Intel CPU frequency scaling and boost mode?

[Alex Smirnoff]

Hi fellow qubes users,

I just installed (not to say it was easy) Qubes on gen10 intel NUC.
It has a "mobile" type CPU, 1.6Ghz with turbo boost up to 4GHz.
However, Xentop never shows frequencies higher than 1.6 no matter if I have a CPU-intensive task or not. Does turbo boost work as expected?

Also, I have an arduino-based analog meter controlled by USB I used on my previous systems to collect and display system load metering. However, most of the data is available in dom0 only. What is the best practice to send it to an AppVM?

[Jarrah]

> I just installed (not to say it was easy) Qubes on gen10 intel NUC.
> It has a "mobile" type CPU, 1.6Ghz with turbo boost up to 4GHz.
> However, Xentop never shows frequencies higher than 1.6 no matter if I have
> a CPU-intensive task or not. Does turbo boost work as expected?

There is a lengthy discussion at 
https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/4604 about this with some
potential fixes.

I just resolved a similar issue on 4.1 where my laptop was locked to 800
MHz. The `xen-acpi-processor` kernel module was the problem there. Your
issue may be something else, but that thread is likely the best place to
find information about it.

[Alex Smirnoff]

Tried to modprobe it explicitly, does not load :-/

[Alex Smirnoff]

Though I played a bit with xenpm and apparently frequency scaling works as intended! It is just not reported properly even to dom0.

[adrian...@gmail.com]

Hi there - I am struggling to get past the boot screen with my gen10 intel - care to share any helpful tips of how things worked for you that might be helpful?

[Alex Smirnoff]

Ah. As I said, it is all tricky. First, enable legacy boot. It is greyed out in bios setup; you need to turn off "modern standby" first. Now you can boot.

But, it is going to be 800x600 and no network (neither wired or wireless). On the next step you need a USB network card. Once you get *some* network, do sudo qubes-dom0-update kernel-latest kernel-latest-qubes-vm. Then edit /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/xen.cfg and get rid of rhgb, it is broken.

And if you are lucky, you now have a working system!

I wonder why Qubes does not have offline update mechanism or more recent installation media. All this crazy stuff reminds me of installing Slackware in 1996 on a random hardware from local flea market.