sony-vaio-z-series team mailing list archive

[Adam Hill <sidepipeuk@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Knuth,

> You mentioned that you integrated the NOHZ patch.

	Actually I didn't, all I did was enable CONFIG_NO_HZ. The patch that 
Norbert posted is already in the 2.6.35-rc6 base kernel that I used.

> Did it influence your power consumption?

	Creating a tickless kernel made a bit of difference, yes.

> And did you have accessive occurrences of
>   34.2% (185.3)   [kernel scheduler] Load balancing tick
>   23.9% (129.6)   [extra timer interrupt]
> in the output of powertop?

	I have ( currently )

Cn                Avg residency       P-states (frequencies)
C0 (cpu running)        ( 0.4%)       Turbo Mode     9.5%
polling           0.3ms ( 0.0%)         2.67 Ghz     0.0%
C1 mwait          0.2ms ( 0.1%)         2.54 Ghz     0.0%
C2 mwait          0.8ms ( 0.0%)         2.40 Ghz     0.0%
C3 mwait         35.6ms (99.5%)         1199 Mhz    90.5%

Wakeups-from-idle per second : 33.6     interval: 20.0s                                                                        
Power usage (ACPI estimate): 10.6W (5.4 hours)

Top causes for wakeups:
  54.3% ( 45.0)   [kernel scheduler] Load balancing tick
  11.5% (  9.5)   [kernel core] hrtimer_start (tick_sched_timer)
   9.1% (  7.5)   [ahci] <interrupt>
   6.7% (  5.5)   events/3

	I don't think that 10.6W is a bad result for a core i7 system :). In 
reality though power use is normally a bit higher if I actually DO anything!

> Also: Norbert mentioned to send the HDD to sleep. Does this make sense
> with SSD drives?

	Good question, and one to which I don't really know the answer. You would 
imagine that an SSD uses very little power when it isn't being accessed 
anyway, so any gains that there may be would probably not make up for the 
reduced performance of having to wake it up again.

Adam.


