Arch Linux

moosie

Member

Registered: 2011-01-08

Posts: 20

Optimus Battery

I have a dell xps l502x and when I'm on windows i have about 4-5 hrs of battery life but on Arch I'm only getting 2. I have only the intel video drivers installed and not the nvidia. Could that be a reason for decreased battery life?

EDIT: I see this in /var/log/dmesg.log but i don't have nouveau installed...

[    5.976102] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: power state changed by ACPI to D0
[    5.976106] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: power state changed by ACPI to D0
[    5.976111] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: enabling device (0006 -> 0007)
[    5.976117] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
[    5.976121] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
[    5.978686] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Detected an NVc0 generation card (0x0c1a80a1)
[    5.987257] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Attempting to load BIOS image from PRAMIN
[    5.998618] Linux video capture interface: v2.00
[    5.998659] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: ... BIOS signature not found
[    5.998661] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Attempting to load BIOS image from PROM
[    5.998670] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: ... BIOS signature not found
[    5.998673] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Attempting to load BIOS image from PCIROM
[    6.008809] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Invalid ROM contents
[    6.008955] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: ... BIOS signature not found
[    6.008957] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Attempting to load BIOS image from ACPI

Last edited by moosie (2011-10-23 17:48:37)

axel668

Member

Registered: 2009-08-15

Posts: 168

Re: Optimus Battery

Whatever you do, do NOT just install Nvidia drivers, this will kill your X configuration ... The optimus / ION Nvidia GPU is powered on by default under Linux - you can probably turn it off using acpi_call (AUR), for my Asus 1215N this is working quite well. If you actually want to use the Nvidia chip, you need bumblebee (AUR, too). Bumblebee together with ACPI_call is tricky, but it can be done, look at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bu … Management
for details.

Arch has no power saving utils in the core install, so if you really want to optimize battery life, you will also want to have a look at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Laptop_mode, which has a pretty good overview of what's possible (and even if you use a graphical tool like xfce4-power-manager, you need the same modules to actually power down your hardware).

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(Mitch Ratcliffe)