The Linux Kernel Power Problems On Older Desktop Hardware

[ioannis]

Well just installed gentoo on my brand new laptop
( i7-2630QM, 8gb of ram, 7200rpm 640 gb, amd 6770m 1gb gddr5 )

with every power management option I can think of, on idle I get 2.6 wakeups pre second in intervals of 45 seconds.

kernel is 2.6.39-pf2.

I really can't see the problem ( at least not on my system ).

what power management options do you use? can you list them for us?

I have an nvidia chip and the driver itself causes more wakeups than your entire system (even with the on-demand vblank)

[sLinkAge]

what power management options do you use? can you list them for us?

I have an nvidia chip and the driver itself causes more wakeups than your entire system (even with the on-demand vblank)

Well,

first of all, on boot I call acpi_call and turn off the radeon card , on linux the intel 3000 is more than I need.

also on startup I have this script which I run :

for x in $(ls /sys/class/scsi_host/ )
 do
	echo min_power > /sys/class/scsi_host/${x}/link_power_management_policy
 done
echo 1500 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs
echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/sched_smt_power_savings

after that I use a script I found on the net ( this mimics the powertop behavior )

cd /sys/devices
find pci* -name "control" -exec /etc/local.d/help_script.sh {} \;

When the help_script.sh is this :

#!/bin/bash

file=$1

if [[ "$file" =~ 'power' ]]
then
  echo "$file"
  echo "auto" > "$file"
  echo "Done."
fi

The thing is, after this script runs, everything works fine except my lan card, so I set it back to on with this command :

echo on > /sys/devices/pci0000\:00/0000\:00\:1c.0/power/control

If you want I can post my .config file so you can see how I've built the kernel.

[Michael]

2.6.38 reg: http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=16181

[ioannis]

Well,

first of all, on boot I call acpi_call and turn off the radeon card , on linux the intel 3000 is more than I need.

also on startup I have this script which I run :

for x in $(ls /sys/class/scsi_host/ )
 do
	echo min_power > /sys/class/scsi_host/${x}/link_power_management_policy
 done
echo 1500 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs
echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/sched_smt_power_savings

after that I use a script I found on the net ( this mimics the powertop behavior )

cd /sys/devices
find pci* -name "control" -exec /etc/local.d/help_script.sh {} \;

When the help_script.sh is this :

#!/bin/bash

file=$1

if [[ "$file" =~ 'power' ]]
then
  echo "$file"
  echo "auto" > "$file"
  echo "Done."
fi

The thing is, after this script runs, everything works fine except my lan card, so I set it back to on with this command :

echo on > /sys/devices/pci0000\:00/0000\:00\:1c.0/power/control

If you want I can post my .config file so you can see how I've built the kernel.

Thanks sLinkAge. I'll give those a try