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Bug 178130 - sys-power/powertop-1.0 (new Package)
Summary: sys-power/powertop-1.0 (new Package)
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: Gentoo Linux
Classification: Unclassified
Component: New packages (show other bugs)
Hardware: x86 Linux
: High enhancement (vote)
Assignee: Default Assignee for New Packages
URL: http://www.linuxpowertop.org
Whiteboard:
Keywords: EBUILD
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2007-05-12 01:41 UTC by Christian Merkle
Modified: 2007-05-14 23:53 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

See Also:
Package list:
Runtime testing required: ---


Attachments
PowerTop 1.0 ebuilld (powertop-1.0.ebuild,815 bytes, text/plain)
2007-05-12 01:42 UTC, Christian Merkle
Details
PowerTop 1.1 ebuilld (powertop-1.1.ebuild,745 bytes, text/plain)
2007-05-13 18:01 UTC, Christian Merkle
Details

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Description Christian Merkle 2007-05-12 01:41:00 UTC
What's eating the battery life of my laptop? Why isn't it many more hours? Which software component causes the most power to be burned? These are important questions without a good answer... until now.

The Linux 2.6.21 kernel introduces the so called tickless-idle feature. This feature allows the processor to be really idle for long periods of time, rather than having to wake up every millisecond for the timer tick. Current processors save a lot of power if they are idle for long periods, which translates into a longer battery life for your laptop, or a lower energy bill for your datacenter. However, a Linux system consists of more software than just the kernel, and there are many tunables involved. It's not easy to see what is going on, and as a result the behavior is sometimes far from optimal, and a lot of power is wasted.

Intel is proud to announce the PowerTOP tool (http://www.linuxpowertop.org), a program that collects the various pieces of information from your system and presents an overview of how well your laptop is doing in terms of power savings. In addition, PowerTOP will provide an indication of which tunables and software components are the biggest offenders in slurping up your battery time. PowerTOP will update it's display frequently so that you can directly see the impact of any changes you are making.

A typical Linux distribution has many components that wake the processor up frequently for no good reason. In our testing with PowerTOP, we have seen many cases where with some simple fixes, the battery life of typical laptops was increased by one hour or more!

We are providing fixes for several of the issues we identified, and we encourage the Linux community to help us in this quest to get the maximum battery life out of your (hopefully Intel based) laptops. Try the PowerTOP tool, join the mailing list or the IRC channel and provide feedback, problem reports or fixes!

===
Source: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com> on LKML


I wrote a small ebuild for PoweTop 1.0 => sys-power/powertop could be the best category.
Comment 1 Christian Merkle 2007-05-12 01:42:03 UTC
Created attachment 118954 [details]
PowerTop 1.0 ebuilld
Comment 2 Stefan Schweizer (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2007-05-13 13:13:38 UTC
thank you very much. I committed this.
Comment 3 Christian Merkle 2007-05-13 18:00:45 UTC
I´m not shure if this is the right way or any maintainer will care of the package: There´s a version bump to 1.1

Changelog:
1.1 --
* Fix bug that shows "you don't have C-states" on mobile CPUs when the cpu is 100% busy as reported by Friedrich
* Cosmetic code cleanups (Lindent) as suggested by David Brownell
* Get rid of popen() and the static sized events array (Keith Packard)
* Add some more tips for kernel config options based on various reports/feedback
* Improve "you are not root so can't get timerstats" message to say that you need to be root rather than that you need to change your kernel config
* Make a better effort at locating the kernel .config file
* Don't show "please turn CONFIG_FOO off" if the kernel you have doesn't even support CONFIG_FOO (yet)
* Show absolute per-second wakeup counts too (multiple requestors)
* Add capability to suggest disabling daemons and the like


1.0 --
* Initial Release
Comment 4 Christian Merkle 2007-05-13 18:01:52 UTC
Created attachment 119132 [details]
PowerTop 1.1 ebuilld

Version bump to 1.1
Comment 5 Stefan Schweizer (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2007-05-13 18:48:05 UTC
thank you fixed again. The right way is to just tell me about it or file a new bug. Usually I prefer instant messaging / email or irc ;)
Comment 6 Christian Merkle 2007-05-13 19:46:30 UTC
Okay :-)