Fedora Hardware :: Using Acpi: Thermal / Sysfs-api To Extend Battery Life
Dec 31, 2009
This link, acpi: thermal/sysfs-api, explains how the new thermal management sysfs class is built, but doesn't give much information about using it. Using watch, I can see that the cur_state of cooling_device2 changes from 0 to 5 when I check "Dim display when idle" in Power Management Preferences. But I haven't found an applet that changes cooling_device0 or cooling_device1.
Echoing different integers to the cur_state files limits the maximum cpu frequency for cpu0 and cpu1, respectively. This behaviour is expected from what I've read, and mimics the options in Windows power manager for extending battery life by throttling the CPUs. I've had no luck with google and local man pages, so has anybody has seen an applet for controlling /sys/class/thermal/cooling_device[0|1]/cur_state?
On a side note, a value of 1 does slow the CPU down, but it will still hit 100C (normal for an Intel mobile duo core). However, values of 2 and larger throttle enough to lower the maximum CPU temp. Since the CPU temp is a good indicator of power consumption, it's pretty obvious that these two cur_state files are intended to extend battery life. dd_wizard
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Jan 8, 2011
I bought a dell mini 10v last spring and I have always gotten around 2-2.5 hrs max battery life. Is that all this 3-cell can pull off?
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Mar 2, 2010
getting back to our laptop, the stability window is ~3.2V. Meaning that when you operate the battery above this the electrolyte is oxidized on the positive electrode and reduced on the negative electrode. Remember that we only want to oxidize and reduce the active materials and don't want to do anything else. All these reactions other than the ones we want are called side reactions and these are really bad for the battery. The nominal voltage of a laptop battery is 3.7 V which means that something bad wants to happen as we use the battery.So long story short, stuff (e.g., passive layers and poor kinetics of reactions) happens and things are not as bad as they seem and you can increase the voltage up to 4.2V without bad things really happening. All chargers for Li-ion cells today cut the battery off when it reaches 4.2V. What you have to realize is that at 4.2V, these side reactions are present in finite amounts and start to chemically kill the battery, but its not that dramatic.
Operating to 4.1V makes things better and extends the life, 4.0 V is even better and so on. So why don't battery manufacturers cut the voltage off at, say, 4 V to get better battery life? Because every time you cut this voltage down you decrease the capacity of the battery and its run time. The 4.2V cutoff is a compromise between good run time and decent (read "not pathetic) life.On the other hand, if you charge the battery and then pull the plug (so to speak), the battery discharges some, the voltage drops, and these reactions become less of a problem and your battery life goes up. So the best things you can do is to charge the laptop (or cell phone, camera etc.) and once its charged, pull the plug. Your battery will thank you for it.As a matter of fact, if you own a Lenovo Thinkpad, you can actually change the state of charge to which you charge the battery using the Battery Maintenance utility. You can change this from charging to 100% state (where the voltage is 4.2V) to 90% so that your voltage is less. You lose some energy is doing that, but atleast you can change it to 100% when you need battery power and put it back down to 90% when you can plug in. I wish my Mac has the same feature.
I typically use the battery for a while (say 1/2 hour to 1 hour), then plug it in and wait to fully charge it, then I pull the plug and use it again for 1/2 hour to 1h and then I repeat this. Takes some getting used to and I forget to do this, but I try.
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Aug 31, 2010
I originally installed Kubuntu 7.10 on an ACER laptop (exact model escapes me at the moment) and subsequently upgraded to 9.10 and then to 10.04. Starting with 9.10, I had problems with the computer suddenly turning off in the middle of doing work. Eventually, I figured out that when this happened, the bottom panel had gotten quite warm so it probably a thermal control measure. Further, I discovered that I could prevent this by setting the power regulator to powersave, which effectively kept frequency scaling at 50% and under which I never had the computer suddenly turn, the only exceptions being when unplugged the computer and replugged it in and it would switch to dynamic power policy thus running at full power.
