Dell Thermal mode is not showing up.

[osleg]

I have Dell 9570 with smbios installed and loaded.

$ lsmod G smbios
dell_smbios            28672  2 dell_wmi,dell_laptop
dell_wmi_descriptor    16384  2 dell_wmi,dell_smbios

Also tried to check whether thermal settings are accessible

sudo smbios-thermal-ctl -g
Helper function to Get current Thermal Mode settings

 Print Current Status of Thermal Information: 
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Current Thermal Modes: 
         Balanced

Current Active Acoustic Controller (AAC) Mode: 
         AAC mode Disabled

Current Active Acoustic Controller (AAC) Mode: 
        Global (AAC enable/disable applies to all supported USTT modes)

Current Fan Failure Mode: 

So it seems that thermal should work, yet widget doesn't show thermal settings.

[osleg]

Tried to run the set_perfs.sh script.

$ sudo ./set_prefs.sh -read-all | jq
{
  "cpu_min_perf": "19",
  "cpu_max_perf": "100",
  "cpu_turbo": "true",
  "gpu_min_freq": "350",
  "gpu_max_freq": "1100",
  "gpu_min_limit": "350",
  "gpu_max_limit": "1100",
  "gpu_boost_freq": "1100",
  "gpu_cur_freq": "1100",
  "cpu_governor": "powersave",
  "energy_perf": "balance_performance",
  "thermal_mode": "balanced"
}

So thermal is detected.

[jsalatas]

I have no idea why! lol :) Just guessing: Is there a chance to be just scaling issue? Could you please the latest code? :\ If that guessing doesn't work, we will reconsider :)

[osleg]

After the new version with fixed width I had that line for thermal settings for a moment but after opening pop up again it disappeared once again. I tried to play with display scaling to see maybe some issues with it but nothing helps, the thermal part is just not there.

Is it possible to see any kind of logs for the plasmoid?

[osleg]

here how it looks like btw

[jsalatas]

I guess debug will not help much here. I believe there is some race conditions involved during the creation of the widget and it gets initialized before getting the reading.

I'll look at it. Thanks!

[osleg]

A bit offtopic but, did you ever have different results with different thermal profiles? I just tested and it seems that it spins the fans at the very same speed with any thermal profile.

ontopic: maybe it could be better to test for this at draw time instead of initialization time? I think plasmoids should be able to change content of popup dynamically? (Never wrote a plasmoid hence that's just a wild guess :) )

[jsalatas]

A bit offtopic but, did you ever have different results with different thermal profiles? I just tested and it seems that it spins the fans at the very same speed with any thermal profile.

It makes difference f your system is under load. I have performed some benchmarks using stress-ng that I may share at some time if I ever manage to process them an draw some conclusions. in general it seems that thermal profiles have some maximum fan speed limits which when reached it lowers the cpu speed.

[jsalatas]

maybe it could be better to test for this at draw time instead of initialization time?

lol! Actually I just need to study the Qt documentation more instead of assuming things. :)

[jsalatas]

Could you please try now after checking out the latest code?

Hopefully it will work. If this is not the case, please reopen.

Thanks again!

[osleg]

Nope, still no luck ^_^

[jsalatas]

lol! OK! Let's try to work it out. What distro are you using? where is smbios-thermal-ctl installed?

[osleg]

Arch linux

$ which smbios-thermal-ctl 
/usr/bin/smbios-thermal-ctl

Installed from official package

$ yay -Qi libsmbios
Name            : libsmbios
Version         : 2.4.2-1
Description     : A library for providing access to as much BIOS information as possible
Architecture    : x86_64
URL             : https://github.com/dell/libsmbios
Licenses        : GPL  custom
Groups          : None
Provides        : None
Depends On      : gcc-libs
Optional Deps   : python: tools [installed]
Required By     : fwupd  fwupdate
Optional For    : None
Conflicts With  : None
Replaces        : None
Installed Size  : 914.00 KiB
Packager        : Antonio Rojas <arojas@archlinux.org>
Build Date      : Fri 16 Nov 2018 05:49:29 AM +08
Install Date    : Mon 19 Nov 2018 11:07:53 AM +08
Install Reason  : Installed as a dependency for another package
Install Script  : No
Validated By    : Signature

[jsalatas]

OK! Sorry about this but I guess we need to go step by step. could you please comment out the lines from 146 to 149 in set_prefs.sh script? https://github.com/jsalatas/plasma-pstate/blob/master/gr.ictpro.jsalatas.plasma.pstate/contents/code/set_prefs.sh#L146

if check_dell_thermal; then
    json="${json},\"thermal_mode\":\"${thermal_mode}\""
fi

and replace these with the following?

json="${json},\"thermal_mode\":\"cool-bottom\""

that way we will know if it is bash/shell issue or a qml issue.

