SACF

NAME

sacf - Simple Auto CPU Frequencer

SYNOPSIS

sacf [ -blrtTv ] [ -g governor ]

DESCRIPTION

sacf is a simple program that only changes two things: the governor and turbo boost state; depending on the cpu load, system load and the temperature. Machines that have a battery and most of the time depend on it are the target, but since it reduces the power consumption in general it can be beneficial, in theory.

sacf will run only if /var/run/sacf.lock doesn’t exist, created when run. This is to avoid multiple instances of sacf run at the same time. The lock is ignored if any cli option is used but -b or --daemon is used.

Currently, supported platform is linux (no BSD’s).

It requires root access in order to write to the pseudofilesystem /sys to change the turbo boost and the kernel governor.

OPTIONS

Without any arguments, sacf will run every interval seconds forever.

• -b, –daemon: Daemonize process, forks into the background.
• -g, –governor governor: Sets governor to all cpus, then exit.
• -l, –list: Print stats about the system, then exit (can be run without root).
• -r, –run-once: Run once, then exit.
• -t, –enable-turbo: Enables turbo boost for all cpus, then exit.
• -T, –disable-turbo: Disables turbo boost for all cpus, then exit.
• -v, –version: Print the version number and exit.

NOTES

Some general tips about battery:

• Using turbo boost will, most likely, fire up the fans on your machine, at least lightly in a constant use of it.
• Overheating usually appears in machines that handle a big workload (usage), are using AC and have their CPUs running at the max. Using sacf, you could avoid this by setting the acturbo to Never, and setting the acgovernor to powersave or the similar.

CONFIGURATION

sacf is customized by creating a custom config.h and (re)compiling the source code. This keeps it simple, since reading a config file isn’t that hard (but adds unneeded complexity), and in many aspects more customizable. I try my best to comment about the variables in config.h, since they don’t do anything crazy, so it should be very straight foward what does what.

SEE ALSO

tpl(1)

BUGS

https://github.com/explosion-mental/sacf https://codeberg.org/explosion-mental/sacf

This work is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.0, unless specified otherwise. Year: 2022