What applications might change my power policy?

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1

When I boot my laptop my power policy is pretty normal:

~> cpupower frequency-info
analyzing CPU 4:
  driver: intel_pstate
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 4
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 4
  energy performance preference: balance_power
  hardware limits: 400 MHz - 3.70 GHz
  available cpufreq governors: performance powersave
  current policy: frequency should be within 400 MHz and 3.70 GHz.
                  The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency: 1.90 GHz (asserted by call to kernel)
  boost state support:
    Supported: yes
    Active: yes

However for some unknown reasons, usually after several hours after boot, the policy might be capped to 400MHz to 400MHz. Notice how the performance preference did not change:

analyzing CPU 6:
  driver: intel_pstate
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 6
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 6
  energy performance preference: balance_power
  hardware limits: 400 MHz - 3.70 GHz
  available cpufreq governors: performance powersave
  current policy: frequency should be within 400 MHz and 400 MHz.
                  The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency: 400 MHz (asserted by call to kernel)
  boost state support:
    Supported: yes
    Active: yes

Which renders my laptop pretty sluggish. I’ve never tweaked tuned except happily dragging the “Power Profile” slider in KDE Energy Widget nor did I install any more power-related packages. How can I stop this?

2

NOTE: After fiddling around I suspect a kernel bug here and opened a bugzilla entry:

https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1242113

3

I believe laptops do that when the battery starts loosing power to conserve power. You can set it so that it goes wide open until it dies. I’m not sure how they’re doing it in Tumbleweed these days.

4

Hi

That’s pretty weird. Let’s check which services are running-maybe one of them is messing with your CPU settings.
Try this command:
systemctl list-units --type=service --state=running

5

The result is at:

https://paste.opensuse.org/pastes/736717894146

6

there might be a couple of services limiting your CPU frequency. Let’s check the available power profiles and see which one is currently active. Run these commands:

powerprofilesctl list
powerprofilesctl get

The first command will show all available profiles, and the second will tell you which one is currently in use.

7 
~> powerprofilesctl list
  performance:
    CpuDriver:  intel_pstate
    PlatformDriver:     platform_profile
    Degraded:   no

  balanced:
    CpuDriver:  intel_pstate
    PlatformDriver:     platform_profile

* power-saver:
    CpuDriver:  intel_pstate
    PlatformDriver:     platform_profile
~> powerprofilesctl get
power-saver

None of these profiles will limit my CPU to 400MHz though.

8

I’m not in short of power. My battery sits at 50% at the time of testing.

9

Since it happens after some usage. Maybe temperature is chocking down speed??

10

I found the cause - an annoying weird interaction between PowerTOP and firmware. See bugzilla:

11

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