[Bug 1885730] Re: Please switch default kernel governor to ondemand, such that advanced userspace utilities such as game-mode can be later used to rev-up to to performance, or rev-down to powersave.

Thu Aug 20 13:41:57 UTC 2020

** Description changed:

- In a recent merge from Debian we lost ondemand.service, meaning all CPUs
- now run in Turbo all the time when idle, which is clearly suboptimal.
+ [Impact]

- The discussion in bug 1806012 seems misleading, focusing on p-state vs
- other drivers, when in fact, the script actually set the default
- governor for the pstate driver on platforms that use pstate. Everything
- below only looks at systems that use pstate.
+  * Kernel should have sensible default governor set to ondemand for the
+ generic & oem kernel flavours in Focal and Groovy+ for amd64.

- pstate has two governors: performance and powerstate. performance runs
- CPU at maximum frequency constantly, and powersave can be configured
- using various energy profiles energy profiles:
+  * ondemand.service must not be shipped by systemd package

- - performance
- - balanced performance
- - balanced power
- - power
+  * kvm, cloud-kernels should continue using performance governor.

- It defaults to balanced performance, I think, but I'm not sure.
+  * Users should be given control to rev-up to performance, or rev-down
+ to powersave using other tools, i.e. game-mode and/or similar CLI or GUI
+ tools (these are scheduled to be integrated on Ubuntu platform later).

- Whether performance governor is faster than powersave governor is not
- even clear. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux50
- -pstate-cpufreq&num=5 benchmarked them, but did not benchmark the
- individual energy profiles.
+ [Test Case]

- For a desktop/laptop, the expected behavior is the powersave governor
- with balanced_performance on AC and balanced_power on battery.
+  * Boot ubuntu generic, hwe, or oem kernel

- I don't know about servers or VMs, but the benchmark series seems to
- indicate it does not really matter much performance wise.
+  * Check that default governor is ondemand

- I think most other distributions configure their kernels to use the
- powersave governor by default, whereas we configure it to use the
- performance governor and then switch it later in the boot to get the
- maximum performance during bootup. It's not clear to me that's actually
- useful.
+  * Check that ondemand.service is not active
+ 
+ [Regression Potential]
+ 
+  * ondemand governor is the best kernel default as recently analyzed by
+ colin king, it gives a balance bootspeed and power, giving as responsive
+ machines whilst not wasting power. It is the best experience we can give
+ our users by default.
+ 
+ [Other Info]
+  
+  * It is up to the user to elect/switch to powersave for maximum battery life, or to the performance for maximum processing power (i.e. gaming / computation).

** Summary changed:

- Please switch default kernel governor to ondemand, such that advanced userspace utilities such as game-mode can be later used to rev-up to to performance, or rev-down to powersave.
+ Please switch default, hwe, oem kernel flavours governor to CONFIG_CPU_FREQ_DEFAULT_GOV_ONDEMAND=y , such that advanced userspace utilities such as game-mode can be later used to rev-up to to performance, or rev-down to powersave.

** Description changed:

  [Impact]

-  * Kernel should have sensible default governor set to ondemand for the
- generic & oem kernel flavours in Focal and Groovy+ for amd64.
+  * Kernel should have sensible default governor set to
+ CONFIG_CPU_FREQ_DEFAULT_GOV_ONDEMAND=y for the generic & oem kernel
+ flavours in Focal and Groovy+ for amd64.

-  * ondemand.service must not be shipped by systemd package
+  * ondemand.service must not be shipped by systemd package

-  * kvm, cloud-kernels should continue using performance governor.
+  * kvm, cloud-kernels should continue using performance governor.

-  * Users should be given control to rev-up to performance, or rev-down
+  * Users should be given control to rev-up to performance, or rev-down
  to powersave using other tools, i.e. game-mode and/or similar CLI or GUI
  tools (these are scheduled to be integrated on Ubuntu platform later).

  [Test Case]

-  * Boot ubuntu generic, hwe, or oem kernel
+  * Boot ubuntu generic, hwe, or oem kernel

-  * Check that default governor is ondemand
+  * Check that default governor is ondemand

-  * Check that ondemand.service is not active
+  * Check that ondemand.service is not active

  [Regression Potential]

-  * ondemand governor is the best kernel default as recently analyzed by
+  * ondemand governor is the best kernel default as recently analyzed by
  colin king, it gives a balance bootspeed and power, giving as responsive
  machines whilst not wasting power. It is the best experience we can give
  our users by default.

  [Other Info]
-  
-  * It is up to the user to elect/switch to powersave for maximum battery life, or to the performance for maximum processing power (i.e. gaming / computation).
+ 
+  * It is up to the user to elect/switch to powersave for maximum battery
+ life, or to the performance for maximum processing power (i.e. gaming /
+ computation).

** Description changed:

  [Impact]

   * Kernel should have sensible default governor set to
  CONFIG_CPU_FREQ_DEFAULT_GOV_ONDEMAND=y for the generic & oem kernel
- flavours in Focal and Groovy+ for amd64.
+ flavours in Focal and Groovy+.

   * ondemand.service must not be shipped by systemd package

   * kvm, cloud-kernels should continue using performance governor.

   * Users should be given control to rev-up to performance, or rev-down
  to powersave using other tools, i.e. game-mode and/or similar CLI or GUI
  tools (these are scheduled to be integrated on Ubuntu platform later).

