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#1 2007-05-15 08:41:53

FightRight
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2006-05-25
Posts: 64

Used anyone Powertop ??

Hello,

i have found this page Powertop.

Does anyone knows this software or used it? The text sounds very good, when it really works.

Regards

Fight


Ps: Sorry for my bad english

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#2 2007-05-15 10:40:06

beza1e1
Member
From: Karlsruhe, Germany
Registered: 2007-04-15
Posts: 30
Website

Re: Used anyone Powertop ??

It gets some buzz today. I tried it too. wink

I'm using the default kernel26 and get this:

No detailed statistics available; please enable the CONFIG_TIMER_STATS kernel option

Suggestion: Enable the CONFIG_USB_SUSPEND kernel configuration option. This option will automatically disable UHCI USB when not in use, and may save approximately 1 Watt of power.

Last edited by beza1e1 (2007-05-15 10:40:29)

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#3 2007-05-15 11:12:08

xerverius
Member
From: ~
Registered: 2004-11-02
Posts: 230
Website

Re: Used anyone Powertop ??

I asked on Flyspray for enabling CONFIG_TIMER_STATS, but it was rejected with the commend "Build your own kernel or join efforts for a laptop kernel". This IS the stupidest answer I ever had on a bug report, really, enabling 1 block device for allowing laptop users to optimize their system shouldn't be a big problem I guess... And if it's a big issue, give some reasons for rejecting the bug instead.

PS. enabling CONFIG_USB_SUSPEND can result in usb problems, so it's not recommended to enable this in the stock kernel. AFAIK more distros disabled it in their default kernel.

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#4 2007-05-15 12:12:11

attila
Member
Registered: 2006-11-14
Posts: 293

Re: Used anyone Powertop ??

I asked on Flyspray for enabling CONFIG_TIMER_STATS, but it was rejected with the commend "Build your own kernel or join efforts for a laptop kernel". This IS the stupidest answer I ever had on a bug report, really, enabling 1 block device for allowing laptop users to optimize their system shouldn't be a big problem I guess... And if it's a big issue, give some reasons for rejecting the bug instead.

From my view you can find the reason in the doku about hrtimer in the kernel sources. The kernel devs don't suggest it and speaks about a significant overhead if it is on. For me the story about powertop sounds a little as that they use at the moment "experimental" kernel features to get it run and the future kernel releases will show if powertop will be so good that it gets better integrated.

A little comment about "building your own kernel": The building system of arch is the best understandable package managment what i know and having an own kernel package is never stupid. Try it one time and you will understand why me personally don't see it as an problem to do it. But it is realy okay if you don't want it.

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#5 2007-05-15 12:17:40

lucke
Member
From: Poland
Registered: 2004-11-30
Posts: 4,018

Re: Used anyone Powertop ??

xerverius wrote:

And if it's a big issue, give some reasons for rejecting the bug instead.

Didn't they quote the docs that it introduces fair amount of overhead, arr? Isn't that a reason decent enough?

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#6 2007-05-15 13:27:35

xerverius
Member
From: ~
Registered: 2004-11-02
Posts: 230
Website

Re: Used anyone Powertop ??

attila wrote:

From my view you can find the reason in the doku about hrtimer in the kernel sources. The kernel devs don't suggest it and speaks about a significant overhead if it is on.

Ok I missed that part. Not I'm satisfied neutral.

attila wrote:

A little comment about "building your own kernel": The building system of arch is the best understandable package management what i know and having an own kernel package is never stupid. Try it one time and you will understand why me personally don't see it as an problem to do it. But it is really okay if you don't want it.

I'm not building packages, my server does that automatically tongue and pacman/abs is the only reason I stick with Arch, so I know it's easy. I just didn't knew the device adds so much overheat to the code.

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#7 2007-05-15 15:51:16

stonecrest
Member
From: Boulder
Registered: 2005-01-22
Posts: 1,190

Re: Used anyone Powertop ??

xerverius wrote:
attila wrote:

From my view you can find the reason in the doku about hrtimer in the kernel sources. The kernel devs don't suggest it and speaks about a significant overhead if it is on.

Ok I missed that part. Not I'm satisfied neutral.

For what its worth, there are apparently also worse problems than just the overhead:
http://archlinux.org/pipermail/arch/200 … 14482.html


I am a gated community.

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#8 2007-05-15 17:48:23

atlas95
Member
Registered: 2007-02-11
Posts: 98

Re: Used anyone Powertop ??

Use the viper kernel sad

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#9 2007-05-16 09:12:20

iphitus
Forum Fellow
From: Melbourne, Australia
Registered: 2004-10-09
Posts: 4,927

Re: Used anyone Powertop ??

atlas95 wrote:

Use the viper kernel sad

i don't see the relevance of that to this thread.

g0t rice?

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#10 2007-05-16 16:37:14

big_gie
Member
Registered: 2005-01-19
Posts: 637

Re: Used anyone Powertop ??

Powertop is really nice. It will enable devs to give a better importance to powersaving. Before that, there wasn't really ways to see if your code was power hungry... I think we will see better power management because of this in a near future.

