**Update:**  linux-cpupower and cpufrequtils both seem to fix the problem.  They only work once per boot of the OS for an unknown reason, but that's enough to set it for the rest of the operation time.  Also, for an unknown reason, after that I can then set the frequency the old way, using MATE's CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor.  Thermald did not appear to actually be managing the temperature remotely adequately for the short time that I tried it.  I'm currently using linux-cpupower.  Thanks very much!  This can be marked as solved.

I've had systems where clearing dust and fluff out reduced CPU temperature several degrees.

Chris

fsmithred:  Thanks!  I've noted these down, maybe cpufrequtils is what I'll end up using, we'll see.

Geoff 42:  Oh, thank you for the information.

It is always wonderful when asking a question leads to me learning about a bunch of new things.  Thank you all!

Alpine Linux have an OpenRC init script but you would have to switch to /sbin/openrc-init as PID1: https://git.alpinelinux.org/aports/tree … mald.initd

I think that you could use OpenRC as installed, which uses SysVinit as PID 1. I feel that using openrc-init as PID 1 is not quite there yet, as there are problems shutting down.

https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?pid=21756#p21756

Geoff

There's also cpulimit which will let you limit the amount of cpu(s) that a particular process or program can use. I use that to keep from overheating a laptop when mksquashfs is running.

Both are command-line tools and are easy to use.

Do you think it would be fine to use openrc instead, and what do you base that on?

Probably. I've used it myself and it is actively developed by Gentoo & Alpine Linux. But to use the Alpine init script you would have to use /sbin/openrc-init rather than just the service manager, which might not be the best idea for a production machine.

I've just run the systemd unit file through sysd2v and it generated this sysvinit script:

#!/bin/sh
# Generated by sysd2v v0.3  --  http://www.trek.eu.org/devel/sysd2v
# kFreeBSD do not accept scripts as interpreters, using #!/bin/sh and sourcing.
if [ true != "$INIT_D_SCRIPT_SOURCED" ] ; then
    set "$0" "$@"; INIT_D_SCRIPT_SOURCED=true . /lib/init/init-d-script
fi
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:       thermald dbus-org.freedesktop.thermald
# Required-Start: $remote_fs
# Required-Stop:  $remote_fs
# Default-Start:  2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:   0 1 6
# Description:    Thermal Daemon Service
### END INIT INFO
DAEMON=/usr/sbin/thermald
DAEMON_ARGS="--no-daemon --dbus-enable"
PIDFILE=/var/run/thermald-sysd2v.pid
START_ARGS="--background --make-pidfile"

^ Place that in /etc/init.d/thermald and enable the service to autostart thermald at boot.

I did some searching on my own too and saw a cpufreqd in the repos, and also heard of a "userspace frequency governor" from a friend.

EDIT:  Oh and I don't mind using a command line program.

Have you seen thermald? It only offers a systemd unit file for autostarting but I'm sure we could hack something together for sysvinit if you want.

Alpine Linux have an OpenRC init script but you would have to switch to /sbin/openrc-init as PID1: https://git.alpinelinux.org/aports/tree … mald.initd

There is also linux-cpupower but that's command line only, the cpupower-gui package is only available in chimera/ceres.

1.  Does anyone know why that might be or what I might be able to do to fix it?
2.  Does anyone know of alternative methods of adjusting the CPU frequency?  (The only method I know of for it is the MATE feature I described)

Thanks!