battery management in Linux on pavilion

[Mike Rodgers]

I have a HP Pavilion ze1250 running Suse Linux 8.0. I have to keep it connected to AC because it runs full throttle and runs the battery down in an hour. Any ideas on how to manage power consumption better?

[Bruno Vidal]

Hi
In order to do that you have to modify your APM configuration. Two thing, first recompile a new kernel after changing APM options (under General Setup -> Advance Power Management). And then you can use apm command to suspend/stand-by the computer.

Good luck.

[Essen Davis]

I have a ze1250 and have solved this. I hope I can remember all it takes.

First, download the latest kernel source (not from redhat)... this is so that you can apply the acpi patch (from sourceforge-directions included). You will need to print and reference a page (many available under google search) that tells how to compile your own kernel. while in the make xconfig step... disable apm support because you have apm but it doesn't give you any control. If you have both acpi and apm enabled, apm will get recognized first and acpi won't run.

test (as root) to make sure it worked. type cat /proc/acpi/processor/CPU0/throttling

it should show you that you are running hot. (level 0).

Then download fritz's autospeedstep SOURCE (not rpm). It is made for intel speedstep. extract it to a directory and replace autospeedstep.c with the attached file. follow his directions on compiling it. then add to /etc/rc.d/rc.local
the lines:

/usr/local/sbin/autospeedstep
echo "Starting AMD Power Now Throttling!"

on restart you can cat it and it should show 86% reduction. It steps up to full power only when the cpu is under high load (3d games or for a few seconds while starting large programs).
You may find some scripts out there to control things like your power button and such. sleep is not yet supported under acpi. If you want my scripts, I can attach them, but they're nothing spectacular... I'm still looking for better ones myself.

BTW, all this work is well worth it... I get the same battery life under linux that I had with windows xp., my lap is also no longer getting burned up.

Hope this helps.

Essen

[Oliver Hemming]

I followed Essen's instructions using Mandrake 9 on a 1210 and they worked perfectly. Thanks. I should also add that I compiled the acpi stuff into the kernal rather than kept them as modules. I don't know which is better... just that it worked for me. Also, there is a acpi plugin called gkacpi for gkrellm