Tuned-ppd vs tlp

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1

I used ppd, tlp and tuned-ppd (which Fedora is currently shipping). I use powertop to check tunables. When I use tlp, usually powertop shows that every tunable is good. When I use ppd or tuned-ppd, the result is like this:

Screenshot_20241231_221431
Screenshot_20241231_2214311141×727 174 KB

Is it normal? Is tlp more efficient on some areas?

1 Like
3

For that very reason I activate the powertop service in Fedora 41:

sudo systemctl --now enable powertop

That runs a “powertop --auto-tune” at boot up time. It’s not perfect, sometimes I see a lot of the PM runtime ones are still “Bad”, and powertop 2.15.9 has a bug I wrote up about it turning optical mice off.

My bug in bugzilla,
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2300988

related upstream bug,

It’s in ASSIGNED mode still on that bug. I work around that by having a drop-in added to my powertop service so it runs a script I wrote.

#!/bin/bash
# /usr/local/bin/powertop-mouse.sh
# powertop-mouse.sh -- tries to deal with the mouse fix on different ports
# related to systemd powertop service

for pf in /sys/bus/usb/devices/?-?/product
do
    # this might not be portable to all mouses, maybe some don't result in a "product" file?, but the one I have
    # matching $pf/../power/control to 'on'
    # At the worst, this would just not set the control to 'on'
    if  grep -qi mouse $pf; then
        parent="$(dirname $pf)"
        #echo "$parent points to a mouse"
        #cat $pf
        if [[ $(id -u) -gt 0 ]]; then
            # ordinary user running it would just see the dryrun to see where
            # the mouse is
            echo "$0  DRYRUN set 'on' for mouse in $parent/power/control"
        else
            echo "$0 set 'on' for mouse in $parent/power/control"
            echo "on" > $parent/power/control
        fi
        exit 0
    fi
done
exit 1

It’s complicated because I wanted the mouse not being turned off to work for any USB port. If you always have it on the same port, the script isn’t needed and you can do it all in the systemd drop-in file at /etc/systemd/system/powertop.service.d/override.conf. The below shows the “one-line, no script” way commented in and the script commented out assuming the mouse is on USB “1-1”

cat /etc/systemd/system/powertop.service.d/override.conf

[Unit]
Wants=tuned.target
After=tuned.target

[Service]
ExecStartPost=bash -c 'echo "on" > /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-1/power/control'
#ExecStartPost=/usr/local/bin/powertop-mouse.sh
4

The only problem with powertop, it sets CPU freq from 4ghz to 2.1(base clock)ghz. This is why I do not like it. Tlp work well, i works dynamically. 4ghz will be available plus all good tunables

5

I’m using tuned and powertop in combo:

tuned-adm active → balanced
and then powertop as the service (just does the “–auto-tune” at boot time, nothing dynamic about it at all).

I don’t see evidence the base clock is pushed down, the Max and Min clocks shown by “lscpu” look normal but my cpu is old (Skylake i7-6700HQ)