PowerTOP is in community: pacman -S powertop

For me, the kernel wakeups are mainly from nvidia (shame on you blob!), kicker (from kde-mod), usb and ndiswrapper.

Without this tool, I think I would not have blamed kicker for eating my battery, but now I can check this!

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#11 2007-05-17 13:18:11

kansei
Member
From: RIT - Rochester, NY
Registered: 2007-02-12
Posts: 21

Re: Used anyone Powertop ??

rats, what USB problems would enabling usb suspend as a module cause? I could set it up to only be active when on battery power. 1W of power savings is significant when my computer only uses ~19W with wireless and bluetooth on (in Windows.. I haven't done much setting up power management in Arch yet, even though I haven't run windows on any of my personal computers since Vista Business was released). Every little bit helps smile

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#12 2007-05-18 08:26:06

iphitus
Forum Fellow
From: Melbourne, Australia
Registered: 2004-10-09
Posts: 4,927

Re: Used anyone Powertop ??

kansei wrote:

rats, what USB problems would enabling usb suspend as a module cause? I could set it up to only be active when on battery power. 1W of power savings is significant when my computer only uses ~19W with wireless and bluetooth on (in Windows.. I haven't done much setting up power management in Arch yet, even though I haven't run windows on any of my personal computers since Vista Business was released). Every little bit helps smile

rmmod uhci-hcd
rmmod ohci-hcd
rmmod ehci-hcd

power saved.

(one or two of the above will barf out, depending on what USB chipsets your computer has, that's ok)

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#13 2007-06-01 07:31:32

lloeki
Member
From: France
Registered: 2007-02-20
Posts: 456
Website

Re: Used anyone Powertop ??

why CONFIG_USB_SUSPEND is bad: it panics my kernel.

well, whatever, this thing is great, except that I have to cap max_cstate (via sysfs) to 2, else my core 2 duo whines and hisses. so, I can not gain much by squeezing the 1000+ wake up events I have!

anyway, this thing is great to know which processes sporadically, but very often, wake up (which can not be seen in top). e.g I had a bad python process, waking more often than nvidia...

Last edited by lloeki (2007-06-01 07:35:29)


To know recursion, you must first know recursion.

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#14 2007-06-15 19:46:53

Torin
Member
Registered: 2007-03-01
Posts: 2

Re: Used anyone Powertop ??

it would be cool, if it would be integrated with kernel-suspend2 smile

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#15 2007-06-22 09:41:55

jinn
Member
From: Gothenburg
Registered: 2005-12-10
Posts: 506

Re: Used anyone Powertop ??

Does anyone know if the firefox patch is implemented on repository version?

While there are many things that can keep the Firefox browser active, such as animations in websites you are looking at, Firefox also had a few things that would keep Firefox active even when looking at a blank page. We've fixed two of the most visible bugs in this space, and are collecting more fixes over time.

Mike Hommey has filed a cleaner fix for these in the Firefox bugzilla as bug 380558.

You can download Mike's Firefox 2.0 patchkit here.

If not It would be nice to have the patched firefox version in the repos.


The ultimate Archlinux release name: "I am your father"

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#16 2007-09-04 03:24:21

IsSuE
Member
Registered: 2006-04-29
Posts: 309

Re: Used anyone Powertop ??

I just installed powertop on my laptop and i have to recognize that my laptop wont go into any c-state. Here is a screenshot
http://mitglied.lycos.de/frog1/etc/powertop.jpg
Can i force my cpu to go into c-states?

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#17 2007-09-04 07:35:49

iphitus
Forum Fellow
From: Melbourne, Australia
Registered: 2004-10-09
Posts: 4,927

Re: Used anyone Powertop ??

jinn wrote:

Does anyone know if the firefox patch is implemented on repository version?

While there are many things that can keep the Firefox browser active, such as animations in websites you are looking at, Firefox also had a few things that would keep Firefox active even when looking at a blank page. We've fixed two of the most visible bugs in this space, and are collecting more fixes over time.

Mike Hommey has filed a cleaner fix for these in the Firefox bugzilla as bug 380558.

You can download Mike's Firefox 2.0 patchkit here.

If not It would be nice to have the patched firefox version in the repos.

At one stage they were applied, but they caused more problems than they fixed. I think it was decided to wait for them to be merged upstream or stabilise.

Issue: No. You can't "force" it into a sleep state. A sleep state means it's effectively doing nothing, and thus, your computer will do nothing. Fix the programs that are preventing it from sleeping between tasks instead.

James

Last edited by iphitus (2007-09-04 07:38:04)

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#18 2007-09-04 11:31:31

Eliteforce
Member
Registered: 2006-03-26
Posts: 56

Re: Used anyone Powertop ??

IsSuE wrote:

I just installed powertop on my laptop and i have to recognize that my laptop wont go into any c-state. Here is a screenshot
http://mitglied.lycos.de/frog1/etc/powertop.jpg
Can i force my cpu to go into c-states?

install powernowd or cpudynd etc?

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#19 2007-09-04 11:53:03

IsSuE
Member
Registered: 2006-04-29
Posts: 309

Re: Used anyone Powertop ??

Yep i got cpudyn installed. But i thought those progs were only for throttling the cpu?

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