However, after "upgrading" to 10.04, I can't do anything to restrict frequency scaling. Whether I set the regulator to powersave, ondemand or anything, CPU frequency can go to full capacity until it heats the CPU to the critical trip point, invoking poweroff. Sometimes, this would happen just a few minutes after "acpi -t" reported 40C (is there some way to test the output from acpi, I've seen it report obviously wrong figures such as 0C when the room was considerably above freezing?). While trying to figure out what to do, I discovered the /proc/acpi/thermal directory and subsequently the /sys/dev/... directory.
I would like to know which directory I should focus on and what files in order to establish trip points and direct actions that will force the system to reduce heating so it won't reach critical. It's not like it's particularly compute intensive tasks triggering this. I have had it happen while running nothing more than the windowing system, system monitor, terminal and paging through a file with less. I have looked for documentation online but have not found anything that clearly explains what I need to do. The only parts I understand from what I've found are "[critical]: S5", "[active]", and "[passive]". The "[passive]" line included items like "tc=..." and "device=0x...", but I have no idea whatsoever what any of those settings do and the documents do absolutely nothing to explain them.
1) what file I need to edit, 2) what options I can set in the file, 3) what values those options can take and 4) what effects those values have on ACPI's behavior. Lastly, the default setting HAVE GOT TO BE CHANGED. Having poweroff as the first line of defense against overheating is simply UNACCEPTABLE. What would happen if this occurs during the middle of a system upgrade? I know at least enough to figure what needs to be done, even if I can't figure out how to do it. Many users can't even do that and I don't think they should have to. The installation process should automatically detect what methods of reducing thermal output available (reducing frequency scaling, throttling, fans) and set trip points that invoke them before reaching critical.
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Oct 11, 2010
It's only been a couple of days since I formatted my toshiba laptop's hard drive (i was running fedora without significant problems) and installed slackware 13.1 32bit. I did a network install because the dvd drive is not functioning properly. everything installed fine with the hugesmp kernel, but I started not being able to boot the laptop every single time I wanted to (especially after a reboot but also after a power up).
my observations:
-the pc might freeze in the very first toshiba logo screen (where you are prompted to press F2 to enter BIOS)
-or it might freeze when I get the lilo boot loader (not even the count down to choose kernel starts) - but i CAN use the arrows and press 'enter' to choose to load a kernel manually
-or just after it loads the kernel and the bios checks
-or during boot after in loads ACPI thermal zone
-or a little later during boot when the dhcpcd if broadcasting for a dhcp lease.
the first 3 are freezes, the last 2 are resets. especially if i need to reboot (or get the resets of the 2 last case), I will surely get stack in one of the first 3 cases afterwards! i have observed that rarely, after such a reset, if it actually gets stack in the toshiba logo, i might be able - pressing the poiwer buttonj repeatedly to actually overcome the 'freezing' there at which time i'll get to the lilo loader (the count down timer will not.. count down), but i can press 'enter' and I will finally get stack after loading the kernel and bios checks
So I have to powerdown the laptop and start all over again. Sometimes the whole boot process will proceed smoothly. and i'll get to a login prompt, and when I do I can keep the laptop up and running for virtually ever. that is it doesn't seem to be slackware related... Hwever the problems started after I installed slackware. I didn't have any problem with the fedora installation and i wonder if it has something to do with the network boot.... additional note, with feodra i didn't have a problem restarting or shutting down the laptop. now if i restart, the pc will go through the process of shutting down, but it will never actually reboot - i'll have to do it manually..
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Jun 2, 2011
I just upgraded to f15 x86_64. I use a VPCCEB3Z1E vaio laptop and I noticed that my laptop can't last more than half past an hour running from battery in wireless productivity (just surfing the net and make some word processing, so nothing so heavy...) I use kde 4, installed cpupowerutils (replacement for cpufrequtils), put the modules acpi_cpufreq, cpufreq-ondemand -powersave and the other governors in /etc/rc.d/rc.local for loading them at boot. Edited profiles in powerdevil (every profile has cpupowerutils freq-set -g and the name of a governor) but i still notice no changes. How I can get a better power management on this laptop? Fan still runs at high speed.
