eee-control (EeePC management tool)

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npc · Post by **npc** » Tue Aug 11, 2009 3:22 am

I was missing the dmi option in my kernel setup. Got it and now it runs.
However the initscript spits out [!!] and stops.
I can see the tray, but there are no performance options, just "none". Running eee-control-daemon -V shows me a lot of stuff, seems like the daemon runs, however only direct-io works for FSB tweaking without complaining and falling back to dummy.
Sensors work too, it shows temp, fan and fan rpm. Acpitool says there is no FAN, so i suppose the fan info comes from the i2c-tools.
Hitting fn+F2 (wifi) says there is a FATAL error because it probably is looking for a different wifi module than mine, since it's a 1000HA not a 901.
I'm sad, eee-control is not very helpful, i hope it gets more 1000HA compatible in the future. I wonder if i can get the same setup with acpifreqd or something.

Thanks guys and good luck.

NPC

npc · Post by **npc** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 8:16 pm

Again i was missing stuff. I messed around with cpufreqd and other apps but none of them really impressed me. Besides that, xorg would not see some of the extra hotkeys that the eeepc has. So i tried eee-control one last time and to my surprise it works!
I was prolly missing acpi-freqd and fan kernel modules and maybe something else.

Anyways, only direct-io works for FSB tweaking, 3 setups are available high/normal/powersave. My wifi card is well seen because i overrid the default modules and device in eee-control.conf. All hotkeys work flawlessly, also the fan controlling feature is okay too.

I have emerged it with USE="-gnome", so no auto-performance changes like when i plug off the AC adapter, but that's okay.
Eee-control is using hal and xfce4-notifyd to spit warnings and setup changes, which is really neat. However, the icons are really small and get blurred on resizing, so I did change them to some of the Tango theme. I'll file a feature request upstream asking for svg icons on instead of regular small png ones.

I'm looking forward to be able to use she or she-uv or even acpi-dev and maybe they would make a small workaround for the auto-performance stuff without a huge load of gnome dependencies.

See you, guys.

NPC.

gringo · Post by **gringo** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 8:48 am

only direct-io works for FSB tweaking, 3 setups are available high/normal/powersave.

does it really work for you ? Yes, the variables are displayed, but they do no alter the cpu clock freq., at least for me.
SHE is supposed to work out of the box with kernel >=2.6.30 but it doesn´t here, i tried contacting upstream but got no response till now.

There is a new ebuild for version 0.9.4 available in the arcon overlay btw.
http://gpo.zugaina.org/AJAX/Ebuild/54383/View

cheers

npc · Post by **npc** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 12:30 pm

gringo wrote:
only direct-io works for FSB tweaking, 3 setups are available high/normal/powersave.
does it really work for you ? Yes, the variables are displayed, but they do no alter the cpu clock freq., at least for me.
SHE is supposed to work out of the box with kernel >=2.6.30 but it doesn´t here, i tried contacting upstream but got no response till now.

The cpu frequency read by acpitools wouldn't change, that's a known issue. It seems FSB changes, it saves power, reduces cpu performance, but the frequency is not read differently, that's stated here by Greg, the dev:

I switched to high performance/powersave mode, but the CPU frequency scaling applet still shows the same frequencies and governor. Why?
While eee-control adjusts the FSB, the CPU frequency scaling applet is a frontend for cpufreq. FSB and cpufreq are two separate things. Furthermore, cpufreq cannot detect the FSB change and therefore still will display the original frequencies, even with the FSB underclocked/overclocked.

Here i've set up my eeepc to use the conservative governor, it works with eee-control in parallel i suppose, it's built in the kernel with performance too, it's somehow automagically chosen by the kernel and is the recommended governor for laptops. It scales my acpi-shown frequency from 800 to 1600 mhz. I've kind of tested it by letting conky do the math and estimate my battery remaning life: when idle, running at 800mhz and with eee-control powesave setup it is supposed to last about 7 hours, which is that battery life stated as maximum by Asus.

Also, the bios seems to hide some stuff from eee-control on some setups, so direct-io is the only possible configuration, maybe she or she-uv is as faulty as i2c-dev:

Known Issues
Under some circumstances, I2C/SMBus is not available because the BIOS "hides" the controller. In this case "i2c-dev" performance control cannot be used.

