Re: Scaling governor controls
On Thu, July 19, 2012 12:25 pm, Tim H. wrote: > You're right. Package does not exist for Precise. Looks like the > xfce4-cpufreq-plugin may have taken its place. Pretty nice plugin > actually. It is nice, but it doesn't seem to allow me to change the governor or cpu speed. There is a panel that looks like it would, with pull downs for governor and speed, but changing them makes no difference. I think it only indicates. The description of the package also sounds like it is saying displays, not changes. The xfce4-goodies package OTOH includes it as a depend. It advertises it as a "* CPU frequency management plugin (xfce4-cpufreq-plugin)". One of the two descriptions is wrong. One of the things I have noticed with both this and the commandline cpufreq-info util, is that I have only ever seen full and half speed as current speed. I have never seen one of the two intermediate speeds indicated. cpufreq-info does tell me that they have been used some as their percentage use is higher than zero, but checking the speed every second or so seems to miss the speed ramp up or down. -- Len Ovens www.OvenWerks.net -- Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel
Re: Scaling governor controls
On 07/18/2012 06:36 PM, Len Ovens wrote: On Tue, July 17, 2012 7:25 pm, Tim Henderson wrote: > scaling governor - normally ondemand, sometimes gets xrun when > switching to higher speed. Noticeable difference with "performance" > setting. Downsides, CPU runs hotter, batteries on battery run devices > last less time. Best to be able to switch for as needed. I apologize if I am oversimplifying this, but have you tried the xfce4-governor-plugin? It's not installed by default, though it probably should be. Install with apt-get, allows you to switch between different scale options. You can see the changes in /proc/cpuinfo Tim H. sudo apt-get install xfce4-governor-plugin Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done E: Unable to locate package xfce4-governor-plugin It seems not to be available. You're right. Package does not exist for Precise. Looks like the xfce4-cpufreq-plugin may have taken its place. Pretty nice plugin actually. Tim -- Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel
Re: A poll - Was: Re: Scaling governor controls
On Wed, July 18, 2012 2:43 pm, Len Ovens wrote: >> Btw. if you wish to use less resources, without getting xruns, perhaps > setting up the CPU freq scale gov to a fixed limited freq will do the > job. AFAIK xruns are caused by changing the speed on demand, but I > suspect that a limit to 1GHz for your 2GHz CPU won't cause issues. > > That has been my experience while watching CPU speed vs. xruns. Allowing > the user to select cpu speed for the job sounds like a good idea. I'll > have to find out how :-) Setting performance is easy, and so is ondemand. > But I don't know how to set half or in between speeds. Anyone know? No worries, I found it, cpufreq-set does it. -- Len Ovens www.OvenWerks.net -- Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel
Re: Scaling governor controls
On Wed, July 18, 2012 1:15 am, Ralf Mardorf wrote: > > We don't safe the planet by using ondemand. We safe the planet by > picking out the CPU and additional hardware we need. If we don't need 64 > cores at 10GHz, we could use an energy saving dual-core at 2GHz instead. The planet (considering human nature) may be beyond saving... at least as we know it. Get rid of facebook might have more effect, but something else would use whatever that freed up anyway. Running out of oil might help more in the long run. Music (and other art) might make the place more livable though. > Just 2 Cents from an annoying idiot, YMMV :D, > Ralle Sounds like a great logo for a T-shirt. -- Len Ovens www.OvenWerks.net -- Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel
Re: Scaling governor controls
On Tue, July 17, 2012 7:25 pm, Tim Henderson wrote: >> >> > scaling governor - normally ondemand, sometimes gets xrun when >> > switching to higher speed. Noticeable difference with "performance" >> > setting. Downsides, CPU runs hotter, batteries on battery run devices >> > last less time. Best to be able to switch for as needed. >> >> >> > > I apologize if I am oversimplifying this, but have you tried the > xfce4-governor-plugin? It's not installed by default, though it > probably should be. Install with apt-get, allows you to switch between > different scale options. You can see the changes in /proc/cpuinfo > > Tim H. sudo apt-get install xfce4-governor-plugin Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done E: Unable to locate package xfce4-governor-plugin It seems not to be available. -- Len Ovens www.OvenWerks.net -- Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel
Re: Scaling governor controls
