Re: acpi package

[Daniel Pittman <daniel@rimspace.net>]

On Fri, 3 May 2002, Alessandro Speranza wrote:
> On Sat, 4 May 2002, Daniel Pittman wrote:
>> 
>> Sure. What it lets you do, today, is display the information on
>> remaining battery life, system temperature and AC power connection in
>> a convenient, standard way without needing to parse the content of
>> the ACPI /proc interface yourself.
>
> That's right. For the moment, the only thing I'm using it for, apart
> from that it actually switches the computer off when I shutdown, I can
> check the status of the battery by reading /proc/acpi/battery/status,
> but not much more, and the battery has in fact a very short life.

The acpi command presents the information in a more useful form, I
think, in that it outputs on my machine a percentage remaining...

As to the battery life, my new laptop will run for a while hour and a
half before it dies. If you actually want to be able to have more than
that you probably want to buy an Apple iBook or equivalent.

Intel and AMD both consume a ridiculous amount of power to run a CPU
because they went for brute force.

So, if you have a short battery life, make sure that it's actually
shorter than the manufacturer claims you can get. :)

>> Yes. With acpid you can make it respond to events. I just hacked the
>> script supplied to call 'poweroff' when I hit the power button so my
>> machine turns off under ACPI.
> 
> That's interesting. What I'm wondering is: do you need just the few
> things that the patched kernel knows about acpi to do that?

I don't quite follow you. Without the daemon my understanding is that
the kernel ACPI interface will not power off on it's own. I could be
wrong, however, and have not run without the daemon. :)

[...]

>> The various Debian packages allow you to have the system react
>> automatically to power "events" such as low battery and the like. You
>> don't need them to have either ACPI or APM function.
> 
> Ok, I imagined that. The thing is my event file is empty, does it
> matter?

Not really, I suspect. Is there anything you want your machine to do
automatically? If not, an empty file should be fine. :)

Good luck with it all.
        Daniel

-- 
The revolution WILL be televised, but you'll only be able to
understand it if you don't watch the television coverage.
        -- Russ Nelson


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