Coolbook for Lion workaround solution

[Socras]

@ssn637

I think what you're saying is true for snow leopard. The problem is that I'm using Lion and coolbook doesn't work on Lion.

To get it to work with Lion I have to use the nullcpu kext which disables apple's power management kexts. So my computer's power management is only controlled by coolbook.

I think thats why my battery life decreases. What I don't understand is why didn't koudanshi notice any decrease in his battery life...

@koudanshi

I'm using b/2. When I click B/2 on coolbook the frequencies showing are 798MHz and 931MHz and I'm using 798MHz.

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I just saw your post ssn637. So I'm guessing I just have to wait for the next coolbook update...

 

[Socras]

Hi,

There's a guy in here saying that if we replace lion's AppleACPIPlatform.kext for snow leopard's coolbook works.

He's on a hackintosh computer but could this work on a mac?

Cheers

 

[ssn637]

Hi,

There's a guy in here saying that if we replace lion's AppleACPIPlatform.kext for snow leopard's coolbook works.

He's on a hackintosh computer but could this work on a mac?

Cheers

Sounds like it's worth a try. I'll see how it looks on my test system. The download link is dead but I have the kext on my macbook pro 10.6.8 V1.3.6

I don't think it's working. There may be a difference between the 10.6.7 and 10.6.8 AppleACPIPlatform extensions, but V1.3.6 was copied over from my Snow Leopard system to the Lion installation to test the proposed workaround. The CoolBook controller failed to load a couple of times, so I just uninstalled and tried again until the error message went away. One positive note was that the default frequencies were reported correctly (e.g. 2660 Hz @ 1.0875 V vs. 1.1625 V on earlier attempts), and I was able to set battery voltage pairs of 1596 / 0.9000 and 2128 / 1.000 V. If I ramp up the CPU load the system does indeed max out at 2128 Hz at 1.0 V, but when I unload the system CoolBook fails to report correct voltages and frequencies when compared with iStat Pro's values. Prior to installing CoolBook, the lowest reported voltage when idle was around 0.74 V, but after installation it doesn't drop below 0.80 V.

Maybe someone else will have better luck, but I'm not convinced that this is the answer yet. Let's keep trying! In the meantime, I'm back to Snow Leopard...

 

[Socras]

Damn! I was really hoping it would work...

I don't think I'll go to snow leopard though. Despite it's performance issues, Lion is much better to work.

 

[ssn637]

Damn! I was really hoping it would work...

I don't think I'll go to snow leopard though. Despite it's performance issues, Lion is much better to work.

Well, I'm still testing various settings and haven't given up just yet.

Now that 10.7.3 11D16 has been released I can give the new version a try.

 

[ssn637]

Well, after having found a key extension from Mac OS X 10.6.6/7 and installing it in Lion 10.7.3 11D16 I came up with the same result. Just couldn't get it to work even over a clean installation. The CoolBook controller loaded just fine, and I was able to select pairs of voltages and frequencies, but upon restarting noted only the default frequencies were being reported. This could easily be confirmed with iStat Menu sensors. In fact, the machine seemed to run at a higher temperature after the CoolBook installation.
One thing I didn't quite understand is the b/2 voltage and frequency setting, which appears as a default 798 / 0.925V upon launching CoolBook. According to the CoolBook manual, however, these reduced voltages are only applicable to the Santa Rosa platform, and I did indeed note in Snow Leopard that setting this pair had a negative impact on battery life. But in Snow Leopard and Lion iStat Menu consistently reports idle CPU voltages around 0.80 V, so it seems like the operating system is halving the lowest frequency setting under low usage with the Penryn chips.
If anyone has other suggestions please let me know and I'll be glad to test them out! In the meantime I've moved my main machine to Lion since 10.7.3 seems to have solved some of the earlier stability problems and I can take advantage of File Vault 2 again. Battery life is still suffering, but I'd guess that I'm taking around a 10% hit now compared with Snow Leopard.

 

[ssn637]

OK, I just found out that there's a problem with the speed step functionality in 10.7.3. I replaced both AppleIntelCPUManagement kernel extensions with the 10.7.2 versions and will give CoolBook another try with Snow Leopard's ACPIPlatform extension.

