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Re: Power Mgt on Laptop



On Fri, 2 Apr 2004 14:10:29 -0800
Jeff Coppock <jcoppock1@comcast.net> wrote:

> Lately, I've been working on making my laptop as efficient on power as
> possible.  
> 
> Dell Latitude C610, BIOS version A16, Testing release.
> 
> There is a lot of information out there on this subject and I've
> accomplished quite a bit on the system:
> 
> 1.  I mount my EXT3 partitions with noatime
> 2.  I have /tmp mounting in memory with tmpfs
> 3.  I adjusted syslog-ng logging with the sync() option to buffer 5
> lines before writing to file
> 4.  I do not use swap since I have enough memory to handle all my
> needs
> 
> But, in spite of this I simply cannot get the HDD to spin down with
> KDE running.  If I exit to KDM, it works just fine.   With KDE
> running, I've tried stopping all the daemons I can and still no joy.
> 
> I've tried to see what was accessing files/dirs using the following
> script:
> 
> #!/bin/bash
> echo
> echo "Finding new files and dirs 5 minutes old."
> echo
> echo "Files..."
> find / -mount -type f -amin -5
> find /usr -mount -type f -amin -5
> find /home -mount -type f -amin -5
> echo
> echo "Directories..."
> find / -mount -amin -5
> find /usr -mount -amin -5
> find /home -mount -amin -5
> 
> I can get KDE to a point where nothing KDE-related shows up, but still
> no joy.  
> 
> I've also found that noflushd doesn't work by testing it against
> hdparm-S, which does work.  So I'm using hdparm now.
> 
> I'm thinking now that it's hopeless with KDE running, that I won't be
> able to read email or other doc's offline without the HDD spinning and
> burning battery.  If anyone has idea's or suggestions to help me out,
> I'd really appreciate it.

I forgot to mention my kernel information.  I'm running a self-compile
2.4.21 kernel, which is configured properly for what I need/want.  I'm
stuck at this version for an application I need that won't run on newer
kernels yet.  I looked into laptop_mode, but I'm not convince it will
buy me anything compared to what I have so far.

jc


-- 
Jeff Coppock		Systems Engineer
Diggin' Debian		Admin and User



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