Re: Multiple minor glitches with 2.6.27.* and linux-NEXT

[Mihai Moldovan <ionic@ionic.de>]

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* On 19.12.2008 23:19, Jesse Brandeburg wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 6:12 AM, Mihai Moldovan <ionic@ionic.de> wrote:
>   
>> First of all, will the changes to e1000e be integrated in Linux 2.6.28
>> as soon as it is released? 2.6.27 does not detect my onboard NIC, whilst
>> Linux-NEXT does. Some basic information about this:
>>     
>
> 2.6.28 should have support for 8086/10de.
>   
Thanks, this is great. :)

>> Might anyone here be so kind to explain me whether disabling specific
>> Cores of an Intel(R)™ Core2Quad CPU completely ...
>>
>>  - is possible? I am not quite sure whether this would work at all.
>>  - would indeed safe power/lower the power consumption? Logically
>> disabling cores does safe hardly any power. :)
>>     
>
> I'm not the best person to answer, but if you enable TICKLESS kernel
> and ACPI power states (and run one of the powersave governors,
> basically treating your desktop like a laptop) then your CPUs will use
> very little power.
>   
Guess what I have done. ;-)
I'm already running CPUFreq using the "ondemand" governor. "Powersave",
by the way, is not the best method to actually save power, but I sure
believe you know this too well. :)

> You should be able to get an idea of the power being used by your
> system by seeing how much time it spends in C1/C2/C3, using the
> powertop application from http://www.lesswatts.org/projects/powertop/
>
> it will also give suggestions about how to optimize your system.
Thanks for this rant, I have totally forgotten about powertop, shame on me!

Out of this scope, though, another question: why was the
CONFIG_DEBUG_KERNEL option "hardlinked" to CONFIG_FRAME_POINTER? (Well,
rather vice versa.) I don't really see the point in making the Kernel
larger and, even more imporant, slower when enabling CONFIG_TIMER_STATS
or CONFIG_SCHEDSTATS... I guess you'll get it.

A few month ago this was different and, to my mind, also more logical.
That is, one could disable CONFIG_FRAME_POINTER when not needed and
still use most of the nifty statistic/"pseudo-debugging" features. For
"real" debugging, of course, the frame pointers must be turned on. I
guess that's a question of definition...?
> Why
> disable cores when the system will effectively do it for you?  If
> you're really serious about conserving power, get a power meter that
> goes between your power plug and the wall and measure the wattage
> being consumed by your system.
>   
I already did play with this thought as well... Let's see where I can
borrow a quite good device for some time. :)

Thank you for your great and fast answers.

Best regards,


Mihai Moldovan


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