> Thanks!
> 
> Knuth
> 
> ---
> 
> On 10/05/2010 11:16 AM, Adam Hill wrote:
> >> @Adam: I'll so look forward to the new kernel version by Jesse. Where
> >> can I find your bug report to keep me updated on it?
> > 
> > https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29141
> > 
> >> One other question: does the 2.6.34 version of the kernel with your
> >> patch work also for 1600*900 display? I could try this way while I'm
> >> waiting for the new kernel version!
> >> 
> > 	I don't believe that it does, no. There is one person on here with the
> > 
> > 1600x900 panel using it, but why his works I don't know, because a few
> > others have tried without success :(.
> > 
> > Adam.
> > 
> >> Thank you again!
> >> Regards,
> >> 
> >> Matteo
> >> 
> >> 2010/10/5 Adam Hill <sidepipeuk@xxxxxxxxx>:
> >>>        Jesse from Intel updated my bug report earlier to indicate that
> >>>        he
> >>> 
> >>> was making progress and would hopefully have a test kernel at some
> >>> point tomorrow. This is good news, because this should be a "proper"
> >>> fix for the Intel card not relying on secret handshakes and touuching
> >>> your toes depending on how the machine is configured to boot and what
> >>> panel you have.
> >>> 
> >>>        It's too early to say yet whether his updated code will work for
> >>> 
> >>> everyone, but those who are still having issues may as well wait a
> >>> short while to find out, rather continuing to bash their heads against
> >>> walls in frustration! Unfortunately, a new kernel will still need to
> >>> be installed ( and if I get time I'll create some .debs ) but it
> >>> should at least mean that the next versions of the major distros
> >>> should hopefully work out of the box.
> >>> 
> >>> Adam.
> >>> 
> >>> On Tuesday 05 October 2010 05:40:32 Matteo Carminati wrote:
> >>>> Dear Rutger, dear all,
> >>>> 
> >>>> I spent all the day trying to make (at least one of) the graphic cards
> >>>> working properly, but I failed: I still have random colors, even if X
> >>>> seems to work correctly =(
> >>>> 
> >>>> - I updated the system to the last version of all the packages: no
> >>>> problems with it, but it was useless;
> >>>> - I tried to boot with the grub.cfg file posted by K.Posern
> >>>> (https://lists.launchpad.net/sony-vaio-z-series/msg01588.html), but I
> >>>> think it works only for a non-RAID configuration and I do not know how
> >>>> to modify it for my system (add "set gfxpayload=text" seems not to be
> >>>> enough);
> >>>> - Last I tried to install grub1, but again I had some problems and I
> >>>> had to get back to grub2.
> >>>> 
> >>>> I'm wondering why I'm having these problems if Ubuntu 10.10 + grub2
> >>>> works without particoular problems to other users.
> >>>> Do I have to install any particoular package? In which position must
> >>>> be the graphic switch? Should I boot windows before linux?
> >>>> 
> >>>> I hope someone can help me, I'm quite sad about this situation: having
> >>>> a great computer and cannot exploit all its features is really bad.
> >>>> Thank you all again for the support!
> >>>> 
> >>>> Best regards,
> >>>> Matteo
> >>>> 
> >>>> 2010/10/4 Rutger Hendriks <rutgerhendriks@xxxxxxxxx>
> >>>> 
> >>>>> Nice to hear!
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> I use no patches, just the linux16 and initrd16 in grub.cfg. I do not
> >>>>> know why it gives you the wrong colours. I have installed all Ubuntu
> >>>>> updates, maybe that helps for you too? Does X work ok for you?
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> 2010/10/4 Matteo Carminati <carminati.matteo@xxxxxxxxx>:
> >>>>>> Thank you Rutger!
> >>>>>> Following your suggestions I managed to shrink the win7 partition
> >>>>>> and install Ubuntu 10.10, maintaining the original RAID
> >>>>>> configuration. Moreover I hadn't problems installing grub in a
> >>>>>> small /boot partition! Before editing the grub.cfg file I had only
> >>>>>> a black screen, now Ubuntu can boot, but the colours on the screen
> >>>>>> are completely wrong, as they appeared booting from the liveCD
> >>>>>> without nomodeset option.
> >>>>>> What have you done in order to have one of the two graphic cards
> >>>>>> working? Is there any kernel patch to apply, as it was for the 34
> >>>>>> kernel version? Thank you again!
> >>>>>> Best regards,
> >>>>>> Matteo
> >>>>>> 
> >>>>>> 2010/10/2 Rutger Hendriks <rutgerhendriks@xxxxxxxxx>
> >>>>>> 
> >>>>>>> Hi Matteo,
> >>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>> I've seen other people talking about changing the raid config,
> >>>>>>> because installation failed otherwise, but I did not have that
> >>>>>>> problem. So my raid config is still as was originally (4 * 64 in
