Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-mobile (24 mails)

[Thomas Renninger <trenn@xxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 2007-07-09 at 16:33 +0200, Dieter Jurzitza wrote:
> Dear listmembers,
> when trying to optimize openSUSE 10.2 on my X60 (please see 
> http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Installing_openSUSE_10.2_on_a_ThinkPad_X60 for ;
> my findings) I stumbled over some "Ungereimtheiten" - please translate 
> whoever can :-):
> 
> 1.) Both zen-updater and opensuseupdater continuously keep loading the battery 
> through wakeup events - IMHO one event every hour should be more than enough 
> for such a tool.
Could you give us a pointer what kind of events happen how often, pls.
And how they keep loading the battery. Through not going into Cx state
or because CPU load is that high that even frequency is set to higher
freqs.
> 
> 2.) The kernel lacks several settings for optimizing the power consumption, 
> these are specifically:
> 
> CONFIG_TICK_ONESHOT=y
> CONFIG_NO_HZ=y
> CONFIG_HIGH_RES_TIMERS=y
> CONFIG_USB_SUSPEND=y
> 
> For powertop:
> CONFIG_TIMER_STATS=y
> 
> Why aren't those activated? Stability issues?
Because they were introduced in 2.6.21 and 10.2 is 2.6.18 based.
But you are right they are even not set in 10.3 (yet).
Not sure whether CONFIG_NO_HZ is already stable enough.
> 
> Activating the kernel parameters and playing around with powertop brought me 
> from ~15W power consumption in battery operation mode down to ~10W (lenovo 
> thinkpad). This is something other laptop users might want to profit from.
> 
> Any comments? Should I open bug reports for these?
Is it really that much?
What have you modified?
Simply booting the one or the other kernel saves you that much (-> I
doubt that)?
Do you use an USB mouse/keyboard that gets autosuspended with the other
kernel?

How much does CONFIG_NO_HZ really give you if you optimize user space
progs for both kernels?

This is really interesting. Please be careful to document any changes
and only try to compare one change with another or figures are useless.
E.g.:
 - With zen-updater and opensuseupdater events disabled I save xy.
 - With CONFIG_NO_HZ I save yx.
And only change these to have comparable values. Also an initial setup
with relevant data might be useful. E.g.
cat /proc/acpi/processor/*/power (or the new C-state interface), USB
devices are evil, display backlight was on/off and whatever could have
to do with power saving.

Thanks,

     Thomas

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