Bug#877016: Time to drop cpufrequtils?

[Phil Susi]

Package: cpufrequtils
Version: 008-1

In your last changelog entry from 2012, you mentioned that this should
be the last time this package is packaged, as it was being replaced by
cpupowerutils. It appears that cpupowerutils is part of the upstream
kernel source and built in the linux-tools-xxversionxx package. If this
is the case, should cpufrequtils not be removed now?

[Mattia Dongili]

On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 03:16:52PM -0400, Phil Susi wrote:
> Package: cpufrequtils
> Version: 008-1
...

> is the case, should cpufrequtils not be removed now?

Yes, indeed it should. Thanks for nagging.
There's a little more work required to smooth the transition.

$ apt-cache rdepends cpufrequtils
cpufrequtils
Reverse Depends:
cpufreqd
powertop
pm-utils
mate-applets
parl-desktop-strict

parl-desktop-strict Conflicts, mate-applets Recommends, the rest
Suggests

popcon:
https://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=cpufrequtils
https://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=linux-cpupower

libcpufreq0 is a bit more complicated as there are packages linking to
it: mate-applets gnome-applets gkrellm-cpufreq cpufreqd.

I'll start filing bugs there to request changing the build dependencies,
though effectively libcpupower is not providing the same symbols as
libcpufreq.

Would you want to help with any of this?

Thanks
--
mattia
:wq!

[Phil Susi]

On 9/28/2017 9:51 AM, Mattia Dongili wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 03:16:52PM -0400, Phil Susi wrote:
>> Package: cpufrequtils
>> Version: 008-1
> ...
>> is the case, should cpufrequtils not be removed now?
>
> Yes, indeed it should. Thanks for nagging.
> There's a little more work required to smooth the transition.
>
> $ apt-cache rdepends cpufrequtils
> cpufrequtils
> Reverse Depends:
> cpufreqd
> powertop
> pm-utils
> mate-applets
> parl-desktop-strict

Are the tools from the kernel package a drop in replacement so will
satisfy these depends? If so then maybe we just need a Replaces: or
Provides: added to the kernel package?

[Mattia Dongili]

Functionality wise, yes, cpupower provides what cpufrequtils used to.
The binaries have different names.
E.g.:

$ cpufreq-info -c 0
cpufrequtils 008: cpufreq-info (C) Dominik Brodowski 2004-2009
Report errors and bugs to cpu...@vger.kernel.org, please.
analyzing CPU 0:
driver: intel_pstate
CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0
CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0
maximum transition latency: 0.97 ms.
hardware limits: 800 MHz - 3.00 GHz
available cpufreq governors: performance, powersave
current policy: frequency should be within 800 MHz and 3.00 GHz.
The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
within this range.
current CPU frequency is 1.41 GHz.


$ cpupower -c 0 frequency-info
analyzing CPU 0:
driver: intel_pstate
CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0
CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0
maximum transition latency: Cannot determine or is not supported.
hardware limits: 800 MHz - 3.00 GHz
available cpufreq governors: performance powersave
current policy: frequency should be within 800 MHz and 3.00 GHz.
The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
within this range.
current CPU frequency: Unable to call hardware
current CPU frequency: 1.42 GHz (asserted by call to kernel)
boost state support:
Supported: yes
Active: yes

I notice some differences in the output too (transition latency and an error about frequency).

--
mattia
:wq!

[Mike Gabriel]

Hi all,

On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 06:51:30 -0700 Mattia Dongili <mala...@linux.it> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 03:16:52PM -0400, Phil Susi wrote:
> > Package: cpufrequtils
> > Version: 008-1
> ...
> > is the case, should cpufrequtils not be removed now?
>
> Yes, indeed it should. Thanks for nagging.
> There's a little more work required to smooth the transition.
>
> $ apt-cache rdepends cpufrequtils
> cpufrequtils
> Reverse Depends:
> cpufreqd
> powertop
> pm-utils
> mate-applets
> parl-desktop-strict

Just FTR, mate-applets in Debian unstable is about to switch to
libcpupower-dev with the next upload. You can wipe if off the above list.

Greets,
Mike

[Moritz Mühlenhoff]

severity 877016 serious
thanks

Am Thu, Sep 28, 2017 at 06:51:30AM -0700 schrieb Mattia Dongili:
> On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 03:16:52PM -0400, Phil Susi wrote:
> > Package: cpufrequtils
> > Version: 008-1
> ...
> > is the case, should cpufrequtils not be removed now?
>
> Yes, indeed it should. Thanks for nagging.

Bumping the severity to RC to move forward with this for trixie.

Cheers,
Moritz

[邓景元]

Two scripts in cpufrequtils are needed to run debian pc/laptop correctly. They are /etc/init.d/cpufrequtils and /etc/init.d/loadcpufreq .

These two SysV scripts are used to load kernel modules of cpu frequency scaling governors correctly. For some other distributions, because they build scaling governors into kernel so they do not have such problem. However, Debian kernel build them as module so that we need a script to modprobe them.

These two scripts are broken after kernel 6.6 because changes of Debian kernel conifg. You can see this problem at #1060238 ( https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1060238 ) . Kernel team does not think they need to change config from m to y, so that here we still need some scripts.

Now there are three options:

1. Keep the package cpufrequtils and fix the bug ( I have written a patch to fix it)

2. Move the scripts to another package and fix the bug

3. Write new scripts to modprobe the modules, hopefully we can get rid of sysV scripts.

Thanks

[Pkreuzt]

Cpupower (linux-cpupower package) is the natural replacement for cpufrequtils and it seems capable of autoloading governors alone. I think all we need is a systemd service and a sample config file for it, as provided by cpufrequtils.

See my own wish report on it:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=894906

Also see the way Arch does this:

https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/linux-tools