  [Test Case]

   * Boot ubuntu generic, hwe, or oem kernel

   * Check that default governor is ondemand

   * Check that ondemand.service is not active

  [Regression Potential]

   * ondemand governor is the best kernel default as recently analyzed by
  colin king, it gives a balance bootspeed and power, giving as responsive
  machines whilst not wasting power. It is the best experience we can give
  our users by default.

  [Other Info]

   * It is up to the user to elect/switch to powersave for maximum battery
  life, or to the performance for maximum processing power (i.e. gaming /
  computation).

** Description changed:

  [Impact]

   * Kernel should have sensible default governor set to
- CONFIG_CPU_FREQ_DEFAULT_GOV_ONDEMAND=y for the generic & oem kernel
- flavours in Focal and Groovy+.
+ CONFIG_CPU_FREQ_DEFAULT_GOV_ONDEMAND=y for the generic, hwe, raspi,
+ riscv64, oem kernel flavours in Focal and Groovy+.

   * ondemand.service must not be shipped by systemd package

-  * kvm, cloud-kernels should continue using performance governor.
+  * ppc64el, kvm / cloud-kernels should continue using performance
+ governor.

   * Users should be given control to rev-up to performance, or rev-down
  to powersave using other tools, i.e. game-mode and/or similar CLI or GUI
  tools (these are scheduled to be integrated on Ubuntu platform later).

  [Test Case]

   * Boot ubuntu generic, hwe, or oem kernel

   * Check that default governor is ondemand

   * Check that ondemand.service is not active

  [Regression Potential]

   * ondemand governor is the best kernel default as recently analyzed by
  colin king, it gives a balance bootspeed and power, giving as responsive
  machines whilst not wasting power. It is the best experience we can give
  our users by default.

  [Other Info]

   * It is up to the user to elect/switch to powersave for maximum battery
  life, or to the performance for maximum processing power (i.e. gaming /
  computation).

** Description changed:

  [Impact]

   * Kernel should have sensible default governor set to
  CONFIG_CPU_FREQ_DEFAULT_GOV_ONDEMAND=y for the generic, hwe, raspi,
  riscv64, oem kernel flavours in Focal and Groovy+.

   * ondemand.service must not be shipped by systemd package

-  * ppc64el, kvm / cloud-kernels should continue using performance
- governor.
+  * ppc64el, kvm flavour, cloud-kernels flavours should continue using
+ performance governor.

   * Users should be given control to rev-up to performance, or rev-down
  to powersave using other tools, i.e. game-mode and/or similar CLI or GUI
  tools (these are scheduled to be integrated on Ubuntu platform later).

  [Test Case]

   * Boot ubuntu generic, hwe, or oem kernel

   * Check that default governor is ondemand

   * Check that ondemand.service is not active

  [Regression Potential]

   * ondemand governor is the best kernel default as recently analyzed by
  colin king, it gives a balance bootspeed and power, giving as responsive
  machines whilst not wasting power. It is the best experience we can give
  our users by default.

  [Other Info]

   * It is up to the user to elect/switch to powersave for maximum battery
  life, or to the performance for maximum processing power (i.e. gaming /
  computation).

** Also affects: linux-riscv (Ubuntu)
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

** Also affects: linux-oem-5.6 (Ubuntu)
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1885730

Title:
  Please switch default, hwe, oem kernel flavours governor to
  CONFIG_CPU_FREQ_DEFAULT_GOV_ONDEMAND=y , such that advanced userspace
  utilities such as game-mode can be later used to rev-up to to
  performance, or rev-down to powersave.

Status in linux package in Ubuntu:
  In Progress
Status in linux-oem-5.6 package in Ubuntu:
  New
Status in linux-riscv package in Ubuntu:
  New
Status in systemd package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid
Status in linux source package in Focal:
  Triaged
Status in linux-oem-5.6 source package in Focal:
  New
Status in linux-riscv source package in Focal:
  New
Status in systemd source package in Focal:
  Fix Released
Status in linux source package in Groovy:
  In Progress
Status in linux-oem-5.6 source package in Groovy:
  New
Status in linux-riscv source package in Groovy:
  New
Status in systemd source package in Groovy:
  Invalid

Bug description:
  [Impact]

   * Kernel should have sensible default governor set to
  CONFIG_CPU_FREQ_DEFAULT_GOV_ONDEMAND=y for the generic, hwe, raspi,
  riscv64, oem kernel flavours in Focal and Groovy+.

   * ondemand.service must not be shipped by systemd package

   * ppc64el, kvm flavour, cloud-kernels flavours should continue using
  performance governor.

   * Users should be given control to rev-up to performance, or rev-down
  to powersave using other tools, i.e. game-mode and/or similar CLI or
  GUI tools (these are scheduled to be integrated on Ubuntu platform
  later).

  [Test Case]

   * Boot ubuntu generic, hwe, or oem kernel

   * Check that default governor is ondemand

   * Check that ondemand.service is not active

  [Regression Potential]

   * ondemand governor is the best kernel default as recently analyzed
  by colin king, it gives a balance bootspeed and power, giving as
  responsive machines whilst not wasting power. It is the best
  experience we can give our users by default.

  [Other Info]

   * It is up to the user to elect/switch to powersave for maximum
  battery life, or to the performance for maximum processing power (i.e.
  gaming / computation).

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