[ltp] [W510] decreasing power use, increasing battery life: screen
and lid issues
Petter Hansen
linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org
Tue, 04 Dec 2012 16:40:24 +0100
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Den 04. des. 2012 13:03, skrev Marius Gedminas:
> On Mon, Dec 03, 2012 at 05:37:17PM -0800, Tom Roche wrote:
>> Can I get advice on ways to improve a Thinkpad W510's battery life when
>> running debian?
Have you tried the Intel HD Graphics in processor instead of Nvidia?
You vil probably get 100% more battery life. In my t520 i only use the
intel graphics. That give me up to 10 hours on battery. With the nvidia
graphics i get around 4 hours.
You also have to use 3.0 > kernel.
> Have you tried powertop?
>
>> I'd especially like to improve its power management,
>> e.g.,
>>
>> * allowing screen brightness control via Fn-Home/Fn-End
> I'd say this is worth reporting as a bug, if you can figure out which
> component is dropping the ball.
>
> What's your desktop environment?
>
>> * making the close-lid event just turn off the screen, instead of
>> sleeping the box (i.e., suspending to RAM)
>>
>> I recently got a W510 on closeout (pretty good price). I installed LMDE
>> (a testing/wheezy-based distro), but am only getting slightly more than
>> 2 hours use from a fully-charged battery. This is usually plenty, but
>> this week I'm traveling at a conference where the meeting rooms seem to
>> have no accessible power outlets :-(
>>
>> One major problem seems to be screen power management: the screen is
>> always on full brightness, and cannot be reduced by Fn-End.
> One of the many possible ways of changing screen brightness is to adjust
> the 'brightness' property via xrandr. (Name of the property may depend
> on your video driver -- mine's intel).
>
> There's also xbacklight.
>
> And some magic files in /proc or /sys that probably shouldn't be
> touched.
>
> And the screen brightness applet in GNOME System Preferences.
>
>> Another major problem is, closing the lid does not (solely) turn off the
>> screen: instead, it sleeps the box. This means I am sometimes forced to
>> keep the lid up and screen on when not necessary. Note I have made the
>> appropriate change in the gnome-power-manager UI, but the behavior of
>> the box does not change.
> For the record, in recent GNOME versions gnome-power-manager is no
> longer used; power management is handled by gnome-settings-daemon's
> power plugin.
>
> It's possible that the two keep their configuration in different places.
>
> $ gsettings list-recursively|grep lid
> org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power lid-close-ac-action 'nothing'
> org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power lid-close-battery-action 'nothing'
>
> works for me (GNOME 3.6, Ubuntu 12.10).
>
>> I thought I could fix at least the first problem by switching the video
>> driver from nouveau to nvidia proprietary, but that breaks boot, as
>> described here
>>
>> http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/pipermail/linux-thinkpad/2012-December/051131.html
>>
>> So I'd appreciate other suggestions (as well as advice regarding ways to
>> roll back the nvidia install!)
> I see that rescue mode doesn't help. And init=/bin/bash is problematic
> when you've got an initramfs. Can you boot from a LiveCD, mount your
> filesystem, chroot, then uninstall the nvidia packages? You may also
> need to manually mount /proc and /sys inside the chroot if
> uninstallation of any of those packages triggers update-initramfs.
>
> (I avoid laptops with NVidia graphics for a reason.)
>
> Marius Gedminas
--
Petter Hansen
Enter su to get rootly powers.
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Den 04. des. 2012 13:03, skrev Marius
Gedminas:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:20121204120332.GA31749@platonas" type="cite">
<pre wrap="">On Mon, Dec 03, 2012 at 05:37:17PM -0800, Tom Roche wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Can I get advice on ways to improve a Thinkpad W510's battery life when
running debian?</pre>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
Have you tried the Intel HD Graphics in processor instead of Nvidia?<br>
You vil probably get 100% more battery life. In my t520 i only use
the intel graphics. That give me up to 10 hours on battery. With the
nvidia graphics i get around 4 hours.<br>
You also have to use 3.0 > kernel.<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:20121204120332.GA31749@platonas" type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">
Have you tried powertop?
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">I'd especially like to improve its power management,
e.g.,
* allowing screen brightness control via Fn-Home/Fn-End
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">
I'd say this is worth reporting as a bug, if you can figure out which
component is dropping the ball.
What's your desktop environment?
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">* making the close-lid event just turn off the screen, instead of
sleeping the box (i.e., suspending to RAM)
I recently got a W510 on closeout (pretty good price). I installed LMDE
(a testing/wheezy-based distro), but am only getting slightly more than
2 hours use from a fully-charged battery. This is usually plenty, but
this week I'm traveling at a conference where the meeting rooms seem to
have no accessible power outlets :-(
One major problem seems to be screen power management: the screen is
always on full brightness, and cannot be reduced by Fn-End.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">
One of the many possible ways of changing screen brightness is to adjust
the 'brightness' property via xrandr. (Name of the property may depend
on your video driver -- mine's intel).
There's also xbacklight.
And some magic files in /proc or /sys that probably shouldn't be
touched.
And the screen brightness applet in GNOME System Preferences.
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Another major problem is, closing the lid does not (solely) turn off the
screen: instead, it sleeps the box. This means I am sometimes forced to
keep the lid up and screen on when not necessary. Note I have made the
appropriate change in the gnome-power-manager UI, but the behavior of
the box does not change.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">
For the record, in recent GNOME versions gnome-power-manager is no
longer used; power management is handled by gnome-settings-daemon's
power plugin.
It's possible that the two keep their configuration in different places.
$ gsettings list-recursively|grep lid
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power lid-close-ac-action 'nothing'
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power lid-close-battery-action 'nothing'
works for me (GNOME 3.6, Ubuntu 12.10).
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">I thought I could fix at least the first problem by switching the video
driver from nouveau to nvidia proprietary, but that breaks boot, as
described here
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/pipermail/linux-thinkpad/2012-December/051131.html">http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/pipermail/linux-thinkpad/2012-December/051131.html</a>
So I'd appreciate other suggestions (as well as advice regarding ways to
roll back the nvidia install!)
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">
I see that rescue mode doesn't help. And init=/bin/bash is problematic
when you've got an initramfs. Can you boot from a LiveCD, mount your
filesystem, chroot, then uninstall the nvidia packages? You may also
need to manually mount /proc and /sys inside the chroot if
uninstallation of any of those packages triggers update-initramfs.
(I avoid laptops with NVidia graphics for a reason.)
Marius Gedminas
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-signature">--<br>
Petter Hansen<br>
Enter su to get rootly powers.
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