
Powertweak-Linux FAQ v1.03
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Q. After running Powertweak, my system seems slower.
   How come? How can I fix this?
A. Check the /var/log/powertweak.log file. In the only reports of this I've
   recieved so far, Powertweak hasn't changed _anything_.


Q. When I check the log file it seems nothing has been optimised.
A. This could be because of several things..
    1. Powertweak is still a young project, and it's hardware
       database is constantly evolving.
       If your hardware isn't recognised yet, why not try creating
       tweaks yourself ? Get the technical documents for your device,
       and read the sections about PCI configuration space registers.
       If you need further help, or have done something worthwhile, send
       it to the powertweak mailing list, or direct to dave@powertweak.com
    2. The device has no registers that are tweakable.
       Although you could try adjusting the latency register.
    3. Your BIOS already tunes things to their optimal settings.
       (I've yet to see one that does)
    4. You haven't changed the powertweak.config file.
       Try changing some settings from 0 to 1. Note, that the entries
       that are zero by default are done so because they could cause
       some problems. Please report any bad things that happen to the
       mailing list.


Q. What are the best settings for my system ?
A. The values that are currently in the pci.tweaks are set to default safe
   values.  When the GUI is finished, it will recommend the best setting for
   each option. Until then, you'll have to experiment to find the best settings
   for your system.


Q. There's a message when I run the GUI saying "I need noodlez!".
A. When I wrote this, it was the first GTK programming I had done, and hadn't
   eaten for some time. I was _hungry_. There is no noodlez.tgz, noodlez.rpm
   or similar. Please understand it was just a test message to see if I had
   got my head around the GTK text widget properly.


Q. What happened to pci.tweaks ?
A. This proved problematic for several reasons.
   1. Some C compilers (notably later egcs revisions, gcc 2.95 & 2.95.1)
      miscompiled the parsing code
   2. It wasn't as flexable as necessary. To achieve the goals would have
      needed even more tags introduced. In short, it was getting messy.
   3. I never really liked it anyway.
   So I decided to kill it off as of v0.1.3, and replace it with internalised
   tweaking.


Q. What happened to the CPU tuning ?
A. It was decided during the development of v0.1.3, that CPU tuning really
   belongs in the kernel, as not everyone will be using Powertweak.
   For this reason, it seemed pointless to have it two places.
   Another reason is that the sheer amount of code necessary to make things
   work correctly (scheduling instructions to run on a specific CPU in an SMP
   environment from userspace == very hairy)


Q. I've written some feature for Powertweak, where can I get latest cvs tree
   to sync to ?
A. There is no Powertweak cvs repository, but I regularly release pre-patches
   before a final release. You can get these from
	http://linux.powertweak.com/files/pre/


Q. Okay, I've got the latest pre, and I've resynced my changes. Should I just
   send you my updated tree? Should I post it to the mailing list?
A. Unless you've changed _lots_ of code in multiple files, a unified diff is
   the best way to distribute your changes..

	diff -urN powertweak.vanilla powertweak.changed >powertweak.diff

   As for the mailing list, don't send the patch, unless it's small (less than
   a page of code). It's much better to put the patch in ftp/web space somewhere,
   and send a pointer to it to the mailing list.


Q. Installing Powertweak has screwed up my lspci!
A. You need to upgrade to the latest version of pciutils.

