Power settings have no effect and offer nonexisting options

[Henning Sprang]

The "power" area of the settings offer three options:

powersave, balanced, and performance.

As per cpufreq-info "balanced" is not a valid option.

Also changing to any of the two really existing options does not change cpu frequency in a visible way.

Maybe there is a connection between this and the bug i reported about the matching indicator: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/indicator-cpufreq/+bug/1977659

I *can* actually switch between the values using the studio-controls application. changing values there leads to visible changes in cpufreq-info output and /proc/cpuinfo data shown.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 22.04
Package: gnome-control-center 1:41.4-1ubuntu13.2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.15.0-35.36-lowlatency 5.15.35
Uname: Linux 5.15.0-35-lowlatency x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu82.1
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: unknown
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Sat Jun 4 20:36:14 2022
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/gnome-control-center
InstallationDate: Installed on 2020-04-12 (782 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 19.10 "Eoan Ermine" - Release amd64 (20191017)
SourcePackage: gnome-control-center
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to jammy on 2022-04-28 (36 days ago)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report. Could you provide the output of
$ powerprofilesctl
and
$ cpupower frequency-info
after changing the profile
?

[Henning Sprang (henning)]

yes, here it is:

$ powerprofilesctl
  performance:
    Driver: platform_profile
    Degraded: no

  balanced:
    Driver: platform_profile

* power-saver:
    Driver: platform_profile

The other command gives me this - but note that I did an update in between and a reboot to another kernel, while the effect reported keeps the same:

$ cpupower frequency-info
WARNING: cpupower not found for kernel 5.15.0-37

  You may need to install the following packages for this specific kernel:
    linux-tools-5.15.0-37-generic
    linux-cloud-tools-5.15.0-37-generic

  You may also want to install one of the following packages to keep up to date:
    linux-tools-generic
    linux-cloud-tools-generic

After inbstalling the tools package for the runinng kernel, i get this output, but still no change from changing the governor in the settings or the matchjing indicator, and both keep telling me the current state is "balanced" which does not exist as governor as far as I understand:

$ cpupower 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 - 4.80 GHz
  available cpufreq governors: performance powersave
  current policy: frequency should be within 800 MHz and 2.30 GHz.
                  The governor "performance" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency: Unable to call hardware
  current CPU frequency: 2.28 GHz (asserted by call to kernel)
  boost state support:
    Supported: yes
    Active: yes

And againgf, when I run the "studio-controls" application, this can change the setting.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Could you give details on the model you are using? There are some upstream issue on thinkpad as https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/hadess/power-profiles-daemon/-/issues/78

[Henning Sprang (henning)]

I have a thinkpad x1 extreme gen2.

I have a bit trouble to exactly understand what I could do with the information from that URL - will try to read it again later with some more time.

What I can confirm ist that thermald reports some kind of incompatibility as far as I understand:

$ sudo journalctl -b -u thermald.service
Jun 08 10:25:34 tp-x1e systemd[1]: Starting Thermal Daemon Service...
Jun 08 10:25:34 tp-x1e thermald[1968]: 22 CPUID levels; family:model:stepping 0x6:9e:d (6:158:13)
Jun 08 10:25:34 tp-x1e thermald[1968]: [/sys/devices/platform/thinkpad_acpi/dytc_lapmode] present: Thermald can't run o>
Jun 08 10:25:34 tp-x1e thermald[1968]: Unsupported cpu model or platform
Jun 08 10:25:34 tp-x1e systemd[1]: thermald.service: Deactivated successfully.
Jun 08 10:25:34 tp-x1e systemd[1]: Started Thermal Daemon Service.

If it should turn out that settings and indicator are unable to change/display the currently used cpu governor, shouldn't they then also avoid to give useres the impression they can?
Or could they be changed to do it the same way as studio-controls do it, as this proves it's basically possible?

Anyway, please let me know if there is anything else I should try to analyse or fix this thing. I will come back and report if I myself find anything, too.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

I don't understand the details of the behaviour it seems an issue with power-profiles-daemon. And yes if the profile fails to change the settings should display the error but it's not clear to me if the service fails or if the action doesn't reflect as you expect. The mentioned ticket seems to discuss details on how the profile impacts performance exactly on some lenovo laptops and also suggests there might be firmware issues on some of those machines

[Henning Sprang (henning)]

OK.
I wonder if this might even be related/have impact on my performance issues that I solved partly with kernel change/config, but still are less than fine on a irelatively new and powerful machine...
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1973434

As written there I suspect - after a lot of trial and error - that my performance problems could have multiple sources layered together.
One indicator for this could be, that they get partially better when using lxde(pure, not lubuntu/lxde-qt, which both are even poorer or dont even start properly) instead of gnome.
(but it could also be that existing prolems with performance only get more visible with gnome-shell which tends to have regular, short CPU load spikes that wouldnt be noticed on proper running powerful systems, but impact hard when there is a low level problem.

I'm also going to try a fresh install as well as a rollback from backup to 21.10 to compare the behaviour as soon as I have time.

[Julien MARY (jmary)]

I can notice a similar problem. The power settings are showing wrongly that the actual cpu governor is powersave where studio controls shows the correct one which is performance. So far changing the governor in power settings has no effect and doesn't trigger an error. It behaves like a politician at not keeping its promises.

At the moment, changing policy is made through a script I made, calling cpufreq-set.
kernel is 5.19.0-1024-lowlatency
The machine is a Dell Precision 3560 with 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7, running 22.04.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Mario Limonciello (superm1)]

At least in the case of systems that support ACPI platform profile this really is a duplicate of the same problem I mentioned in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/power-profiles-daemon/+bug/2046853

I believe the pull request I linked there will help.

Here is a PPA with it added if you want to try.
https://launchpad.net/~superm1/+archive/ubuntu/ppd

[Mario Limonciello (superm1)]

This should be fixed in Noble in power-profiles-daemon 0.20.