[jsalatas]

Just a heads up: performing the above modifications in manjaro when running in a virtual box seems to work.

[osleg]

Yup this change instantly fixed the issue

[jsalatas]

So seems like it's the set_prefs.sh that doesn't send the correct information to qml :\

Can we please try something more? Sorry about that :(

First of all undo the previous change. Then in set_prefs.sh do the following changes: 1) go to line 150 https://github.com/jsalatas/plasma-pstate/blob/master/gr.ictpro.jsalatas.plasma.pstate/contents/code/set_prefs.sh#L150 and add before it the following

echo $json > /tmp/plasma_pstate.debug

2) go to line 146 https://github.com/jsalatas/plasma-pstate/blob/master/gr.ictpro.jsalatas.plasma.pstate/contents/code/set_prefs.sh#L146 and add before it the folowing

if check_dell_thermal; then
    echo "smbios-thermal-ctl found" > /tmp/check_dell_thermal.debug
else
    echo "smbios-thermal-ctl not found" > /tmp/check_dell_thermal.debug
fi

just wait a couple of seconds and look at the files /tmp/check_dell_thermal.debug and /tmp/check_dell_thermal.debug. What are their contents?

[osleg]

$ cat plasma.out | jq
{
  "cpu_min_perf": "19",
  "cpu_max_perf": "100",
  "cpu_turbo": "false",
  "gpu_min_freq": "350",
  "gpu_max_freq": "1100",
  "gpu_min_limit": "350",
  "gpu_max_limit": "1100",
  "gpu_boost_freq": "1100",
  "gpu_cur_freq": "350",
  "cpu_governor": "powersave",
  "energy_perf": "balance_performance"
}

[osleg]

$ cat /tmp/check_dell_thermal.debug 
smbios-thermal-ctl not found

[osleg]

here is the culprit I changed line 17 from smbios-thermal-ctl -g > /tmp/null 2>&1 to smbios-thermal-ctl -g > /tmp/chk_out_res.out 2>&1

$ cat chk_out_res.out 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/smbios-thermal-ctl", line 37, in <module>
    locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, '')
  File "/usr/lib/python3.7/locale.py", line 604, in setlocale
    return _setlocale(category, locale)
locale.Error: unsupported locale setting

LC_ALL under root is

echo $LC_ALL
en_US.UTF-8

Yet running it with sudo LC_ALL is empty. Though that's weird why smbios works when running with sudo from shell :thinking:

[jsalatas]

The error doesn't mean that it sees an empty LC_ALL value. It means that the locale in LC_ALL doesn't exist. You can verify that this is the case by running the following:

sudo LC_ALL='' smbios-thermal-ctl -g

and

sudo LC_ALL='xx_XX' smbios-thermal-ctl -g

where xx_XX maybe whatever non-existent locale. The first command (with the empty LC_ALL) will work but the second will fail if the locale doesn't exist.

You can also try something like the following, which will generate a similar error.

LC_ALL='xx_XX' python -c "import locale; locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, '')"

however the following should work:

LC_ALL='' python -c "import locale; locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, '')"

I could override the LC_ALL variable each time I call the smbios-thermal-ctl but I don't think that I really should try to fix broken/invalid locale settings :\

Please do a search for

  File "/usr/lib/pythonX.Y/locale.py", line nnn, in setlocale
    return _setlocale(category, locale)
locale.Error: unsupported locale setting

which seems to be common issue and I guess you will find the solution.

[osleg]

I see, I fixed it by just adding LC_ALL=C ... before each call to smbios in set_perfs script and now it works :)

[osleg]

Thanks for assistance! <3