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Jun 5, 2010
this isn't so much slackware specific as it is general linux related, but using the default huge slackware kernel included with 13.1, acpi reports cpu temps of about 55 celsius i always like to run my own kernels though, and using the latest stable kernel, i have compiled one using what i believe is necessary for my hardware, and everything works as expected except that acpi reports my cpu temp as 80 celsius at idle, causing my fan to be running constantly
so without simply using the generic config included with slack in the newer kernel, what do you think might be causing the thermal issues? i used diff on the two configs and the output is over 5,000 lines, so thats not a huge help, and im really not even sure what to be looking for the cpu is an intel i7 720qm, so if anyone might know any specific settings for that processor type needed for acpi to interface with it properly that would be much obliged here is my config for potential review: [URL] also, if i disable acpi entirely, the fan operates as normal but i cannot get readings obviously
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Aug 31, 2010
I have a 3 year old laptop with the original battery and its drained pretty bad. The "Battery may be broken" popup was driving me insane and this is how you disable it, in case you are in the same situation as me. Open terminal
Code:
gconf-editor
Drill down to...
apps --> gnome-power-manager --> notify
uncheck the low_capacity checkbox. This should disable the popup for you if your battery has little life left in it. Now, if any knows how to disable the Avahi popup, let me know.
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Dec 21, 2010
I recently bought a Toshiba Satellite L650-BT2N23 laptop (i3-core, 4GB RAM) and have Fedora 14 (kernel 2.6.35.6-45.fc14.x86_64) installed on it along with Windows7 64 bit. I am having a hard time getting linux o detect the battery, even when the laptop is running on battery power. The battery appears as not present and the power management applet always indicates that the laptop is running on AC. Setting acpi=on or acpi=force did not remedy the problem, neither did disabling acpi altogether (acpi=off). I have 'Insyde H2O BIOS' version 1.70, which appears to support acpi.
[Code]....
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Jun 30, 2011
So I just installed F15 and I really like it. I had to upgradde to kernel version 2.6.39.1 to get my wireless from disconnecting -- aparentlyey it is a bug in kernels 2.6.38.x .Now my problem, and it was also a problem with kernel 2.6.38.x, is that my battery life on my netbook (gateway LT2320, atom n450 @1.6, gma 3150, 1gb ram, 1024x600) is cut by half. I used to get 7-8 hours of battery life, with Crunchbang, Ubuntu, etc., but now i get 4.5 hours.I have read that this is a problem with the current kernels available after 2.6.37.x.
My question is have they found a fix? Are we going to have to wait for 2.6.31? How much longer until that kernel is in the fedora repositories?
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Jan 7, 2011
Does Windows 7 get better battery life compared to Fedora. I'm about to purchase a t410s, and from reviews it's battery life is quite low. I don't want to run Fedora if it's going to eat even more battery life.I know Linux tends to run hotter and have about 30 mins less battery life. This was the case about a year ago, does this still hold true for Fedora today or has Linux finally overcome Windows?
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Mar 28, 2011
I'm running Windows 7 Enterprise and noticed something new. The system icon for battery life is showing "plugged in, not charging." Does this oddity occur in Fedora too?
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Feb 23, 2010
Is Ubunutu better than Windows 7 for general battery life?
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May 12, 2010
So, I never got great battery life with 9.04 or 9.10, but it was acceptable. Here's the thing, with Windows 7 I can get about two hours. With Ubuntu I'm lucky if I get an hour, and I mean really lucky. I have selected to dim the brightness and to spin down the HDD when possible, it hasn't helped a whole lot. What I don't see is an option to underclock the CPU, which is done rather easily in Kubuntu.