> >>>>>>> raid0).
> >>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>> In short I did this to install Ubuntu 10.10 64bit beta:
> >>>>>>> - Boot from the Ubuntu 10.10 beta 64bit DVD. This was rather hard
> >>>>>>> because the graphics do not get initialised properly, I think what
> >>>>>>> did the trick was booting to windows first and then booting to the
> >>>>>>> DVD, but it's been a while ago I tried.
> >>>>>>> - Resize the Windows disk. I tried resizing from Windows, but that
> >>>>>>> only allowed me to shrink it by around 100Gb or so. From Linux I
> >>>>>>> could resize to it any value. After resizing you have to boot
> >>>>>>> Windows again to let it scan / fix the ntfs. Then again boot the
> >>>>>>> DVD.
> >>>>>>> - Now I could install Ubuntu 10.10 beta 64bit without problems. The
> >>>>>>> four 64Gb ssd's were named /dev/sda to /dev/sdd. Don't use these
> >>>>>>> directly because they are used in the raid array. Instead use
> >>>>>>> /dev/mapper/xxxx_Volumexxx. Simply add an extended partition to
> >>>>>>> /dev/mapper/xxx_Volume0 and add your Linux partitions in there.
> >>>>>>> These will be named e.g. /dev/mapper/xxx_Volume05, 06 and 07.
> >>>>>>> - I installed grub to /dev/mapper/xxx_Volume0. I think I did that
> >>>>>>> manually because the installer gave an error.
> >>>>>>> - I edited /boot/grub/grub.cfg to change linux to linux16 and
> >>>>>>> initrd to initrd16, and I have added these kernel options:
> >>>>>>> i8042.nopnp acpi_backlight=vendor. I don't need the 'nomodeset'
> >>>>>>> kernel option with the change to linux16 and initrd16. Now I can
> >>>>>>> use the intel graphics correctly, except that brightness does not
> >>>>>>> work yet.
> >>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>> I hope this helps anyone installing Linux while keeping Windows 7
> >>>>>>> up and running.
> >>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>> With kind regards,
> >>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>> Rutger Hendriks
> >>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>> 2010/10/2 Matteo Carminati <carminati.matteo@xxxxxxxxx>:
> >>>>>>>> Thank you all for the answers!
> >>>>>>>> I tried with the beta of ubuntu 10.10, as suggested by Michael,
> >>>>>>>> but I was
> >>>>>>>> not able to force vesa drivers to have a graphical interface nor
> >>>>>>>> to use the
> >>>>>>>> alternate edition to perform a text installation (since the
> >>>>>>>> mirror could not
> >>>>>>>> recognize the maverick release). Am I doing something wrong? Any
> >>>>>>>> other suggestion?
> >>>>>>>> Otherwise, I'll get rid of the and try to install both the OSs,
> >>>>>>>> hoping it
> >>>>>>>> could work.
> >>>>>>>> Best,
> >>>>>>>> Matteo
> >>>>>>>> 2010/9/30 Michael Schramm <michael.schramm@xxxxxxxxx>
> >>>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>>>> Hi
> >>>>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>>>> Have you tried to use the beta of ubuntu 10.10?
> >>>>>>>>> That worked for a friend of mine.
> >>>>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>>>> Br michael
> >>>>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>>>> Am 30.09.2010 19:26 schrieb "Matteo Carminati"
> >>>>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>>>> <carminati.matteo@xxxxxxxxx>:
> >>>>>>>>>> Hi all,
> >>>>>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>>>>> This is my first mail in this mailing-list and I hope I could
> >>>>>>>>>> be helpful
> >>>>>>>>>> in
> >>>>>>>>>> the future, even if I'm not a linux expert, but now I need
> >>>>>>>>>> some help. I bought a VPCZ1290X (4GB RAM - 2x128 GB SSD -
> >>>>>>>>>> 1600x900 screen), a pair
> >>>>>>>>>> of
> >>>>>>>>>> weeks ago and I now want to have linux on it.
> >>>>>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>>>>> I'd like to have both win and a linux distribution on it, but
> >>>>>>>>>> I did not
> >>>>>>>>>> found a way to install linux without deleting the original
> >>>>>>>>>> win7 installation, due to the RAID 0 configuration of the two
> >>>>>>>>>> SSDs that cannot be
> >>>>>>>>>> recognized by all the linux installers I tryed.
> >>>>>>>>>> What I want to do is to disable the RAID 0 configuration in
> >>>>>>>>>> the bios, but I
> >>>>>>>>>> suppose in this way the win7 installation will be corrupted.
> >>>>>>>>>> Is this correct?
> >>>>>>>>>> Is there another way to install both linux and win, preserving
> >>>>>>>>>> the original
> >>>>>>>>>> win7 installation?
> >>>>>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>>>>> Thank you all for the answers!
> >>>>>>>>>> Regards,
> >>>>>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>>>>> Matteo
> >>>>>>>> 
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