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Repartee41

Member

Registered: 2022-11-14

Posts: 11

How To Put nic:virbr0 on a Toggle?

Hello,

I require the use of a VM daily on my laptop (Thinkpad T14s gen 2a). However, when not running the VM, the device "nic:virbr0" still uses a vast amount of power, sometimes 6-7x as much as anything else. When on the go, this absolutely destroys battery life, which is when I don't need the VM.

Is there a way to toggle this device on and off? For example, I can press a key combination (or better yet, have it toggle when opening virt-manager) and disable libvirtd.service, then press it again to reenable it?

Thanks in advance.

kevinbui

Member

Registered: 2021-10-19

Posts: 1

Re: How To Put nic:virbr0 on a Toggle?

I also have the same problem on Thinkpad X1 Extreme. The virtual network virbr0 consumes 26.7W even without any virtual machines running. I have not found any solution to optimize it, so for now I can only turn it off when not using the virtual machine, and turn it back on when needed:
   $ sudo ifconfig virbr0 down
This problem also exists for docker virtual networks.

However, it seems that powertop reports the power consumption of the network card incorrectly - it seems to be the power consumption of the graphics card, not the network card (https://askubuntu-com.translate.goog/qu … x_tr_hl=vi)

I tried turning off the virtual network card and trying again with powertop, and the wifi card was detected as consuming 27W. So it is true that powertop misidentified, the device that consumes the most power must be the Nvidia discrete card. I isolated this card to put it in a virtual machine to use when needed. But even after isolating, it seems to still consume quite a lot of power.

Maybe I have to use bumblebee to completely disable this Nvidia card.

Thanks Lone_Wolf for reminding the language.

Last edited by kevinbui (2024-12-28 12:29:26)

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 14,574

Re: How To Put nic:virbr0 on a Toggle?

Please don't necro-bump .

Also the common language on this forum is English .
In case you're not good with english, you can post in our Other Languages board.

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Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

clean chroot building not flexible enough ?
Try clean chroot manager by graysky