Announcing the beta release of PowerTOP 2.0 [LWN.net]

From:		Arjan van de Ven <arjan-AT-linux.intel.com>
To:		discuss <discuss-AT-lesswatts.org>, Powertop Mailing List <power-AT-bughost.org>
Subject:		Announcing the beta release of PowerTOP 2.0
Date:		Wed, 05 Jan 2011 06:40:34 -0800
Message-ID:		<4D2482E2.3070301@linux.intel.com>
Archive-link:		Article, Thread

After two alpha releases, with really valuable feedback from testers, 
I'm now releasing the beta release of PowerTOP 2.0 to go with the 
release of kernel 2.6.37, which has some features that the new PowerTOP 
will use.

The PowerTOP 2.0 release is effectively a complete rewrite of the 
PowerTOP code base. The old 1.x code base had grown rather out of hand, 
having gotten many new features after the very first PowerTOP release 
without the foresight of a design that accommodated all these features.

This new 2.0 codebase extensively uses the kernel "perf" infrastructure 
to give much more accurate data for the various reports; make sure to 
enable this in your kernel configuration!

This increased accuracy and detail also required a redesigned, tab 
based, user interface so that all the relevant pieces of the program 
have all the screen real-estate they need.

Another major feature of the 2.0 code base is that the power behavior of 
the various devices in the system is prominently tracked and displayed, 
so that it's clear which devices are problematic in terms of power behavior.

One of the more experimental features of the 2.0 code-base is a power 
estimation engine, which, after calibration and getting sufficient 
measurement points, is able to give an estimate of how much power 
individual devices and processes in the system are consuming.

The reporting mode also has gotten a major overhaul, now producing an 
HTML file that has all the information in one simple file, making it 
easier to report power bugs with all relevant information right there.

The PowerTOP 2.0 code base needs a relatively new kernel to work 
properly; the brand new 2.6.37 will of course be great, but 2.6.36 will 
also work (with a few features silently absent).


You can download the beta release of PowerTOP 2.0 from

http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/status/powertop/powertop-...

or you can get the code from git at

git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/status/powertop/powertop.git


Feedback and testing of this beta release is very welcome; I would 
appreciate it is feedback email is sent to
the power@bughost.org or discuss@lesswatts.org email lists.

(Log in to post comments)

Announcing the beta release of PowerTOP 2.0

Posted Jan 9, 2011 22:58 UTC (Sun) by PaulWay (✭ supporter ✭, #45600) [Link]

I've compiled this - the compile is pretty easy on a stock Fedora system, with the installation of the libln-devel package. It's quite a bit better than version 1 , although I'm only testing it on a desktop system so I don't see as many of its nice knobs and meters, perhaps.

Have fun,

Paul

Announcing the beta release of PowerTOP 2.0

Posted Jan 22, 2011 18:02 UTC (Sat) by chadadavis (guest, #72520) [Link]

Works great on Ubuntu 10.10 (64bit on HP Envy with ATI Mobility Radeon 5650), including the calibration.

The Tunables tab is very convenient. I only missing knowing how many watts I'm using and the estimated remaining battery time.

Cheers,
Chad

Announcing the beta release of PowerTOP 2.0

Posted Jan 23, 2012 12:52 UTC (Mon) by engla (guest, #47454) [Link]

(It's now a year later)

Where is powertop's git repository? Did Arjan just delete it? Version 2.0 has not appeared yet either, but I find 1.97 to work fine (if it could just tell how to make those tunables permanent).

Announcing the beta release of PowerTOP 2.0

Posted Apr 14, 2012 10:22 UTC (Sat) by meyert (subscriber, #32097) [Link]

http://www.mail-archive.com/power@bughost.org/msg02155.html

https://github.com/fenrus75/powertop

Announcing the beta release of PowerTOP 2.0

Posted Apr 16, 2012 11:09 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Oh that's fun. There's one git repo. There's another one on git.kernel.org, which normally I would prefer only we're eight months post-compromise and it's still empty. And if you go to the first website advertised in that mail post, its download page links to a subversion repository!

At this point I'd have to start digging into the last-modified date of each repo to see which was current and what their relationship was to the existing powertop 1.x repos... and life is just too short.