Later,

NPC.

gringo · Post by **gringo** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 6:00 pm

The cpu frequency read by acpitools wouldn't change, that's a known issue. It seems FSB changes, it saves power, reduces cpu performance, but the frequency is not read differently, that's stated here by Greg, the dev:

sure, i know, im not talking about cpufreq : if i set powersave mode in eee-control the cpu should run in powersave mode, IOW, reducing FSB which will bring down cpu clock. If thats the case it doesnt work here, or at least /proc/cpuinfo always shows the same cpu clock speed.
Thats all i was trying to say above.

cheers

npc · Post by **npc** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 9:02 pm

I agree and that bugs me a little, if that issues wasnt listed at eee-control website i'd say it's not working. However, you can reduce fsb and raise the multiplier, thus keeping the same cpu frequency. I don't know if that's the case, but i could be.

Later.

NPC.

gringo · Post by **gringo** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 8:12 am

However, you can reduce fsb and raise the multiplier

sure, but for me that goes against for what i understand for "powersave mode"

I don´t know, i have been playing around a bit and have looked to the code but apparently i´m to stupid to figure out exactly what eee-control does.

cheers

npc · Post by **npc** » Sat Aug 22, 2009 2:38 am

I'm no hardware expert, but it seems that when you reduce the FSB you supposed to decrease power consumption. Even if the final frequency is the same, the reduced FSB speed reduces also the core voltage of the CPU and other parts of the mainboard, such as the NorthBridge voltage, less voltage means less power consumption. It's a common feature amongst overclockers' tweaks to raise little by little a bunch of chip voltages as they are trying more aggressive setups, the higher voltage keeps stuff stable because it's paired with the raising current needs of those chips, eventhough the power consumption hits the sky real quick and things can fry.
I think we could do some real world tests and see if battery really lasts longer with the setups available and check back if they help save power.

bubye.

npc · Post by **npc** » Thu Aug 27, 2009 12:02 am

I've done a minor test here. I have conky running on the background checking the battery estimated life using sbs* modules and such. When switching between powersave, normal and high profiles the battery life increases up to 62 minutes. The cpu frequency was kept at 0.8 Ghz by conservative cpufreq governor at all times.

It seems to me that the fsb is trully being changed and it might help saving power.

see you.

ocbMaurice · Post by **ocbMaurice** » Wed Sep 02, 2009 10:01 pm

Just wanted to mention, that I successfully merged version 0.9.4 with the 0.9.3 ebuild patch I posted on Page 2.

Code: Select all

cp /opt/portage/app-misc/eee-control/eee-control-0.9.3.ebuild /opt/portage/app-misc/eee-control/eee-control-0.9.4.ebuild
ebuild /opt/portage/app-misc/eee-control/eee-control-0.9.4.ebuild digest

You may have to adjust the path, of course

lxg wrote:I have created an ebuild for this software, and I'm trying to keep up with the rapid development by trying new versions and creating up-to-date ebuilds.

I guess you're not trying that hard? It's nice that you've put up the website, but please do an Update. The patches are here in this thread. Thank You!

Does anybody know, if there is any eee-pc specific overlay around?

Maurice

npc · Post by **npc** » Thu Sep 03, 2009 1:14 am

try this overlay for the ebuild http://gpo.zugaina.org/app-misc/eee-control
please try not to be rude.

bubye

ocbMaurice · Post by **ocbMaurice** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 5:26 pm

I finally found out, how to adjust the fsb from the console.
So I just wanted to document/share this here:

Code: Select all

eee-control-query set_fsb string:powersave
eee-control-query set_fsb string:full
eee-control-query get_fsb

@npc: I don't think I was rude. If I have been, I'm sorry!
It's just that even the official page links to that site.

Anyway, thanks for the link to the overlay!
(I know that I have overlooked it in this thread)

Maurice

jarealist · Post by **jarealist** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 11:49 pm

There is an update to the RT2860 ralink wireless driver I use on my 1000HE, but I have not been able to get it to work following the how-to in the Gentoo WIki. The previous driver release works fine. I'm using Wicd to manage my wireless interface.

Has anyone else got this latest release to work?

http://www.ralinktech.com: 2009_0918_RT2860_Linux_STA_v2.2.0.0.tar.bz2

gringo · Post by **gringo** » Tue Sep 29, 2009 3:24 pm

just FYI : there is a driver in the kernel that supports the ralink 2860 chip under "staging drivers".
i´ve been using this one since i have my eeepc and it works just fine afaict.

cheers

jarealist · Post by **jarealist** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 12:15 am

gringo wrote:

just FYI : there is a driver in the kernel that supports the ralink 2860 chip under "staging drivers".

Thanks for the tip. Works great here too.

justXi · Post by **justXi** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 7:12 am

Exist an ebuild for eee-control-0.9.4?

