How/why would dev.cpu.0.freq_levels change??!?

[David Wolfskill]

OK; I've managed to demonstrate a few things:

* Stopping powerd before the phenomenon occurs does not prevent
  dev.cpu.0.freq_levels from changing, though it does appear to prevent
  dev.cpu.0.freq from changing:
  g1-60(6.3-S)[1] sysctl dev.cpu.0.freq_levels dev.cpu.0.freq
  dev.cpu.0.freq_levels: 1200/0 1050/0 900/0 750/0 600/0 450/0 300/0 150/0
  dev.cpu.0.freq: 2400
  g1-60(6.3-S)[2] 

* As you can see, this can lead to the "interesting" situation that the
  current CPU frequency is higher than the maximum "available."

* The phenomenon is not limited to when I run RELENG_6; in an effort to
  avoid the continuous fan whine, I tried running RELENG_7 for a while,
  and encountered a recurrence rather quickly.  :-(

* I tried firing up the Dell diagnostics; they reported OK for each of
  the CPU & motherboard fans at high speed, but when the diags tried to
  switch to low speed, they reported that the fans only went down (from
  10-11K RPM) to about 7K RPM instead of 5K RPM.  (They reported that
  everything else was working "optimally."  Since their serial port test
  is known to be inadequate -- it makes no attempt to actually use the
  serial port to send or receive data at all -- I don't know how much that
  assessment is actually worth.)

I still don't know what the problems are, but it's apparent that
something outside FreeBSD's control is misbehaving.  Given that, I
suppose it would be unreasonable to expect FreeBSD to compensate
in an attempt to enforce rationality.  :-(

Which still leaves me wondering what type(s) of evasive actions
make sense: I've become rather accustomed to using a laptop with a
1600x1200 screen, and finding another laptop similarly-equipped
(but newer) at a reasoonable price that will run FreeBSD well appears
to be somewhat of a challenge.  I'm open to suggestions.

Maybe I should just see if the local laptop repair place can fix it. :-(

Peace,
david
-- 
David H. Wolfskill				david at catwhisker.org
I submit that "conspiracy" would be an appropriate collective noun for cats.

See http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/publickey.gpg for my public key.
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