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kobra
Asked: 2018-04-30 07:39:09 +0800 CST

Ubuntu 18.04 /w Macbook Pro: Kworker keeps hogging up my CPU

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Just thought of dropping a question since this problem seems to have been around for quite some time.

Just now I have installed the new Ubuntu 18.04 on my Macbook Pro, and I notice the kworker hogging up a lot of CPU:

3411 root      20   0       0      0      0 R  84,4  0,0   6:12.23 kworker/0:0

Here's some other info about my setup:

lsb_release -a:

No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
Release:        18.04
Codename:       bionic

uname -a:

Linux MacbookPro 4.15.0-20-generic #21-Ubuntu SMP Tue Apr 24 06:16:15 UTC 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Now I searched Google for answers on this problem and found plenty, actually. The answer in this thread did the trick for me: Why does kworker cpu usage get so high?

All I had to do was disable gpe06 and the hogging kworker-process was gone. First I looked for the gpe causing the high CPU load:

grep . -r /sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/

Then going through the list and finding the gpe that hogs up the resources and disabling it:

cp /sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe06 /root/gpe06.backup
echo "disable" > /sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe06

My problem is that when I boot the machine, the damned kworker is running again. I know I can just disable it each time manually, but was wondering if there's a better solution for this? I tried following the instructions on the Ask Ubuntu thread I linked above, but it seems to be an outdated guide on how to get this running on startup.

So, how do I make this a permanent solution so I don't have to disable the gpe06 each time I start the laptop?

cpu-load cpu macbook-pro macbook 18.04

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    According to this : https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/7uwz3r/1604_lts_vs_1710_on_2015_macbook_pro/dto1mtb/

    this following "tricks" works fine for me (same machine, same problem, same gpe) :

    sudo -s
crontab -e

    and add this following line at the end : 

    @reboot echo disable > /sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe06
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  2. I had the same problem running Lubuntu 20.10, 5.8 kernel, in an old Macbook 2006. In my case the solution was to mask gpe17 using boot parameter

    I added boot parameter acpi_mask_gpe=0x17 to GRUB and rebooted.

    Add acpi_mask_gpe=0x17 to /etc/default/grub line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT, then run update-grub and reboot.

    That solved the high CPU utilization.

    I found the problem with this command: grep . -r /sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/

    The issue: /sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe17: 3491042 EN enabled unmasked

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