Edit:
Solved.... found the overlay.

justXi · Post by **justXi** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 6:00 pm

npc wrote:Again i was missing stuff. I messed around with cpufreqd and other apps but none of them really impressed me. Besides that, xorg would not see some of the extra hotkeys that the eeepc has. So i tried eee-control one last time and to my surprise it works!
I was prolly missing acpi-freqd and fan kernel modules and maybe something else.

Anyways, only direct-io works for FSB tweaking, 3 setups are available high/normal/powersave. My wifi card is well seen because i overrid the default modules and device in eee-control.conf. All hotkeys work flawlessly, also the fan controlling feature is okay too.

Do you know what apps you are currently running?
I have "acpid", "cpufreqd" and "eee-control" running, but I don't see any performance options in the eee-control-tray.

Edit: I run eee-control-tray and I got:

ERROR:dbus.proxies:Introspect error on :1.10:/org/eee/Eee/EeePc: dbus.exceptions.DBusException: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.AccessDenied: A security policy in place prevents this sender from sending this message to this recipient, see message bus configuration file (rejected message had interface "org.freedesktop.DBus.Introspectable" member "Introspect" error name "(unset)" destination ":1.10")
Fehler bei er Kommunikation mit eee-control-daemon: A security policy in place prevents this sender from sending this message to this recipient, see message bus configuration file (rejected message had interface "org.eee.Eee" member "set_fan_control" error name "(unset)" destination ":1.10")

Any ideas how to solve this?

ocbMaurice · Post by **ocbMaurice** » Fri Oct 09, 2009 12:29 am

npc wrote:Anyways, only direct-io works for FSB tweaking, 3 setups are available high/normal/powersave

I think you are missing the part about direct-io.

Code: Select all

fsb-method: direct-io

Had to change this too to get it working.

HTH, Maurice

himpierre · Post by **himpierre** » Sat Oct 31, 2009 6:19 pm

Hello.

After upgrading to python2.6 and a successfull python-updater run i get this error when i try to start eee-control-tray. Someone knows what python module or other package i have to reemerge to solve this?

Code: Select all

/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/gtk-2.0/gtk/__init__.py:40: RuntimeWarning: tp_compare didn't return -1 or -2 for exception
  from gtk import _gtk
ImportError: could not import gio
ImportError: could not import gio
ImportError: cannot import name Widget from gtk
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/eee-control-tray", line 20, in <module>
    import EeeControl.tray
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/EeeControl/tray.py", line 522, in <module>
    class EeeControlSensors(gtk.Dialog):
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'Dialog'

himpierre · Post by **himpierre** » Mon Nov 02, 2009 9:33 am

Had to reemerge gtk+. Now everything is running again.

gcasillo · Post by **gcasillo** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 12:51 am

gringo wrote:just FYI : there is a driver in the kernel that supports the ralink 2860 chip under "staging drivers".
i´ve been using this one since i have my eeepc and it works just fine afaict.

cheers

Just posting here to confirm that the staging driver from 2.6.31-r5 is working for me. I had been trying to get the 2.2.0.0 version of the driver from Ralink's web site to work, but it wouldn't get an IP address from my router.

gringo · Post by **gringo** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 3:14 pm

Just posting here to confirm that the staging driver from 2.6.31-r5 is working for me. I had been trying to get the 2.2.0.0 version of the driver from Ralink's web site to work, but it wouldn't get an IP address from my router.

just as a side note : the driver in the staging tree actually is the driver from ralink but somewhat refactored and reworked, mainly to fit more nicely into the kernel coding style rules.
In a ( hopefully) not to far future this hardware will probably be supported by another driver that will be pushed from the rt2x00 project, which will obsolete this one and will be therefore removed from the kernel tree.

A first proposal was already sent to the lkml -> http://lkml.org/lkml/2009/10/17/81 but it will take some time apparently.

cheers

Waninkoko · Post by **Waninkoko** » Fri Nov 13, 2009 12:00 am

Anybody else tried eee900freq driver?

I'm not sure if it's because of it, but now my battery lasts much longer

I don't know why it hasn't been included in mainline kernel tree (also, I saw very few info about it).

gringo · Post by **gringo** » Fri Nov 13, 2009 10:36 am

that one only is for the 900, right ?
i have an 901 and the acpi freq driver works just fine apparently, apart from no being able to overclock the cpu like the windows driver.

cheers

Waninkoko · Post by **Waninkoko** » Fri Nov 13, 2009 5:13 pm

Yup. AFAIK, acpi-cpufreq doesn't work on the 900.

eee-control (EeePC management tool)

Now it works!

Re: Now it works!