[sf-lug] Overheating and CPU throttling

[maestro]

Josh Greenland;
do you also use the suggested [with install of powertop] package
laptop-mode-tools?
thank you...


message ends.
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/'m'/



On Sun, Jan 13, 2019 at 5:55 AM Josh Greenland <joshuag1 at mindspring.com>
wrote:

> Akkana Peck wrote:
> > My Thinkpad X201 laptop has developed an overheating problem.
> > Randomly, when I'm doing something lengthy and CPU intensive
> > like building Firefox, it will shut down without warning. Afterward,
> > I have messages like this in /var/log/kern.log:
> > thermal_zone0: critical temperature reached (100 C), shutting down
> >
> > I've found lots of pages with people with similar problems,
> > getting lots of responses like "Any modern Linux computer should
> > automatically throttle its CPU when temperatures get high". No one
> > explains how this automatic throttling is supposed to happen, or how
> > to enable it if it's not happening, or what "modern" means (is it
> > the CPU that needs to be modern? The BIOS? The kernel? How modern?)
> >
> > What I'd really like is a daemon or kernel setting that monitors
> > the temperature and, if it exceeds max (well before it reaches
> > critical), scales down the CPU frequency, or kills or (preferably)
> > suspends whatever process is running away with the CPU, or suspends
> > the machine rather than shutting down. I have started down the path
> > of writing such a daemon, but it's complicated by not wanting to
> > suspend certain processes like X even if their CPU usage looks high
> > due to some other app. And it's hard to believe Linux doesn't
> > already offer a solution to this problem.
> >
> > More system details:
> >
> > This X201 has been my main workhorse for 5+ years and never had
> > temperature problems until a few weeks ago. I have opened it
> > and don't see any dust bunnies around the fan.
> >
> > Processor is a quad-core Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU M 540 @ 2.53GH.
> > Distro is Debian Testing. Kernel was 4.18.0-2-amd64, which I was
> > stuck on because of a modeset bug in 4.18.0-3, but it looks like
> > 4.19.0-1 has fixed it so now I've upgraded.
> >
> > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor is
> > "ondemand", if that matters; though it doesn't seem from
> > https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/cpu-freq/governors.txt
> > like any of the governors look at temperature at all.
> >
> > Any suggestions? Any good articles I could read on how this
> > scaling/governor/thermal/cpufreq stuff is supposed to work?
> >
> >          ...Akkana
>
> It might not hurt to install the powertop utility and use it to check
> power usage, especially of hardware resources that you don't use, and to
> use it to turn on all powersaving capabilities on your system.  It's
> made a huge difference on a hot-running system that I use, and has
> helped on an older Thinkpad that I spend a lot of time on.
>
> You can also use powertop to see what hardware resources stop using
> power when you unload their modules.
>
> I also use the cpupower utility, which has allowed me to put maximum
> limits on CPU frequency when my systems run too hot -- most often during
> compiles.
>
> I use the sensors utility from the lm_sensors package and i7z to keep an
> eye on temperature and fan speed.
>
> powertop, cpupower, lm_sensors and i7z are all packages on Archlinux's
> respositories.  I don't know about their availability on other distros.
>
> '
> There is also thermald, a daemon software that may have been designed to
> do what you want.
>
>
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