On Wed, July 18, 2012 12:05 am, óÅÒÇÅÊ äÁ×ÙÄÏ× wrote: > Okay, you asked for it. http://wiki.rootzwiki.com/CPU_Governors That was a fun read. The large number of tries at getting it right says a lot all by itself. > > And here's a CPU scaling daemon that scales CPU depending on JACK > requirements: > http://wiki.linuxmusicians.com/doku.php?id=system_configuration > I think you meant: http://rg42.org/oss/jackfreqd/start >From reading this it seems that jackfreqd does the same thing as auto setting scaling to performance on jack startup. pkexec (policy kit executer) and a script from qjackctl could do the same thing. Actually my mode change feature already does this at the user's whim. -- Len Ovens www.OvenWerks.net -- Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel
Re: A poll - Was: Re: Scaling governor controls
On Wed, July 18, 2012 1:27 am, Ralf Mardorf wrote: > On Tue, 2012-07-17 at 23:10 -0700, Len Ovens wrote: >> and turn off pulse->jack bridging > > Anybody using Ubuntu Studio without getting rid of pulse? > > I'm using Ubuntu Studio, but I removed PA. I leave pulse running. If the system (including PA) is tuned/setup right, pulse on it's own causes no harm, uses very little CPU while not being used and uses very little memory. The PA-jack bridge doesn't cause me too many problems either really... so long as everything is set up right. It does use more memory and a lot more CPU, but even on my netbook, this doesn't cause problems _most_ of the time. Set up correctly is the rub. I had to spend a lot of time working this stuff out. More than one device seems to be the place where things go wrong. And of course everyone's set of devices is different and requires a different setup. For example, an internal card used by pulse with a higher minimum latency can lock an external/pci device to that limit when PA-jack bridging is enabled. On my netbook, the internal HDA sound IF can only get -p128 and interacts with the wireless to give xrun/minute problems. I have an ART USB IF that with PA-jack bridge turned off can use -p64 without xruns (assuming everything set up right), but with the PA-jack bridge on my USB IF won't let jack even start lower than -p128 and the xrun/minute shows up too. Configuring PA with my HDA "profile" to OFF fixes this. And I can now use the USB to listen to a utube song through flash->gstreamer->pulse->jack->alsa->USB just fine... dumb and only done to test it, but does work. It is really easy to just yard out PA and lots of people do (I don't blame them), but for a firewire user, it may be worth while. The unfortunate thing is that from a ubuntu studio POV it can't be tweaked right for a good out of the box experience. It has to be set up by the user. For us this means both good docs (sigh) and a good tool for setting things up... and the realization that PA redoes lots of things when ever... a new USB sound device is plugged in, an application requests a port, etc. It is quite easy to turn off and on PA-jack bridging and I would suggest switching it off when not needed for desktop use. > I won't argue with audio productions, but does anybody use GIMP while having a call via skype or something similar? How about using gimp and listening to tunes from where ever? Much more common. > IMO PA belongs to "averaged" desktop distros, but not to a distro for artists. When drawing, I even turn off my fixed-line network. I think a lot of people (I won't say most) use their computer for more than one use, they want to use it as a "normal" computer sometimes. But I agree with switching distractions off while doing these kinds of things. Quite honestly, anyone half way serious about art will have an old machine they have upgraded from for doing the desktop thing, including playing BG music. > No Pulseaudio + CPU freq scale gov set up to performance are basics for any art. We need to be able to configure for the individual then. Also, for some machines "performance" makes things hot if left for too long. > Btw. if you wish to use less resources, without getting xruns, perhaps setting up the CPU freq scale gov to a fixed limited freq will do the job. AFAIK xruns are caused by changing the speed on demand, but I suspect that a limit to 1GHz for your 2GHz CPU won't cause issues. That has been my experience while watching CPU speed vs. xruns. Allowing the user to select cpu speed for the job sounds like a good idea. I'll have to find out how :-) Setting performance is easy, and so is ondemand. But I don't know how to set half or in between speeds. Anyone know? -- Len Ovens www.OvenWerks.net -- Len Ovens www.OvenWerks.net -- Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel
Re: A poll - Was: Re: Scaling governor controls