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Apr 30, 2010
Installed Lucid netbook-remix on my Aspire One with SSD and 3 cell battery last night. Under 9.10 I got 2hr 15mins with wifi and up to 3hr without wifi. This morning on the train to work I booted the new release only to find that without wifi I'm now getting only 1hr 20mins battery life (fully charged battery). I have the brightness turned down low to try and save a little power but it makes no difference. What can I do. As this is a netbook-remix release having just over an hour of battery life is plain awful and impractical.Any suggestions to increase battery life?
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Feb 24, 2011
So I've been using Ubuntu on a Toshiba L645d, and after a few hiccups with the sound and wireless, it's finally working well now. However, the battery is still a bit less when compared to Windows 7 (2:00 vs 2:35, but it came with optimizations on W7 so that might be the reason. A comparison of power used: 25w of power on Ubuntu vs 17.5 on W7.
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Mar 3, 2011
I've used an older version of ubuntu before, when it was brown and orange. I ran it off of a 8 gb solid state express card. Used it for about a month, didn't like it because I didn't know how to install anything and because it was slow (because ran off of a express card). Now, I'm looking to try ubuntu 10.10 on a partition of a main hard drive, specifically on the chrome os laptop when it comes out.
Now, I've read up that the battery life for ubuntu is mysteriously worse than on what would run a mac or a windows. This battery life issue is driving me away from ubuntu. How much battery life would I actually get for ubuntu if my battery life lasts 4 hours running a windows 7? And how much hard drive space do I need to partition to install ubuntu?
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Nov 14, 2010
I've been using Ubuntu for the past four years, but I recently bought a Dell Mini 1012, and while Ubuntu 10.04 is wonderful in every way, it is giving me quite poor results in terms of battery life, compared to Windows 7 which is also installed on the device. I have been able to get 4.5 hours out of Ubuntu,compared to the 8 hours I have been able to get with Windows 7 Starter. I have tried everything suggested here in order to get better battery life out of Ubuntu, but without success.I'm wondering if I might have better success with another distribution.Are there any Linux distributions available that can claim longer battery life than others, on netbooks and in general? This question can be answered objectively if it is backed up with hard data from based on benchmarks,
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Apr 1, 2010
I have a Samsung R510 laptop, with a short-life battery (holds up to 1.5 hours) Is there any way to make my laptop work longer by using some tweaks? Maybe it is possible to change the CPU according to the load?
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Feb 4, 2011
I currently use windows 7 on my laptop which gives me on average on 2 hours of battery life. If replace windows with ubuntu, would it allow more battery life time? I am a student, and I always have battery life issue when I work at uni.
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Jul 6, 2011
i recently purchased my second laptop, primarily for linux. When i chose it, my main concern was battery life. Just to make a side note. When i say battery life, i mean how long the computer takes until the battery goes flat. Not how many years/ect it takes till the battery will no longer hold charge.
My new computer claims to be able to get 10 hours. Although it's a bit off, i get a satisfying little bit over 6 hours, from full charge. This is running Windows 7. I couldn't wait to put Linux on my new computer, i have, but it just isn't satisfying because i only get about 4 hours while running linux, tried three different distros, and all roughly the same.
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Mar 3, 2010
I've decided to format my netbook entirely and just run NBR. I still need a windows install because a lot of stuff still doesn't work correctly in wine.
will running a virtual windows install kill mu netbooks battery life quickly or is it the same as running any other program? also what's a good virtual OS program? I think the only one I know of it vmware or something?
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Jun 16, 2010
My battery life in Ubuntu is much less than that of Windows 7. I am trying to find ways to improve my battery life in Ubuntu. One thing that I notice is that my CPU (Intel Core i7 on a Lenovo Thinkpad W510) always runs at 55 degrees Celsius or even higher. my GPU right now reads 51. Seems pretty toasty to me, but not too over the top. Is it abnormal to have this as an average temperature? (since writing, it has risen to 57. I am on AC power, listening to music with Rhythmbox and browsing the web in Google Chrome.)
