Arch Linux

big_gie

Member

Registered: 2005-01-19

Posts: 637

Powertop reports so many wakeups!

Hi,

Arch is installed on my new Asus EeePC 1000. To get maximum battery life, I'm checking the power usage with powertop. But unlike my other laptop, I have way too many wakeups:

     PowerTOP version 1.11      (C) 2007 Intel Corporation

Cn                Avg residency       P-states (frequencies)
C0 (cpu running)        ( 7.8%)         1.60 Ghz    11.8%
polling           0.0ms ( 0.0%)         1333 Mhz     0.6%
C1 mwait          0.0ms ( 0.0%)         1067 Mhz     1.9%
C2 mwait          8.6ms (92.2%)          800 Mhz    85.7%


Wakeups-from-idle per second : 107.6    interval: 15.0s
no ACPI power usage estimate available

Top causes for wakeups:
  25.6% ( 34.9)       <interrupt> : uhci_hcd:usb3, ra0
  20.9% ( 28.5)      <kernel IPI> : Rescheduling interrupts
  17.0% ( 23.1)       <interrupt> : acpi
  11.6% ( 15.8)        cairo-dock : schedule_hrtimeout_range (hrtimer_wakeup)
  10.1% ( 13.7)     <kernel core> : hrtimer_start (tick_sched_timer)
   7.4% ( 10.0)          ifconfig : MlmeInit (linux_MlmePeriodicExec)
   1.8% (  2.4)      <kernel IPI> : TLB shootdowns
   1.5% (  2.0)     <kernel core> : clocksource_register (clocksource_watchdog)
   1.5% (  2.0)           emerald : schedule_hrtimeout_range (hrtimer_wakeup)
   0.7% (  1.0)    wpa_supplicant : schedule_hrtimeout_range (hrtimer_wakeup)
   0.3% (  0.5)     <kernel core> : enqueue_task_rt (sched_rt_period_timer)
   0.2% (  0.3)            compiz : schedule_hrtimeout_range (hrtimer_wakeup)
   0.2% (  0.3)     <kernel core> : AsicEvaluateRxAnt (linux_AsicRxAntEvalTimeout)
   0.2% (  0.3)      wicd-monitor : schedule_hrtimeout_range (hrtimer_wakeup)
   0.1% (  0.2)        cairo-dock : sk_reset_timer (tcp_delack_timer)
   0.1% (  0.2)              sshd : sk_reset_timer (tcp_write_timer)
   0.1% (  0.2)     <kernel core> : neigh_table_init_no_netlink (neigh_periodic_timer)
   0.1% (  0.2)              init : schedule_hrtimeout_range (hrtimer_wakeup)
   0.1% (  0.1)          ddclient : do_nanosleep (hrtimer_wakeup)
   0.0% (  0.1)              bash : acpi_thermal_check (acpi_thermal_run)
   0.0% (  0.1)   xfce4-menu-plug : schedule_hrtimeout_range (hrtimer_wakeup)

I understand the first cause is "uhci_hcd:usb3, ra0" ra0 being my wireless card (RaLink 2860). But why is:
1) ACPI at ~25 wakups per second?? (17.0% ( 23.1)       <interrupt> : acpi)
2) ifconfig at ~10?? (( 10.0)          ifconfig : MlmeInit (linux_MlmePeriodicExec))

I opened a bug report for cairo-dock.

For ifconfig, maybe it is caused by wicd? I don't even have ifconfig running...

Thank you

fwojciec

Member

Registered: 2007-05-20

Posts: 1,411

Re: Powertop reports so many wakeups!

Is this with AC cord connected?  If not then why "no ACPI power usage estimate available"?

big_gie

Member

Registered: 2005-01-19

Posts: 637

Re: Powertop reports so many wakeups!

Yes the AC cord is connected. I did my test without the cord, but got the same wakeups patterns on battery.
Sorry for the confusion

fwojciec

Member

Registered: 2007-05-20

Posts: 1,411

Re: Powertop reports so many wakeups!

Acpi is probably getting queried by something that's reporting battery status and such.
What I'd recommend doing is to disable the wireless to see how things change -- you probably don't have to unload the modules, it should be sufficient to do ifconfig [interface] down.

big_gie

Member

Registered: 2005-01-19

Posts: 637

Re: Powertop reports so many wakeups!

Ok thanx for the hint.

I'm doing some test without X, so almost nothing is running. It seems acpi disappears after some time.

Same thing with X.

big_gie

Member

Registered: 2005-01-19

Posts: 637

Re: Powertop reports so many wakeups!

Hum no acpi is back again with around 6 wakups...

mrbrich

Member

Registered: 2010-04-24

Posts: 42

Re: Powertop reports so many wakeups!

That was a great tip, fwojciec!  I was getting about 40 wakeups per second from apci interrupts, and I couldn't figure out why.  It turns out that it was the battery meter running in conky.  When I killed conky, no more wakeups from acpi!  Consumption also went down about 2W.  It's ironic that the act of monitoring the battery to know how much I was using was killing the battery faster!

mrbrich

Member

Registered: 2010-04-24

Posts: 42

Re: Powertop reports so many wakeups!

An update on my previous post.  It wasn't so much the battery meter as the temperature and fan monitoring using ibm_temps and ibm_fan variables.  I changed to acpitemp and hwmon for fans, which gives me exactly the same information, and also reduced the update interval to 3 seconds, and things have improved a lot.  I now get an acceptable 3 wakeups per second from acpi.  My top cause for wakeups is now iwlagn.  I turn the wifi off when I need to conserve power.