On Wed, 2012-07-18 at 10:27 +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: > On Tue, 2012-07-17 at 23:10 -0700, Len Ovens wrote: > > and turn off pulse->jack bridging > > Anybody using Ubuntu Studio without getting rid of pulse? > > I'm using Ubuntu Studio, but I removed PA. > > I won't argue with audio productions, but does anybody use GIMP while > having a call via skype or something similar? > > IMO PA belongs to "averaged" desktop distros, but not to a distro for > artists. When drawing, I even turn off my fixed-line network. > > No Pulseaudio + CPU freq scale gov set up to performance are basics for > any art. > There should probably be an easy way to turn off PA, when wishing to do so, using a gui control, which is being looked at as an option. If anyone knows of a nice way to do that temporarily, other than "pasuspender --" and whatever implications there might be (also, using pasuspender), please do tell. > Btw. if you wish to use less resources, without getting xruns, perhaps > setting up the CPU freq scale gov to a fixed limited freq will do the > job. AFAIK xruns are caused by changing the speed on demand, but I > suspect that a limit to 1GHz for your 2GHz CPU won't cause issues. > > -- > I wasn't aware that he died in 2005. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._L._Burnside > > P.S Given enough time, anyone can become an annoying idiot ;). -- | kaj.ailo...@mousike.me -| -- Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel
A poll - Was: Re: Scaling governor controls
On Tue, 2012-07-17 at 23:10 -0700, Len Ovens wrote: > and turn off pulse->jack bridging Anybody using Ubuntu Studio without getting rid of pulse? I'm using Ubuntu Studio, but I removed PA. I won't argue with audio productions, but does anybody use GIMP while having a call via skype or something similar? IMO PA belongs to "averaged" desktop distros, but not to a distro for artists. When drawing, I even turn off my fixed-line network. No Pulseaudio + CPU freq scale gov set up to performance are basics for any art. Btw. if you wish to use less resources, without getting xruns, perhaps setting up the CPU freq scale gov to a fixed limited freq will do the job. AFAIK xruns are caused by changing the speed on demand, but I suspect that a limit to 1GHz for your 2GHz CPU won't cause issues. -- I wasn't aware that he died in 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._L._Burnside -- Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel
Re: Scaling governor controls
Usually I set up the governor to ondemand by default and to performance for audio productions. I'm neurotic :p. I can't speak for battery resources, but at least for a PC connected to the mains, there's no big difference for the power consumption. Don't believe an idiot like me, simply measure the consumption. Yep, avoid using an electric meter from the super market. I bought one and they are completely useless. However, even low coast electric meters will show that there's no significant difference. IMO every distro for artists (especially for musicians only distros) should build a kernel with a default performance and drop a script (e.g. Debian ships with such a scrip) that change this to ondemand during startup. We don't safe the planet by using ondemand. We safe the planet by picking out the CPU and additional hardware we need. If we don't need 64 cores at 10GHz, we could use an energy saving dual-core at 2GHz instead. Just 2 Cents from an annoying idiot, YMMV :D, Ralle -- I wasn't aware that he died in 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._L._Burnside -- Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel
Re: Scaling governor controls
Okay, you asked for it. http://wiki.rootzwiki.com/CPU_Governors And here's a CPU scaling daemon that scales CPU depending on JACK requirements: http://wiki.linuxmusicians.com/doku.php?id=system_configuration -- Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel
Re: Scaling governor controls
On Tue, July 17, 2012 7:09 pm, Luke Kuhn wrote: > > This is REALLY crucial for some CPU intensive operations. That I know from > experience includes video editing on newer desktops, and might include > multitrack sound recording on netbooks and small laptops that a newsman or > musician might take to a site or a gig. Games on open source video drivers > also benefit from this, BTW. Thankyou for the input. I was begining to think I was the only person who noticed any difference. > When I render videos using Kdenlive, I always set the governor to high, It > makes a substantial difference in render time, apparently because of > transient loads that pass before the governor can respond but collectively > add up to a lot. Just as important to turn it down the rest of the time, > especially using overclocked AMD FX 8120! Ok, that is good to know too. There was a thought that some of these tweaks would get triggered by jackd starting. I can see that may not work in this case. I also have an app that sits in the tray and with a click and selection can change a set of tweaks for up to four modes of operation or normal and three more. I was thinking normal, audio, video and graphics... that is what icons I have made anyway. I use it on my netbook to set scaling, turn off cron and friends, unload a kernel module that messes things