I've done more testing and found that what I've been experiencing may or may not be replicating this bug. I was loading the processor using Prime95 (available at http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm) to test each core under load. The reasons the ondemand cpu frequency governor was not ramping up the multiplier while running this software's torture test (which should completely load the cores) had to do with the default gconf cpu frequency power settings. I needed to change the settings to inform gnome to consider niced processors in the processor load calcuation. Under the default settings, the niced processes were not considered as part of the load, and the cpu multiplier stayed at idle. I was able to use gconf-edit to find this buried setting. Once niced processes were included in the load calculation, the multiplier increased appropriately.
I missed these settings before because I did not find them under either System > Preferences > Power Management or in the preferences for the cpu governing applet. I was able to find them by running gconf-edit, then browsing to apps > gnome-power-manager > cpufreq I find there the following important power management settings: consider nice "Whether or not niced processes should be considered on processor load calculation" performance_ac "The cpufreq performance value used to scale the processor when on AC power." performance_battery "The cpufreq performance value used to scale the processor when on battery power." policy_ac The cpufreq policy used to scale the processor when on AC power. Possible values are ondemand, conservative, powersave, userspace, performance, nothing. policy_battery "The cpufreq policy used to scale the processor when on battery power. Possible values are ondemand, conservative, powersave, userspace, performance, nothing." Two questions to consider. Should the consider_nice variable be checked by default to help niced CPU intensive processes use all available processing? Contributors to distributed computing projects, such as the Mersenne Prime project, video transcoding software, etc, I think would benefit from a more sensible default. Even if the default options aren't changed, shouldn't these options appear in the preferences for Power Management, the cpu frequency scaling applet, or some other more easily accessible location? If I have missed where these settings are otherwise located, please let me know. But if I haven't, I think these settings should be easier to find, especially for laptop users. Finally, I do not know if the original user who submitted this bug was mislead as I was, so the original problem may well be different. I'm regressing the bag from confirmed back to new as a result. -- ondemand governor does not use maximum frequency under load https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/122993 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Desktop Bugs, which is subscribed to gconf in ubuntu. -- desktop-bugs mailing list desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs
