Processor Problems?

[awgord]

@cwsnyder

I was pretty sure that Windows was using all cores as the "Performance" tab of Task Manager shows 3 live graphs for CPU Usage History, and watching the CPU Usage bar graph in Windows while going through start up, it rarely goes over 50% for very long as compared to watching the system monitor in Ubuntu Studio and doing anything from opening a web page to minimizing it causes the lone orange CPU monitor to top out at 100%.

Still though, I watched your video and went through the registry to change the values that were mentioned in there.

During the reboot, I looked at the GRUB editor and did not see anything that said maxcpu=1.

I'm back in Windows right now, and it seems to run a bit faster thanks to your suggestion for the registry edit. I'm about to log out and back in to Ubuntu to see if that made a difference.



@Doug

I don't see anything in my BIOS regarding CPU cores, the only thing I see is "Enable ACPI" which is enabled. Now, again, I'm not sure if that pertains to CPU's or not, I'm just going by what I read in regards to trying to find an answer before coming to the forums, and that was a suggestion that someone had made to someone else.


I thank you both for your help in trying to remedy this problem, and will now boot up in to Ubuntu to see if CW's solution had an effect in Ubuntu.



UPDATE: Nothing has changed

[Doug S]

I did not realize that your computer was dual boot, and it is easy for you to do back to windows. Obviously if the thress cores are being used by windows, then they are not disabled in BIOS.
When you were searching around did you notice some references to USB hubs and problems? Do you have a USB hub and if yes, can you try to remove it? Otherwise I am out of ideas, except to maybe try version 10.04.

[cwsnyder]

One last try from http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/debian-...e-hotplug-cpu/ and http://www.upubuntu.com/2011/09/how-...ntudebian.html : open a terminal and enter the following

cd /sys/devices/system/cpu
ls -l

(that is the lower case L) The listing should match something like

cws@debian:/sys/devices/system/cpu$ ls -l
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root    0 Nov 15 13:13 cpu0
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root    0 Nov 15 15:02 cpu1
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root    0 Nov 15 15:02 cpu2
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root    0 Nov 15 15:02 cpufreq
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root    0 Nov 15 15:02 cpuidle
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 15 15:02 kernel_max
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 15 15:02 modalias
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 15 15:02 offline
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 15 15:02 online
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 15 15:02 possible
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root    0 Nov 15 15:02 power
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 15 15:02 present
--w------- 1 root root 4096 Nov 15 15:02 probe
--w------- 1 root root 4096 Nov 15 15:02 release
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 15 13:09 sched_mc_power_savings
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 15 15:02 uevent
cws@debian:/sys/devices/system/cpu$

To turn on cpu1 or cpu2, you write a 1 to their corresponding online subdirectory, as for example:

cws@debian:/sys/devices/system/cpu$ echo 1 | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online
cws@debian:/sys/devices/system/cpu$ sudo grep "processor" /proc/cpuinfo

[Doug S]

Ya, I saw that, or similair, last night. In the example I saw there was no listing for cpu1 and cpu2 when they were not detected at startup.

But please try it and let us know what you get on your system.

[awgord]

Okay, so I did as you suggested CW and this is what I got:

andy@Andy-PC-Ubuntu:~$ cd /sys/devices/system/cpu
andy@Andy-PC-Ubuntu:/sys/devices/system/cpu$ ls -l
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root    0 Nov 15 09:32 cpu0
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root    0 Nov 15 15:33 cpufreq
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root    0 Nov 15 15:33 cpuidle
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 15 15:37 kernel_max
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 15 15:37 modalias
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 15 15:37 offline
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 15 15:32 online
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 15 15:37 possible
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root    0 Nov 15 15:37 power
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 15 15:37 present
--w------- 1 root root 4096 Nov 15 15:37 probe
--w------- 1 root root 4096 Nov 15 15:37 release
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Nov 15 15:32 uevent
andy@Andy-PC-Ubuntu:/sys/devices/system/cpu$

However, when I tried to run the next command, this was the result:

andy@Andy-PC-Ubuntu:/sys/devices/system/cpu$ echo 1 | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online
tee: /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online: No such file or directory
1
andy@Andy-PC-Ubuntu:/sys/devices/system/cpu$

I thought maybe something was wrong with the install, so I tried running the OS right off the disc (Try before Installing) but, no, it still only sees one core.

As for a USB hub, my keyboard has 2 extra USB ports, one of which I use for my mouse, but that is all for a hub that I have. Not sure if that would be a problem, but hell, I'll try anything - although I hope it's not the keyboard, as my back up is..... not as nice lol


I'll let you know how it goes, thanks guys.

[awgord]

I did not realize that your computer was dual boot, and it is easy for you to do back to windows. Obviously if the thress cores are being used by windows, then they are not disabled in BIOS.
When you were searching around did you notice some references to USB hubs and problems? Do you have a USB hub and if yes, can you try to remove it? Otherwise I am out of ideas, except to maybe try version 10.04.

And THERE you have it..... the problem was indeed a USB hub - unhooked my Logitech G15 keyboard and plugged in an older keyboard with no extra USB ports, reboot, and there we have it - all 3 processors are now being used...

andy@Andy-PC-Ubuntu:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor	: 0
vendor_id	: AuthenticAMD
cpu family	: 16
model		: 2
model name	: AMD Phenom(tm) 8400 Triple-Core Processor
stepping	: 2
microcode	: 0x1000065
cpu MHz		: 1050.000
cache size	: 512 KB
physical id	: 0
siblings	: 3
core id		: 0
cpu cores	: 3
apicid		: 0
initial apicid	: 0
fpu		: yes
fpu_exception	: yes
cpuid level	: 5
wp		: yes
flags		: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow constant_tsc rep_good nopl nonstop_tsc extd_apicid pni monitor cx16 popcnt lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw ibs hw_pstate npt lbrv svm_lock
bogomips	: 4199.82
TLB size	: 1024 4K pages
clflush size	: 64
cache_alignment	: 64
address sizes	: 48 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: ts ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps hwpstate

processor	: 1
vendor_id	: AuthenticAMD
cpu family	: 16
model		: 2
model name	: AMD Phenom(tm) 8400 Triple-Core Processor
stepping	: 2
microcode	: 0x1000065
cpu MHz		: 1050.000
cache size	: 512 KB
physical id	: 0
siblings	: 3
core id		: 1
cpu cores	: 3
apicid		: 1
initial apicid	: 1
fpu		: yes
fpu_exception	: yes
cpuid level	: 5
wp		: yes
flags		: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow constant_tsc rep_good nopl nonstop_tsc extd_apicid pni monitor cx16 popcnt lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw ibs hw_pstate npt lbrv svm_lock
bogomips	: 4199.82
TLB size	: 1024 4K pages
clflush size	: 64
cache_alignment	: 64
address sizes	: 48 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: ts ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps hwpstate

processor	: 2
vendor_id	: AuthenticAMD
cpu family	: 16
model		: 2
model name	: AMD Phenom(tm) 8400 Triple-Core Processor
stepping	: 2
microcode	: 0x1000065
cpu MHz		: 1050.000
cache size	: 512 KB
physical id	: 0
siblings	: 3
core id		: 2
cpu cores	: 3
apicid		: 2
initial apicid	: 2
fpu		: yes
fpu_exception	: yes
cpuid level	: 5
wp		: yes
flags		: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow constant_tsc rep_good nopl nonstop_tsc extd_apicid pni monitor cx16 popcnt lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw ibs hw_pstate npt lbrv svm_lock
bogomips	: 4199.82
TLB size	: 1024 4K pages
clflush size	: 64
cache_alignment	: 64
address sizes	: 48 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: ts ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps hwpstate

Thank you so much Doug, and you too CW, I really appreciate the help!

Now to find a fix to use my G15... off I go!

Thanks again!

[Doug S]

Glad you got it figured out, and thanks so much for reporting back. Very often we never hear back if the issue got solved or how.

By the way, I think this one was more advanced than typical first postings. Well done in sticking with it to the end.

[awgord]

Thanks again Doug, really though, I don't think I would have thought of the keyboard (USB hub) thing as in all the searching I did, I really can't recall seeing anything mentioned about problems with USB hubs.

Seems rather silly when you think about it, or at least it does for me when I think about it, that for some reason a keyboard with 2 extra USB hubs would cause 2 cores of your processor to not be usable.

Oh well, I'm sure I'll be able to find a fix for that and will have my G15 up and running again! If not, well, I've been kind of wanting a new keyboard for a while now anyway