a crawl? (that still doesn't explain the memory usage)....
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Thanks!
> Levi
Abnormal memory usage is another animal altogether.
--
Best Regards,
~DJA.
I don't know. I think some CPU's will slow down if they overheat, and if
the problem is severe enough, just shut themselves down. But that still
doesn't account for the apparently excessive RAM use. Unless you are
doing something really unusual, with 512MB RAM, swap should never even
be used anymore in Linux.
--
Best Regards,
~DJA.
--
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