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Bug 98395

Summary: RE-WRITE: Power Management Guide
Product: [OLD] Docs-user Reporter: Jimi A. <folajimi>
Component: Desktop Configuration GuideAssignee: Docs Team <docs-team>
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX    
Severity: normal CC: earthwings, henrik
Priority: High    
Version: unspecified   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
URL: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/power-management-guide.xml
Whiteboard:
Package list:
Runtime testing required: ---
Attachments: Updated Power Management Guide.
Power Management Guide Patch
Updated Power Management Guide -- Edit
Updated Power Management Guide
Updated Power Management Guide

Description Jimi A. 2005-07-08 14:06:06 UTC
Document updated to reflect recent (and imminent/impending) changes.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.
Comment 1 Jimi A. 2005-07-08 14:09:12 UTC
Created attachment 62956 [details]
Updated Power Management Guide.

This is the guide that has been updated in its entirety. For this reason, there
is no patch to submit. Instead, the entire xml file is attached.
Comment 2 Henrik Brix Andersen 2005-07-08 14:12:45 UTC
Please attach a patch in unified diff format anyways.
Comment 3 Jimi A. 2005-07-08 14:21:08 UTC
Created attachment 62957 [details, diff]
Power Management Guide Patch

Patch submitted, as requested.

JA
Comment 4 Sven Vermeulen (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2005-07-10 04:55:09 UTC
What is the reason for a rewrite? Afaik there was no (or little) need for lots
of changes...
Comment 5 Jimi A. 2005-07-10 10:13:04 UTC
(In reply to comment #4)
> What is the reason for a rewrite? Afaik there was no (or little) need for lots
> of changes...

I *actually* attempted to implement PM on an NP9860 using the guide in question.
I found a fair amount of its content to be out of date (e.g. kernel PM options),
and even prompted questions which were unanswered by the FAQ section of the
guide. There is also the issue of undefined acronyms (e.g. C3/4) and other
unexplained terminology...

According to the GDP's mission statement, "the GDP team is committed to the
creation and maintenance of clear, concise, and original documentation..." The
primary objective of the submitted changes was to make the guide as clear and
concise as is possible. I took it upon myself to rephrase unclear sentences,
while trying to improve the conciseness of the document.

To that end, I may have fixed spelling and grammatical errors. I even removed
the use of colloquialisms, which my experience has taught me impede translation
efforts. Other additions (e.g. swsusp2-sources) are in preparation for the
arrival of 2005.1, which is expected to released by month's end...

FWIW, Mr. Nienh
Comment 6 Jimi A. 2005-07-10 10:13:04 UTC
(In reply to comment #4)
> What is the reason for a rewrite? Afaik there was no (or little) need for lots
> of changes...

I *actually* attempted to implement PM on an NP9860 using the guide in question.
I found a fair amount of its content to be out of date (e.g. kernel PM options),
and even prompted questions which were unanswered by the FAQ section of the
guide. There is also the issue of undefined acronyms (e.g. C3/4) and other
unexplained terminology...

According to the GDP's mission statement, "the GDP team is committed to the
creation and maintenance of clear, concise, and original documentation..." The
primary objective of the submitted changes was to make the guide as clear and
concise as is possible. I took it upon myself to rephrase unclear sentences,
while trying to improve the conciseness of the document.

To that end, I may have fixed spelling and grammatical errors. I even removed
the use of colloquialisms, which my experience has taught me impede translation
efforts. Other additions (e.g. swsusp2-sources) are in preparation for the
arrival of 2005.1, which is expected to released by month's end...

FWIW, Mr. Nienhüser is planning to make some additional changes soon, especially
to the section on sleep states; Mr. Andersen and some other technical experts
may also suggest some changes to my revision before the end of the week.

