Arch Linux

thecombjelly

Member

Registered: 2008-01-28

Posts: 23

Very Short Battery Life On HP Pavillion dv6400

Using Vista with wifi on and regular usage I am able to get around 8 hours of battery life, using arch I get between 2-4 hours of battery life.  I have cpu frequency enabled and functioning correctly.  I use the suggestions offered by powertop, but I still don't get any better than probably an average of three hours of battery life.  I tried different DE's including KDE, KDE4, and Enlightenment, but it didn't make a difference.  Also running the laptop in strictly console mode doesn't get the battery much past 4 hours.

Powertop information when idle:

55.3% (287.1) <interrupt> : extra time interrupt
19.4% (100.5) <interrupt> : eth0
13.1% (68.2) <interrupt> : nvidia
--the rest are below 2%(8)--

Powertop information during regular use:
44.3% (445.9) <interrupt> : PS/2 keyboard/mouse/touchpad
18.3% (184.5) <interrupt> : extra time interrupt
10.1% (101.4) artsd : schedule timeout
8.9% (100.6) <interrupt> : eth0
7.0% (70.6) <interrupt> : nvidia
5.4% (54.8) amarokapp : schedule timeout
4.2% (42.2) <kernel IPI> : Rescheduling interrupts
2.8% (28.0) amarok : schedule timeout
1.7% (17.3) <interrupt> : HDA Intel
1.4% (13.9) X : schedule timeout
--the rest are below (13)

Any ideas on what my be causing the loss of battery life and how to fix it would be sweet.

imachine

Member

From: /dev/ttyv0

Registered: 2006-11-15

Posts: 36

Website

Re: Very Short Battery Life On HP Pavillion dv6400

you should try adding clocksource=hpet to your kernel line in grub

---

a nail that sticks out, is hammered down.
aha.

thecombjelly

Member

Registered: 2008-01-28

Posts: 23

Re: Very Short Battery Life On HP Pavillion dv6400

you should try adding clocksource=hpet to your kernel line in grub

I added clocksource=hpet to the kernel boot parameters and still the battery life is less than four hours, I also use the boot parameters iommu=off agp=off.

honahursey

Member

Registered: 2008-08-18

Posts: 32

Re: Very Short Battery Life On HP Pavillion dv6400

Check out the suggestions at lesswatts.org and http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_re … onsumption.  Both were invaluable to me. 

Yes, the second one does have a few things specific to thinkpads (the fan control script and /proc/acpi/ibm interface), but its mostly general tips that should work with most laptops.

jostein

Member

Registered: 2008-12-01

Posts: 6

Re: Very Short Battery Life On HP Pavillion dv6400

About the touchpad wakeups: I'm having the same problem. When I use the touchpad, the number of wakeups skyrockets, and the "Rescheduling interrupts" follow. This seems to be a known issue (an ubuntu bug report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour … bug/194489 ). I haven't found any solution yet. Anyone seen a solution, I would be very interested (these wakeups consume a little more than 2W!).