3x+ battery life

Army · 2012-05-15 15:58:05

I get the same, you'll have to change the script to

mWh=$(($(cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/current_now)/1000))

kinu · 2012-05-15 16:02:13

Army wrote:

I get the same, you'll have to change the script to
mWh=$(($(cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/current_now)/1000))

Working! Thank you.

Unia · 2012-05-15 16:17:00

Hey, I'm not really into all this kernel stuff and whatnot but all the mentions here do look very promising (esp. since LMT indeed does not add that much battery time)

I do wonder one thing though: can any of these settings (OOTB; so as you provide the script) harm my laptop in any way? I know that certain harddisk powersaving options can so I just want to be on the save side here!

kinu · 2012-05-15 17:02:03

Hi again,

I'm trying now powerdown, and it really works better than LMT for me (about 10% more estimated battery time). But when executing it, I'm getting

[powerdown] cannot enable option /sys/devices/system/cpu/sched_smt_power_savings
[powerdown] cannot enable option /sys/devices/system/cpu/sched_mc_power_savings

I've read that this could be significant for battery life, Is it true? And, if so, anyone knows why this is not working for me?

Unia · 2012-05-15 17:22:56

kinu wrote:

Hi again,
I'm trying now powerdown, and it really works better than LMT for me (about 10% more estimated battery time). But when executing it, I'm getting
[powerdown] cannot enable option /sys/devices/system/cpu/sched_smt_power_savings
[powerdown] cannot enable option /sys/devices/system/cpu/sched_mc_power_savings
I've read that this could be significant for battery life, Is it true? And, if so, anyone knows why this is not working for me?

AFAIK that is only supported by recent CPU's, such as Intel's core i{3,5,7} series. What CPU do you have?

kinu · 2012-05-15 17:57:13

Unia wrote:

AFAIK that is only supported by recent CPU's, such as Intel's core i{3,5,7} series. What CPU do you have?

Yes. This is the good old

Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P7550 @ 2.26GHz

Thank you.

uastasi · 2012-05-18 17:59:05

@taylorchu could you write a tiny howto to explain where to put exactly all the 'pieces' of your tool?
Thank you in advance

Unia · 2012-05-18 18:34:03

NVM.

Whilst I did post, can anyone confirm this is safe and won't break my laptop?

Last edited by Unia (2012-05-18 18:34:48)

el mariachi · 2012-05-18 19:03:49

This is safe. This won't break your laptop or set your cat on fire. It may, however, not triplicate your battery life.

Unia · 2012-05-18 19:08:29

el mariachi wrote:

It may, however, not triplicate your battery life.

Well darn it! Now I see some time I had planned for my exams vanishing in order to test this stuff!

el mariachi · 2012-05-18 19:10:04

Welcome to the club

taylorchu · 2012-05-20 19:29:20

some apps that use too much power on my machine
1. i3status
2. wicd, I replaced it with netcfg, and it helps.

el mariachi · 2012-05-20 19:58:47

what did you use to measure power usage? powertop?

I am Gianluca · 2012-05-20 20:12:23

taylorchu wrote:

some apps that use too much power on my machine
1. i3status
2. wicd, I replaced it with netcfg, and it helps.

I'm thinking about moving from NetworkManager to Wicd, mostly because of battery life.
Is the battery saving big enough to make sense moving from NetworkManager to Wicd?

taylorchu · 2012-05-20 22:14:42

@el mariachi
yes.powertop. I also "feel" that netcfg sets up wifi faster than wicd.

@I am Gianluca
I dont know. I did not work with networkmanager long enough.

Unia · 2012-05-20 22:21:36

taylorchu wrote:

I also "feel" that netcfg sets up wifi faster than wicd.

If you want it to be even faster, use dhclient instead of dhcpcd. I find it to not only be faster, but also more 'stable': dhcpcd has lease fails at random times, whereas dhclient always work.

YMMV, though.

As for your script, it doesn't seem to increase my battery that much. I think my battery is completely fried, though. Haven't been that nice for it

Will do some more testing!

EDIT: Oh, I do get more spinups and clicks from my HDD. Where is this setting stored in powerdown?

Last edited by Unia (2012-05-20 22:22:10)

el mariachi · 2012-05-21 07:30:10

"hdparm -B" set it to a higher value.

Unia · 2012-05-24 10:17:56

^ Thanks, I found the setting and made it 254 as I always used.

It seems like my battery lasts way longer on Openbox than it does on DWM. Gotta look into this.

I am Gianluca · 2012-05-30 12:13:48

There is an ArchWiki page about this package?
I've player with power saving tools for a while, so I'm interested on it. I'm interested on learn the differences between 'powerdown' and 'laptop mode' with the right tweaks.
Thank you.

Unia · 2012-05-30 15:16:32

I am Gianluca wrote:

There is an ArchWiki page about this package?
I've player with power saving tools for a while, so I'm interested on it. I'm interested on learn the differences between 'powerdown' and 'laptop mode' with the right tweaks.
Thank you.

I would like to learn on this topic too, so any good links would be very nice. Though, Gianluca, you can also look into the laptop-mode config files and in the powerdown script to see what they do. For powerdown, you'll have to have Google at your side (or at least, I had to), but for laptop-mode everything is in the config files

Zucca · 2012-05-30 16:32:00

Great tools. But these desperately need a config file and rc script maybe.