There are other changes that I made to the document that can be noted in the
submitted scripts which I will not bother to reiterate here. To you, *common
sense* probably makes everything seem intuitive/obvious, rendering any changes
unnecessary...
Comment 7 Jimi A. 2005-07-11 06:31:34 UTC
Created attachment 63140 [details]
Updated Power Management Guide -- Edit

This morning, I figured out how to put the feature comparison into a table
similar to that used by other guides in the repository. Also, "As Power Budget
chart illustrates..." was corrected to read as "As the Power Budget chart
illustrates..." (The term 'Power Budget' is employed in lieu of the nondescript
'figure 1.1' reference.
Comment 8 Jimi A. 2005-07-16 14:53:31 UTC
Created attachment 63572 [details]
Updated Power Management Guide

Update includes responses provided by the developer of the ncpufreqd utility;
Mr. Nienh
Comment 9 Jimi A. 2005-07-16 14:53:31 UTC
Created attachment 63572 [details]
Updated Power Management Guide

Update includes responses provided by the developer of the ncpufreqd utility;
Mr. Nienhüser provided additional information about a trio of scripts used for
toggling between runlevels.

The athcool utility will not be included because it is targeted at desktops.
Those involved in development of the utility said that they may include support
for laptops in the future.

Awaiting responses from the developers for the cpudyn, speedfreq and powernowd.


JA
Comment 10 Jimi A. 2005-07-20 12:11:45 UTC
Created attachment 63911 [details]
Updated Power Management Guide

Received additional information from several contributors.

Mr. Mattia Dongili (cpufreqd developer) was able to provide updated information
on the current state of the cpufreqd utility. He also noted that there were
inaccuracies culled from the manpages that made their way into the guide.

Mr. John Clemens (powernowd developer) confirmed that the powernowd utility was
also available for PPC and SPARC architectures, in addition to the x86
platform. He also mentioned other features that are now listed in the last
column of the table.

I am currently in contact with Mr. Ricardo Galli to get the latest information
on cpudyn.

Still no response from the speedfreq developer, though :(

JA
Comment 11 Henrik Brix Andersen 2005-07-20 12:42:38 UTC
sys-power/speedfreq is package.masked and scheduled for removal due to no
development taking place upstream, leading to unresolved bugs.
Comment 12 Jimi A. 2005-07-20 13:20:30 UTC
(In reply to comment #9)
> sys-power/speedfreq is package.masked and scheduled for removal due to no
> development taking place upstream, leading to unresolved bugs.

Thanks for the information; I will delete references to speedfreq from the
guide. It appears that the last utility is going the way of the Phoenix...

I will report as soon as I know more.

JA
Comment 13 Dennis Nienhüser (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2005-07-20 13:57:42 UTC
First, thanks for your work on the guide.    
    
Let me comment on some things I read with raised eyebrows.    
You call this patch a RE-WRITE, but there is only little content change. Most   
changes are due to swapped words and sentence rephrasing. I'm not sure whether   
this is reasonable as it doesn't change much but means additional work for the   
translation teams.  
  
> I found a fair amount of its content to be out of date (e.g. kernel PM  
options)  
  
Uhm, no, that's just FUD. 
  
Here's what I noticed when skimming over the patch (didn't look at the other    
ones. Please add patches as brix told you).    
    
+<c>metalog</c>, etc.) You may be able to view the output of the log utility     
+in <path>/var/log/kernel/current</path>. You should see the     
     
That must be a metalog specific logfile.     
     
+This is an ill-advised method as the system may fail to make the necessary    
+runlevel switches as needed. A better approach is to simulate an ACPI event at    
    
No... the user is the one who forgets to make the right choice, not the system.    
    
+Before discussing USB PM, here are a few words on <e>CPU States</e>:    
+</p>    
    
A detailed explanation of C-States in the USB section is cumbersome and    
unnecessary. I'll have to update this section anyway due to new features in    
current kernels.    
    
+interface (including bootsplash support), and may be obtained by installing    
the    
+swsusp2-sources package (Gentoo 2005.1 or later) or by manually patching the    
+kernel sources. The former is part of the kernel source tree as a built-in    
+interface.    
    
There is no such thing as swsusp2-sources. How can you add information about    
something you obviously didn't try yourself?    
    
+<pre caption="Kernel configuration for the various suspend types">    
+PM Options --->    
    
The options listed are already outdated.    
    
    
Comment 14 Łukasz Damentko (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2005-07-20 14:08:03 UTC
(In reply to comment #11)
> (...) means additional work for the translation teams. (...)

We don't translate anything which is not official, so there's no additional work
because of such (maybe too exaggerated) patch name. :)
Comment 15 Jimi A. 2005-07-20 18:43:41 UTC
Ditching bug as author does not see need for any revisions.