Installing Uberkernel and Govnah

On a desktop system, we'd overclock by dropping into the BIOS at boot time and tweaking multipliers and system clocks. On the Touchpad, we overclock by patching the kernel. Fortunately, talented hackers have already done this, and made several pre-overclocked kernels available.

The Touchpad's Qualcomm APQ8060 "Snapdragon" processor's two cores dynamically clock themselves between 192MHz and 1.2GHz when in use; unused cores can actually drop down to 0MHz to save power. Patched kernels that raise the upper limit to 1.5GHz or even higher are available. We'll stick to the 1.5GHz for now; if you want to try the 1.7 or 1.9GHz kernels, have fun...but stability problems have been reported with these higher clocks.

Before you overclock your unit, it's important to make sure you're running the latest system software. As of the time of this writing, that's version 3.0.2. To check, open the launcher, select the Settings tab, and click the System Update application. It will let you know if you need to update anything.

We'll find and install the overclocked kernel and some utilities using Preware. If you haven't yet installed Preware, go to our Root Hacking the HP Touchpad article, which will describe how to install this program manager.

Preware operates on the basis of feeds, which are repositories of programs. (Bear in mind that since "Preware" refers to the Palm Pre smartphone, much of the software will be for these phones and not the Touchpad.) We'll need to add a couple of feeds to Preware to get the stuff we need.

Step 1: Run Preware and tap the Preware menu at the top left of the screen.

Step 2: Select Manage Feeds from this menu, then scroll to the bottom of the screen to reveal the New Feed area.

Step 3: In the Name field, type webos-testing-all; in the URL field, enter http://ipkg.preware.org/feeds/webos-internals/testing/all. Leave the Is Compressed switch set to "On".

Step 4: Tap the Add Feed button at the bottom of the page. You may be prompted to "Update Feeds" at this point, but you might as well wait until you've added the next feed.

Step 5: Add one more feed with the name webos-testing-armv7 and a URL of http://ipkg.preware.org/feeds/webos-internals/testing/armv7. Again, leave the Is Compressed switch set to "On".

At this point, go ahead and let Preware update its feeds. If it doesn't offer to do this for you, tap the Preware menu at the upper left of the screen and select Update Feeds.

Now that we've configured our new feeds in Preware, we can install a patched kernel and a utility to control it. The kernel we'll be installing is called Uberkernel, and the utility is called Govnah.

Step 1: Run Preware and select List of Everything.

Step 2: Find Govnah in the list. You can tap the A-Z tab at the bottom of the screen for an alphabetically-sorted list, or tap the magnifying glass at the top right of the screen and type in the search field.

Step 3: Tap Govnah and then tap the Install button at the bottom of the screen.

Step 4: Now find and install Uberkernel in the same way.

Step 5: After you've installed Uberkernel, you must restart your Touchpad. Hold down the power button until a menu appears, then select the red Shut Down button.

After your Touchpad restarts, we can configure overclocking.

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