My cpu mode is set to 'ondemand', and I think this is a good option to balance power and speed. I am wondering if there is a similar function for the gpu. In my Nvidia settings my "PowerMizer" preferred mode is set to adaptive. Is that essentially all the improvement I'm going to get? In windows it seems like the amount of heat coming from the fan corresponds to running cpu/gpu intensive programs. When I'm not doing much, the exhaust is not as hot. In Ubuntu 10.04, the stream of heat is relatively constant. It does increase with more use, but it seems that the base temperature is higher.
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Feb 24, 2011
First issue is, now that I am running Debian "Squeeze", my laptop runs much hotter than before. Its definitely hot on the very bottom compared to when running Windows. Once the system begins to heat up, the fans start spinning faster, the system gets louder, etc.
Second issue is battery life. I am able to get 5 hours out of the laptop in Windows, but maybe 2.5 hours in Debian. I am assuming that these two problems go hand in hand. Now from experience with PC hardware, I know that the newer chips scale their frequency and voltage depending on demand. I don't think the computer is doing this correctly when running Linux.
By running
cat /proc/acpi/processor/CPU0/throttling
I see that the CPU(s) are in T0 state (or 100%). Manually setting the frequency doesn't change anything either (via the gnome applet). Am I diagnosing this correctly?
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Apr 20, 2010
So I've come across several tips to optimize battery life on Linux. [URLs]. In addition to undervolting, I would like to underclock. Is there a way to control CPU speed outside of the BIOS via some software control in Linux... or some sort of boot manager? I would like to boot to linux using underclocked speeds and have Windows running full blast. Is there a way to run Linux completely in RAM? I have read that saves on power consumption from the hard drive.
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Jul 16, 2010
I recently had to turn ACPI off because of major errors like the child_rip error, but now I don't have battery support or anything like that. No battery meter, etc. Is there a way I can get this while ACPI is off?
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Aug 30, 2010
I am wanting to replace the hard drive on my laptop with a Compact Flash Card. I bought a card and a adapter, but I am seeing that there are a lot of downsides to this (e.g. the card is slower, writes should be conserved because of limited write cycles, etc..) plus, in order to change the hard drive in my laptop (ibook g3 clamshell) you literally have to disassemble the entire thing! I mainly wanted to do this project to increase my battery life. However, some people say that it doesn't make much of a difference, while others say it is wonderful. So, to those that have done this mod, how much of a difference did it make for you?
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Aug 9, 2011
I have a strange problem with the ACPI in my laptop, the problem start some days ago, I don't remember exactly the day.
The first symptom is with de Gnome Power Manager, only show me when I disconnect de AC power, but when connect it again the Power Manager icon disappear and the energy battery stay in the same value.
After search for a while, all the post I read talking about the /proc/acpi/battery directory, but this directory not exist on my laptop.
I have a laptop Lenovo G460. My OS is Squeeze. My Kernel is 2.6.38-bpo.2-amd64, because the 2.6.32 version of the kernel don't recognize well my audio card.
I can't attach the dmesg and the lsmod output because I receive a message "Sorry, the board attachment quota has been reached.", both file are compressed.
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Dec 28, 2010
My ACPI and KDE Battery Monitor both report my battery as being 78% charged, even though I normally use it plugged in and it should be fully charged. I've found a bug report of the same thing in Ubuntu, but it seems to only happen to Sony laptops and I'm using a Lenovo G560. Plus, the bug is pretty old. Does anybody have a clue how to find out if my battery really isn't charging or if it's a software problem?
The bug report is here: [URL]
It seems to occur with laptops with "smart" battery configuration settings in Windows. As I've never had Windows on this computer, that possibility is already shut out.
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Jan 24, 2011
I have an Asus Eee PC with Ubuntu Netbook Remix (Unity). The other day, I turned off the wireless using the keyboard shortcut to save battery life when I was somewhere without wireless, but now it's not turning back on. I tried restarting, I've done the keyboard shortcut several times, and it still just says "disconnected" for wireless and wired, even though there are several wireless networks around me right now. There aren't any options in Network Connections or Network Tools to turn on the wireless. Is there a way to manually turn it back on?
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