Oh. And If I were to get 3x battery time then my laptop would stay on with battery more than 20 hours. I guess that it highly unlikely. Still, I believe that more than 10 hours is reality.

Last edited by Zucca (2012-05-30 16:35:05)

uastasi · 2012-05-30 18:18:05

Zucca wrote:

Great tools. But these desperately need a config file and rc script maybe.
Oh. And If I were to get 3x battery time then my laptop would stay on with battery more than 20 hours. I guess that it highly unlikely. Still, I believe that more than 10 hours is reality.

A good starting point would be creating an executable custom script into /etc/pm/power.d that triggers powerdown and powerup:

#!/bin/bash
case "$1" in
     true)
	# Battery
	powerdown &
     ;;
     false)
	#AC
	powerup &
     ;;
esac
exit 0

Feel free to contribute and improve

I am Gianluca · 2012-05-30 18:40:14

Unia wrote:

I am Gianluca wrote:
There is an ArchWiki page about this package?
I've player with power saving tools for a while, so I'm interested on it. I'm interested on learn the differences between 'powerdown' and 'laptop mode' with the right tweaks.
Thank you.
I would like to learn on this topic too, so any good links would be very nice. Though, Gianluca, you can also look into the laptop-mode config files and in the powerdown script to see what they do. For powerdown, you'll have to have Google at your side (or at least, I had to), but for laptop-mode everything is in the config files

Hi Unia,
I know a little about laptop-mode because I use it. It helps last my battery 4h more rather than without (from 4h to 8h on daily use).
I didn't install powerdown because I don't understand the difference between it and laptop-mode. From what I can imagine they are tweaking the same things, maybe with more or less aggressive parameters.
An ArchWiki page could be helpful, because the battery life is a major problem for everyone who is running a laptop.

Last edited by I am Gianluca (2012-05-30 19:07:06)

Unia · 2012-05-30 19:26:44

At first I didn't really know the difference either (still don't ) but laptop-mode tools wasn't satisfying enough. My battery is pretty much fried so it lasts roughly 30 minutes without any powersaving, maybe 50 if I'm doing intensive stuff.

With laptop-mode tools, the difference was almost insignificant - so I tried powerdown. Now I can work roughly one and a half hours on one battery! Plus that powerdown is a lot simpler than laptop-mode tools. I am currently editing it for my own setup and it's just two files basically: powerdown and powerup.

You should try it and see which gives you better battery lifes. The defaults for powerdown are safe (or so have I been told ) so it won't harm anything!

nierro · 2012-05-30 19:40:23

The real difference between this package and lmt is that :
1) lmt is a daemon + lots of config files, powerdown and powerup are 2 scripts.
2) You won't know what works and what doesn't with laptop-mode-tools, while with this script you can see any error in the log.
3) this package is easily extensible.
4)laptop-mode-tools is slowly developed.
5) you know what powerdown does. You won't know what laptop-mode-tools does (or, at least, with powerdown, you can check easily the code and understand it. Lmt is a series of script performed by the daemon.
6) lmt requires acpid. With this script you can use pm-utils and its powersaving features (plus upowerd, even if i'm having troubles with upowerd + DE + pm-utils, and i have to rely acpid anyway).
BTW i do not use this script but i created my own powersaving script, using the one from crunchbang forum and this, plus other things i needed.
So the key-feature is that it is highly extensible and easily adjustable (at least, for me).

Last edited by nierro (2012-05-30 19:42:38)

Arch Linux

#101 2012-05-15 15:58:05

Re: 3x+ battery life

#102 2012-05-15 16:02:13

Re: 3x+ battery life

#103 2012-05-15 16:17:00

Re: 3x+ battery life

#104 2012-05-15 17:02:03

Re: 3x+ battery life

#105 2012-05-15 17:22:56

Re: 3x+ battery life

#106 2012-05-15 17:57:13

Re: 3x+ battery life

#107 2012-05-18 17:59:05

Re: 3x+ battery life

#108 2012-05-18 18:34:03

Re: 3x+ battery life

#109 2012-05-18 19:03:49

Re: 3x+ battery life

#110 2012-05-18 19:08:29

Re: 3x+ battery life

#111 2012-05-18 19:10:04

Re: 3x+ battery life

#112 2012-05-20 19:29:20

Re: 3x+ battery life

#113 2012-05-20 19:58:47

Re: 3x+ battery life

#114 2012-05-20 20:12:23

Re: 3x+ battery life

#115 2012-05-20 22:14:42

Re: 3x+ battery life

#116 2012-05-20 22:21:36

Re: 3x+ battery life

#117 2012-05-21 07:30:10

Re: 3x+ battery life

#118 2012-05-24 10:17:56

Re: 3x+ battery life

#119 2012-05-30 12:13:48

Re: 3x+ battery life

#120 2012-05-30 15:16:32

Re: 3x+ battery life

#121 2012-05-30 16:32:00

Re: 3x+ battery life

#122 2012-05-30 18:18:05

Re: 3x+ battery life

#123 2012-05-30 18:40:14

Re: 3x+ battery life

#124 2012-05-30 19:26:44

Re: 3x+ battery life

#125 2012-05-30 19:40:23

Re: 3x+ battery life

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