Whoa! With speed step functionality back in 10.7.3 the system is of course much snappier and my Parallels VM doesn't slow to a crawl, but not only did CoolBook fail again with the ACPIPlatform extension from Snow Leopard, my battery life also went down the tubes again! With CoolBook active voltages and frequencies were reported correctly, and the maximum frequency was indeed restricted to my setting, but in idle the CPU voltage never dropped below 0.925 V.

 

[Socras]

Whoa! With speed step functionality back in 10.7.3 the system is of course much snappier and my Parallels VM doesn't slow to a crawl, but not only did CoolBook fail again with the ACPIPlatform extension from Snow Leopard, my battery life also went down the tubes again! With CoolBook active voltages and frequencies were reported correctly, and the maximum frequency was indeed restricted to my setting, but in idle the CPU voltage never dropped below 0.925 V.

How did you get coolbook to report the voltages and frequencies correctly? Did you use the nullcpu kext? If not, how did you do it?

Also try do delete from coolbook your lowest frequency (mine is 800MHz). I read somewhere that if you do that coolbook undervolts the higher frequencies and apple's kexts undervolt the lowest (idle) frequency.

 

[ssn637]

No, I didn't use the NullKext extension provided by Koudanshi. And yes, I dropped the 798 MHz frequency setting because in my experience it only hurts on Penryn chips. I suppose CoolBook reported the correct frequencies due to the ACPIPlatform extension from Snow Leopard. CoolBook was able to throttle higher frequencies correctly with this workaround, but as with all the other solutions we've seen (and as Koudanshi pointed out in his earlier post):

P.S: Coolbook will not put CPU voltage below 0.9v for my case, stock Apple kext can put under 0.9v with 800mhz speed but it's hotter than Coolbook solution.

I'm so sick of Lion now that I've decided to stay with Snow Leopard on my MacBook Pro 13" 2010 model. The advantages of moving to a newer operating system are offset by its poor battery life, lack of user control (auto save was driving me nuts - took what seemed like minutes to open any .rtf files) and instability (Finder froze on an hourly basis and had to be relaunched, although this may have been an incompatibility issue with another program). TrueCrypt is just as viable an encryption utility as File Vault 2 (in some ways even better because the volume needs to be mounted manually when needed), and iCloud completely messed up my iPhone 4 bookmarks...who needs all this hassle? Snow Leopard 10.6.8 is just rock solid. And these Core2Duos are just fine for what I need.

 

[ibuguser]

Coolbook for Lion.

Thanks a lot koudanshi for the workaround post. I have a late'08 MBP and like everyone else was very disappointed to lose coolbook.

I played around with various settings and the setting that seems to work is attached in case someone finds it useful.

 

[therobbot]

Hi,

I know this is an old thread but I just upgraded to Mavericks. I got Coolbook working but also have the problem that without Coolbook, my Macbook has an idle voltage of 0.8V or lower and with Coolbook I can't get a voltage lower than 0.875 (even though I can set it lower in the GUI but it doesn't work). Some of you claimed there is a way to get the best of both worlds (low idle voltage but Coolbook undervolting under load). How exactly did you achieve this? Which kexts did you use?

I'm thankful for any hints!

Tobias

 

[therobbot]

Nevermind, I got it working. The solution is very easy in fact and I wonder why nobody mentioned it. All I had to do was to erase the Macbook*.plist for my macbook from /System/Library/Extensions/IOPlatformPluginFamily.kext/Contents/Plugins/ACPI_SMC_PlatformPlugin.kext/Contents/Resources. After that, Coolbook works just as well as in Snow Leopard.

I found this solution in https://github.com/ayurmedia/xnu-speedstep-air

 

[therobbot]

I tried to modify only parts of the file as well. At first I thought, it works but then it didn't anymore. If anybody has more insights, let me know. Deleting the file definitely works but I don't know which side-effects it might have (e.g. GPU-related)

 

[therobbot]

I tried to modify only parts of the file as well. At first I thought, it works but then it didn't anymore. If anybody has more insights, let me know. Deleting the file definitely works but I don't know which side-effects it might have (e.g. GPU-related)

Now it works again with the file in place and only the CPU parts removed (actually only the control loop part removed). I had to repair permissions afterwards. I'm so happy!