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dummyan

Member

From: Skopje, Macedonia

Registered: 2012-04-26

Posts: 20

acpid: ati-powermode.sh uses undocumented pplib-cmd

Probably when I installed the catalyst drivers for my ATI Radeon HD 4200 two events scripts (/etc/acpi/events) came and also one handler (/etc/acpi/ati-powermode.sh).

What bothers me is the enigmatic approach of the handler. First of all, what is PPLIB? There is a check for it in the handler:

#If PPLIB is enabled
su $user -c '/usr/bin/aticonfig --pplib-cmd="get version"' | grep PPLIB
if [ $? = 0 ]; then
   echo "Has PPLIB"
   has_pplib=1
else
   echo "No PPLIB"
   has_pplib=0
fi

Easily I found out that I have PPLIB version 1.4 and is active!

So far so good, having PPLIB really excites me. Also --pplib-cmd is an undocumented flag. I've read some forum posts where people use --pplib-cmd to set fan speed et cetera. (setting fan speed via pplib didn't work for me though).

Scrolling down the code I came to the part I am interested in. I was going to configure acpid to handle lid close event and came onto this trickery. Now lets see what suppose to happen:

if [ ${lid_closed} -eq 1 -o ${on_dc} -eq 1 ]; then
    echo "Low power"
    if [ ${has_pplib} -eq 1 ]; then
        su $user -c '/usr/bin/aticonfig --pplib-cmd="notify psrc dc"'
    else
        su $user -c "/usr/bin/aticonfig --set-powerstate=1 --effective=now"
    fi

Ok, I closed my lid and I'm using battery and most important I have pplib. Now --pplib-cmd="notify psrc dc" happens. Anybody knows what this suppose to do? Running the command myself gave me "PPLIB command execution is Successful!". Big "Yay!" for me.

If I didn't had PPLIB "aticonfig --set-powerstate=1 --effective=now" should happen. Running this myself yield "/usr/bin/aticonfig: unrecognized option '--set-powerstate=1'". I can only assume that if there isn't PPLIB --set-powerstate is a valid option to use. If this isn't true, it is simply bogus.

Last edited by dummyan (2012-09-25 01:09:23)

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I was born ready noob.