[ltp] Is it just me or is ACPId way, way too verbose?

[Ryan Turner]

Michael Karcher wrote:
> I don't know about any way to make acpid not log such events, I am
> sorry; however, this is strange, probably your ACPI BIOS (mainly DSDT)
> does really strange things. A CPU 0x00000080 notification should be
> issued by the ACPI hardware to the operating system not when the
> frequency of the processor has been changed, but only when the list of
> available frequencies to choose from has changed (See ACPI Specification
> 3.0a, page 144). This usually happens on some laptops when
> plugging/unplugging the power supply, as on battery the highest
> frequencies might be unavailable. It might also be an attempt to tell
> the operating system about thermal issues detected by the ACPI hardware,
> that caused the ACPI firmware to limit processor speed, although the
> regular way to do that is to have a thermal zone device that is
> connected to a processor device instead of changing the P state
> (frequency) table.
> 
> Did you check whether your BIOS is up-to-date? Do you have unusually
> high core temperatures? (Use the coretemp module to directly access the
> thermal monitor included in Intel's Core processors).
> 
> Regards,
>   Michael Karcher

Actually, now that you mention it...

I ran a couple of tests today to see when this happens. It only seems to 
start logging lots of messages after a minute or two of intense 
processing. (I compiled X.org as a test) The temperature gauge would 
rise from idle 35C to 70C where CPUFREQ would force scale the cores to 
1.0Ghz. Then messages start to appear in syslog. Given these results, it 
may actually be an overheating issue. What's odd is it never goes past 
70C. a year or so ago it was common for the CPU to reach over 100C. (I 
know that's very bad, IBM has replaced the processor since then.)

If ACPI changes the number of available frequencies when the CPU gets 
too hot, that could explain the "Available CPU frequencies changed"messages.

-- Ryan