2.1 on a Laptop - temperature CPU-scaling and other issues

Everything looks fine to me (except the temperature that is!) Ambient temperature of 22 Celsius should not be a problem. Looking into it.

Jackd is started this way: -------------------------------------------------------- zettberlin@64studio:~$ /usr/bin/jackd -R -t1000 -dfreebob -r96000 -p512 -n3 jackd 0.103.0 Copyright 2001-2005 Paul Davis and others. jackd comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; see the file COPYING for details JACK compiled with System V SHM support. loading driver .. Enhanced3DNow! detected SSE2 detected Freebob using Firewire port 0, node -1 libiec61883 warning: Established connection on channel 0. You may need to manually set the channel on the receiving node. libiec61883 warning: Established connection on channel 1. You may need to manually set the channel on the transmitting node. ----------------------------------- Looks quite OKayish does it not? ############################################################################ Top gives about this: ---------------------------------------------------- 4792 zettberl 20 0 505m 210m 55m S 25 12.1 1:45.58 ardour-2.4.1 4657 zettberl 20 0 68692 50m 7168 S 8 2.9 0:59.06 jackd 959 root -51 -5 0 0 0 S 4 0.0 0:29.12 IRQ-19 4059 root 20 0 69356 22m 9788 S 2 1.3 0:17.23 Xorg 5 root -51 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:04.69 softirq-timer/0 16 root -51 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:03.27 softirq-timer/1 3086 root -51 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:01.49 IRQ-21 4359 root -51 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:04.47 IRQ-18 4694 zettberl 20 0 10728 1336 956 R 0 0.1 0:02.10 top 1 root 20 0 6124 688 568 S 0 0.0 0:00.88 init 2 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0 3 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 posix_cpu_timer 4 root -51 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 softirq-high/0 6 root -51 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 softirq-net-tx/ 7 root -51 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 softirq-net-rx/ 8 root -51 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 softirq-block/0 9 root -51 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 softirq-tasklet --------------------------------------- Should I tune the niceness / priority of jack/ardour? ####################################################################### And this is the really evil output of sensors: before jack is started (GNOME is up like configured o.o.t.b.) zettberlin@64studio:~$ sensors k8temp-pci-00c3 Adapter: PCI adapter Core0 Temp: +69°C Core1 Temp: +72°C (US7.10 runs KDE4 with Jack playing a song with alsaplayer at 48KHz via USB and sensors dont find anything beyond 60 Centigrade. At the other hand it does not run more then 10 min with the freebob-driver...) And with Jack and Ardour runnng aprox. 20 minutes: zettberlin@64studio:~$ sensors k8temp-pci-00c3 Adapter: PCI adapter Core0 Temp: +82°C Core1 Temp: +84°C The fan is speeding,the housing is still hot, room-temperature is aprox. 22 Centigrade. Ardour plays 3 stereo-tracks in a loop, it runs stable and sane....

As far as I know CPU scaling has been disabled in 64 Studio. I tried enabling it once, but tended to get some xruns every time the scaling changes. PS: I might have been wrong about the Ubuntu kernel... We once had a 6.22 kernel as well, but had to go back to 6.21 because of some serious issues introduced by the new kernel. Do check out TOP to see which package is causing the overloading of the CPU, as Daniel suggested. My CPU's run at around 50 Celcius max... even with Jack and Ardour running with Jamin. 64 Studio 2.1 AMD Athlon 64x2 3800+

@Quentin 2.0 heats the CPU also but not to the point, where the fan fails to keep the temp in check. And not permanently even if there is no real load. BTW: US7.10 runs: 2.6.22-14-rt #1 SMP PREEMPT RT absolutely NO RT Kernel? @Daniel I'll check the sensors in the terminal ASAP. Do you know what package could be wrong if CPU-scaling does not work?

You should run 'top' and see what processes are eating up your CPU, keeping an eye on the load average. Also, ambient air temperature does make a difference to the effectiveness of the cooling fans, and it is summer in the northern hemisphere right now. I would check that your notebook is well ventilated and that its fans are free of dust. You may need to raise it up a little if the fan is on the underside, and easily blocked by being placed on a soft surface. As for the Gnome temperature applet, try running the 'sensors' command in a terminal. If you get errors, you may need to run the sensors-detect script before temperature is reported correctly.

Yes, but you are aware that Ubuntu Studio 7.10 does not run a real time kernel, but a low latency kernel... Interesting that 2.0 did not heat up the laptop, because it is running the exact same kernel. I will forward this to the team. Cheers, Quentin

...I dont really believe that. I can run simple Jack-applications in UbuntuStudio 7.10 while the CPU-scaling works OK and turns down the Processor to 800MHz if the load drops. Yet I have the same trouble in UbuntuStudio 8.04 and so I think it has to do with the recent kernel. I have tested about 6 RT-Distros on this notebook and 64Studio 2.1 is the first one that heats the CPU so massive that an emergency-halt is invoked. I ran 5-6 h sessions with heavy load in 2.0 on the very same notebook - well with the fan whirling constantly but without an emergency halt. So what can this be and what could one do about (without buying a tray with an extra-fan that does not exist for my noetbook-model)?

I have seen laptop trays with large (quieter) fans you van put your laptop on. This should help. The problem with RT kernels, is that you cannot tell it that the RT stuff is not important. It runs the system full speed for as long as you run the RT applications (which is all the time for me...) even if you are not using the full capacity of that.