up and turn off pulse->jack bridging. What is still needed is a GUI config app so the user can tune what gets turned off or on for each mode. As Tim Henderson says in his message there is a xfce utility that could help. However, my thought is that there are enough other things a user may need to tweak for audio or video work, that one app that does all at once would be a lot handier. My app, BTW just triggers a runlevel switch for rl 2-5 (runlevels 3 to 5 seem to have fallen to disuse any more) and then uses 4 upstart scripts (init scripts could be used too, but as ubuntu is moving away from that, I chose upstart) to set things on entering and exiting that runlevel. Just a quick note: on any ubuntu system don't try setting the system to "performance" before 60 seconds after login. Ondemand gets set at that point as I learned the hard way... -- Len Ovens www.OvenWerks.net -- Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel
Re: Scaling governor controls
On 07/17/2012 10:09 PM, Luke Kuhn wrote: This is REALLY crucial for some CPU intensive operations. That I know from experience includes video editing on newer desktops, and might include multitrack sound recording on netbooks and small laptops that a newsman or musician might take to a site or a gig. Games on open source video drivers also benefit from this, BTW. When I render videos using Kdenlive, I always set the governor to high, It makes a substantial difference in render time, apparently because of transient loads that pass before the governor can respond but collectively add up to a lot. Just as important to turn it down the rest of the time, especially using overclocked AMD FX 8120! These days I use the cpu frequency scaling indicator Ubuntu offers. It works in gnome-shell (Which I favor), Unity, but not in Icewm (netbook). Suspect it would not work in XFCE. All that is really needed, of course, is some simple "click to run" scripts to reset the governor (did this before the indicator came out)-but they would need to run as root to function. A simple GUI with easy access for end users, like that indicator but usable with XFCE, is really going to be needed for some workflows. > Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2012 15:31:07 -0700 > From: "Len Ovens" > To: "ubuntu studio" > Subject: blueprint - research available audio improvements from > audio/music sites > Message-ID: > <40918116aaaf8c854db6b24c91a20e8d.squir...@ssl.ovenwerks.net> > Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 > scaling governor - normally ondemand, sometimes gets xrun when > switching to higher speed. Noticeable difference with "performance" > setting. Downsides, CPU runs hotter, batteries on battery run devices > last less time. Best to be able to switch for as needed. I apologize if I am oversimplifying this, but have you tried the xfce4-governor-plugin? It's not installed by default, though it probably should be. Install with apt-get, allows you to switch between different scale options. You can see the changes in /proc/cpuinfo Tim H. -- Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel
Scaling governor controls
This is REALLY crucial for some CPU intensive operations. That I know from experience includes video editing on newer desktops, and might include multitrack sound recording on netbooks and small laptops that a newsman or musician might take to a site or a gig. Games on open source video drivers also benefit from this, BTW. When I render videos using Kdenlive, I always set the governor to high, It makes a substantial difference in render time, apparently because of transient loads that pass before the governor can respond but collectively add up to a lot. Just as important to turn it down the rest of the time, especially using overclocked AMD FX 8120! These days I use the cpu frequency scaling indicator Ubuntu offers. It works in gnome-shell (Which I favor), Unity, but not in Icewm (netbook). Suspect it would not work in XFCE. All that is really needed, of course, is some simple "click to run" scripts to reset the governor (did this before the indicator came out)-but they would need to run as root to function. A simple GUI with easy access for end users, like that indicator but usable with XFCE, is really going to be needed for some workflows. > Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2012 15:31:07 -0700 > From: "Len Ovens" > To: "ubuntu studio" > Subject: blueprint - research available audio improvements from > audio/music sites > Message-ID: > <40918116aaaf8c854db6b24c91a20e8d.squir...@ssl.ovenwerks.net> > Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 > scaling governor - normally ondemand, sometimes gets xrun when > switching to higher speed. Noticeable difference with "performance" > setting. Downsides, CPU runs hotter, batteries on battery run devices > last less time. Best to be able to switch for as needed. -- Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel
