[lenovo t430] CPU + fan + wifi power usage (yes .. 'gain)

nikkolasg · 2014-02-22 23:40:46

Hello everyone,

I've recently installed arch on my laptop (t430), and i've got to say it's pretty cool !! i've learned a LOT. But i've still got that .. Big probleme that is the power consumption.
I'm running the latest arch iso default , and also tried linux-ck from aur. + Awesome WM.
- When activity is normal, temp is around 66, which is 10 degrees MORE than windows (which is still a lot but i've read that t430 got some issues with that ... i'll try to clean out dust someday). That means that fan are always running but running at higher speed than windows and it's bugging me.
-battery is discharging really really really fast. like 3h for fully charged (instead of 4.5 or 5). I've tried every little tricks i've found on the wiki and forums. I was able to solve problems like laptop fans taking huge power or ethernet controller taking huge power even when not used. but i still have my wifi driver (iwlwifi) taking a LOT of power , can be up to 16W on powertop !!!! What is the problem here ?? And it seems powersave is on ...
-When i put a little more charge to my laptop (on AC) like 2 firefox windows with a lots of tabs, powertop, 4-5 terms", it start bugging, like really slowing down . When i run cpupower frequency-info it said "performance, should use frequencies within the range of 1.20 and 1.20" ==> wth ? this was only one time , but i think i messed up my config with all the tweaks i tried because this is clearly not normal ....

SO here is what i run :
CPU freq : i tried pstate as it was the default, and then i tried acpi_cpufreq . I didn't quite see any difference but here is my first questions : How to go back to pstate ? i removed the kernel line argument pstate=disable but it does not load pstate as default anymore ... and I can't force cpupower to set ondemand by default at boot, i dont understand why as it is set into /etc/default/cpupower
Graphic card : i have disabled my nvidia graphic card according to the wiki and it seems to work
Power management : i tried laptop-mode, TLP, and i finally set down for powerdown (in AUR) as it looks better , but again, not big notable difference here. With powerdown, powertop says good to everything except "VM writeback timeout".

I've been searching for days and days now, and i'm desperate to see that every solutions in the forums just dont work with me Here is the output of every config file i could think of. Also, as i said, i'm afraid i might have broken things trying all theses fixes i found.

I deeply thank anyone who will take the time to analyze all this and i'll glady post more output if necessary.

Nikkolasg

Powertop :

Power est.              Usage       Events/s    Category       Description
  16.7 W      0.3 pkts/s                Device         Network interface: wlp3s0 (iwlwifi)
  400 mW     20.0%                      Device         Display backlight
  384 mW      0.0%                      Device         Display backlight
 90.9 mW     23.5 ms/s     131.0        Process        firefox
 84.8 mW     59.4 ms/s      58.7        Process        awesome
 32.2 mW      5.5 ms/s      52.6        Process        lilyterm
 12.0 mW     13.8 ms/s      31.2        Process        /usr/bin/X -nolisten tcp vt07 -auth /var/run/slim.auth
 4.64 mW      1.8 ms/s      12.0        Process        amixer
 4.29 mW      4.8 ms/s       2.3        Process        sh

Grub cmd line :

i915.modeset=1  acpi_backlight=vendor pcie_aspm=force i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 i915.i915_enable_fbc=1 i915.lvds_downclock=1 i915.semaphores=1

Wifi paramaters iwlwifi :

options iwlwifi bt_coex_active=0
options iwlwifi power_save=0
options iwlwifi auto_agg=0
options iwlwifi swcrypto=1
options iwlwifi 11n_disable=1
options iwlwifi 11n_disable50=1

uname : http://bpaste.net/show/181783/
lsmod : http://bpaste.net/show/181792/
dmesg : http://bpaste.net/show/181793/
kernel parameters : http://bpaste.net/show/181806/
/etc/default/cpupower ; http://bpaste.net/show/181808/
cpupower frequency-info : http://bpaste.net/show/181810/
systemctl --type=service : http://bpaste.net/show/181812/

Last edited by nikkolasg (2014-02-23 12:04:25)

Rexilion · 2014-02-23 11:36:12

You almost gave the answer yourself, it's your iwlwifi. Maybe you can play with it's knob's see if tha thelps:

iwlwifi.swcrypto="using crypto in software (default 0 [hardware])" (integer)
iwlwifi.disable_11n="disable 11n functionality, bitmap: 1: full, 2: disable agg TX, 4: disable agg RX, 8 enable agg TX"
iwlwifi.amsdu_size_8K= "enable 8K amsdu size (default 0)" (I have no idea what this is)
iwlwifi.wd_disable="Disable stuck queue watchdog timer 0=system default, 1=disable, 2=enable (default: 0)"

Use these on your kernel cmdline and see if it makes any changes in powertop.

nikkolasg · 2014-02-23 12:50:25

I've tried playing with thoses but power top still shows :
16.7 W 2.4 pkts/s Device Network interface: wlp3s0 (iwlwifi)
Here is what i have so far (not all options u gave me are available for this driver , see with modinfo iwlwifi )

options iwlwifi bt_coex_active=0
options iwlwifi power_save=0
options iwlwifi swcrypto=1
options iwlwifi 11n_disable=1
options iwlwifi wd_disable=1
options iwlwifi power_level=5

I just don't get why my wifi interface uses so much. Is the driver only possible explanation of this ?
Powertop also shows ;
Summary: 517.7 wakeups/second, 36.3 GPU ops/seconds, 0.0 VFS ops/sec and 11.9% CPU use
11% when only firefox opened is weird, (even when i'm away !!) is weird ... !!

Also i don't understand why cpupower frequency-info shows that the powersave governor is used, whereas cpupower is started by systemd and the ondemand in written in its config file.

Last edited by nikkolasg (2014-02-23 12:57:10)

Rexilion · 2014-02-23 13:13:39

options iwlwifi power_save=0

You might wanna set that to 1:

module_param_named(power_save, iwlwifi_mod_params.power_save,
		bool, S_IRUGO);
MODULE_PARM_DESC(power_save,
		 "enable WiFi power management (default: disable)");

Also:

options iwlwifi swcrypto=1

That is not necessarily a good idea and could explain your high cpu load.

EDIT: I did not use modinfo, I used the kernel source code of v3.14. Maybe modinfo is not listing everything?

Last edited by Rexilion (2014-02-23 13:14:21)

nikkolasg · 2014-02-23 14:08:54

I found in many post that you should not enable power_save as it does use more power than when disabled . But anyway this doesn't change anything, i've tried put power_save=1 and swcrypto = 0
==> 16.7 W 1.7 pkts/s Device Network interface: wlp3s0 (iwlwifi)

I'm lost. What is strange is that some time ago i've installed linux mint and i could get up tp 6h of battery.

Thank you anyways for your thought. If you have others I'll take !!!

EDIT : in "Device stats" section :
0 mW 100.0% Radio device: iwlwifi ==> iwlwifi is always working it seems ... what is happening ?? It's a recent install, so no extra soft, and right now i use only firefox with network manager to connect ..

Last edited by nikkolasg (2014-02-23 14:11:24)

Rexilion · 2014-02-23 14:10:30

If you can reproduce the desired behaviour with another distro, write down it's kernel version and active network management system (NetworkManager, netctl etc etc).

Also check powertop what it says there. If this is a kernel regression, we can bisect it.

Last edited by Rexilion (2014-02-23 14:11:04)

nikkolasg · 2014-02-23 14:16:12

1- Ok, I'd like to but .. i dont have any free partitions to install linux mint right now. What can i do ? On window 7 you could use wubi to install ubuntu or linux mint directly as a software (in fact it was like a big file for window) , and not mind of partitioning .. is there any similar way in linux / arch ? Or should i shrink my home partition to install it there ?
2 - What do you want me to check on powertop ?

silenceleaf · 2014-02-23 14:18:26

On my Dell M4800, arch's power consuming is higher than windows too.

Rexilion · 2014-02-23 14:22:28

You mentioned that you installed Linux Mint and could get up to 6hr of battery. That's good. That's perfect. But we need to figure out what component of Linux Mint makes your battery last longer.

Prime suspect is the kernel. However, you bring in new information. From what I understand, you installed Linux Mint through wubi. Well that makes sense that will get 6hr's of battery life. Because then Windows kernel is managing the wireless card. Windows drivers are generally better with respect to power management.

Did you, or did you not, install Linux Mint directly (Linux kernel)? If yes, did that give you a 6hr battery life? If yes, what kernel version is it using and what firmware (if that is used)?

From there we can start to pinpoint where the power usage went up and optionally create a bugreport (not necessary). If you had bad battery life with the Linux kernel from the beginning, then there is unfortunately, not much I can do.

nikkolasg · 2014-02-23 15:59:06

Yeah it was with wubi. But are you sure that wubi installed linux uses windows driver ? I didn't see this anywhere ...
I installed gentoo before to learn all the basis and found that ... i didn't NEED to customize everything ^^Didn't pay attention to the battery issues at the time, so i don't know.

But aside that, can't do anything about this wifi issues .. ? How could i pinpoint where the problem is ?

EDIT : IIt's surely something i've done wrong no ? Most of t430 users can get more battery i think ... example i found this : http://www.totalnetsolutions.net/2012/1 … tery-life/

Last edited by nikkolasg (2014-02-23 16:02:51)

Rexilion · 2014-02-23 16:05:59

nikkolasg wrote:

Yeah it was with wubi. But are you sure that wubi installed linux uses windows driver ? I didn't see this anywhere ...
I installed gentoo before to learn all the basis and found that ... i didn't NEED to customize everything ^^Didn't pay attention to the battery issues at the time, so i don't know.
But aside that, can't do anything about this wifi issues .. ? How could i pinpoint where the problem is ?
EDIT : IIt's surely something i've done wrong no ? Most of t430 users can get more battery i think ... example i found this : http://www.totalnetsolutions.net/2012/1 … tery-life/

I'm sorry, it seems that I have confused Wubi with something else. It *does* use the Linux kernel. I had the assumption that Wubi made you able to use Ubuntu software under Windows. Don't remember the name of the project that dit.

This is good news because that means that there was a kernel at some point in time which gave you correct results.

You installed through Wubi. What distribution (exact version please) did you install?

Last edited by Rexilion (2014-02-23 16:06:45)

nikkolasg · 2014-02-23 19:51:42

Cool. It was last summer and i think it was this one . With MATE.

Linux Mint 15 features the following upstream components: Ubuntu 13.04 package base, Linux 3.8 kernel, MDM 1.2, Cinnamon 1.8, MATE 1.6.

nikkolasg · 2014-02-24 21:40:17

Well ... i'm just letting down. I've installed linux mint 15 with wubi on my window part", and power usage is even worse.
BUT iwlwifi is not using 16W of power !! what's wrong with that !?
I'll give my laptop to lenovo guys see if they can change the fan or whatever.
Thanks anyway.

Rexilion · 2014-02-24 21:58:52

nikkolasg wrote:

Well ... i'm just letting down. I've installed linux mint 15 with wubi on my window part", and power usage is even worse.
BUT iwlwifi is not using 16W of power !! what's wrong with that !?
I'll give my laptop to lenovo guys see if they can change the fan or whatever.
Thanks anyway.

Why did you send it to Lenovo?

Anyway, the differences could be explained by a different accounting method used in the kernel? Could you see something else using a lot of power? Maybe the CPU?

I suggest you try to install the v3.8 kernel in Arch and go with that.

nikkolasg · 2014-02-25 22:23:14

Ok. I "solved" my problem , by doing a clean install with the latest iso of arch.
i now use the pstate driver (for now without thermald) and my wifi controller is now using very little power . i run with 9W !!
I dont know what was messed before though ...
i'll still send my laptop to lenovo so they can change the fan it runs at 44 C when idle, which is largely tolerable but if i can have better (apparently they have a new brand of fan), why not !
Thanks a lot Rexilion for your help anyway. what a great community !!

Arch Linux

#1 2014-02-22 23:40:46

[lenovo t430] CPU + fan + wifi power usage (yes .. 'gain)

#2 2014-02-23 11:36:12

Re: [lenovo t430] CPU + fan + wifi power usage (yes .. 'gain)

#3 2014-02-23 12:50:25

Re: [lenovo t430] CPU + fan + wifi power usage (yes .. 'gain)

#4 2014-02-23 13:13:39

Re: [lenovo t430] CPU + fan + wifi power usage (yes .. 'gain)

#5 2014-02-23 14:08:54

Re: [lenovo t430] CPU + fan + wifi power usage (yes .. 'gain)

#6 2014-02-23 14:10:30

Re: [lenovo t430] CPU + fan + wifi power usage (yes .. 'gain)

#7 2014-02-23 14:16:12

Re: [lenovo t430] CPU + fan + wifi power usage (yes .. 'gain)

#8 2014-02-23 14:18:26

Re: [lenovo t430] CPU + fan + wifi power usage (yes .. 'gain)

#9 2014-02-23 14:22:28

Re: [lenovo t430] CPU + fan + wifi power usage (yes .. 'gain)

#10 2014-02-23 15:59:06

Re: [lenovo t430] CPU + fan + wifi power usage (yes .. 'gain)

#11 2014-02-23 16:05:59

Re: [lenovo t430] CPU + fan + wifi power usage (yes .. 'gain)

#12 2014-02-23 19:51:42

Re: [lenovo t430] CPU + fan + wifi power usage (yes .. 'gain)

#13 2014-02-24 21:40:17

Re: [lenovo t430] CPU + fan + wifi power usage (yes .. 'gain)

#14 2014-02-24 21:58:52

Re: [lenovo t430] CPU + fan + wifi power usage (yes .. 'gain)

#15 2014-02-25 22:23:14

Re: [lenovo t430] CPU + fan + wifi power usage (yes .. 'gain)

Board footer