PowerTOP v2.0 Release

[Posted May 10, 2012 by jake]

The PowerTOP power consumption monitor has released version 2.0. "Version 2.0 has several new key features and updates. The first big change is the use of a hardened library called libparseevents, for accessing the kernel "perf" infrastructure. With this enhancement, we are able to provide much more accurate data, and be more flexible with any future kernel development. There has been a great deal of work done in the area of CPU data measurement and diagnostics. Full accurate support was added for CPU idle, frequency, and power traces, along with expanded frequency state reporting for CPUs with more than 10 states. With these additions, PowerTOP v2.0 now gives a clearer picture of how programs affect CPU utilization, and the impact on important power-saving sleep states." In addition, version 2.0 adds the ability to export HTML and CSV reports, has a re-designed, tab-oriented UI, and more.

PowerTOP v2.0 Release

Posted May 11, 2012 5:04 UTC (Fri) by sheepdestroyer (guest, #54968) [Link] (16 responses)

Is it possible yet to save the power saving settings across reboot? I've read something about that's the distros's job to implement them and powertop is just there to test those settings but when distros will not do it or provide a knob to do it, what is there to do for end users?

PowerTOP v2.0 Release

Posted May 11, 2012 5:33 UTC (Fri) by bmenrigh (subscriber, #63018) [Link] (3 responses)

It's certainly not comprehensive but I have a script to turn a bunch of settings on:

lambda ~ # cat scripts/power_save_on.sh
#!/bin/bash

# SCSI
find /sys/class/scsi_host | egrep '\/host[0-9]+$' | while read LINE; do echo 'min_power' > ${LINE}'/link_power_management_policy'; done

# Device power savings
find /sys/bus/{pci,i2c}/devices/*/power/control | while read LINE; do echo 'auto' > ${LINE}; done

# USB
find /sys/bus/usb/devices/*/power/control | while read LINE; do echo 'auto' > ${LINE}; done

# WOL
ethtool -s eth0 wol d

# sysctl settings
sysctl -p > /dev/null

PowerTOP v2.0 Release

Posted May 11, 2012 6:04 UTC (Fri) by sheepdestroyer (guest, #54968) [Link] (1 responses)

It works great, many thanks
the only settings remaining in the 'bad' state after executing it are :

Bad Wireless Power Saving for interface wlan0
Bad NMI watchdog should be turned off
Bad Power Aware CPU scheduler
Bad VM writeback timeout
Bad Enable Audio codec power management

Someone know about this Power Aware CPU scheduler? It seems I never heard about it outside PowerTop.

PowerTOP v2.0 Release

Posted May 11, 2012 6:40 UTC (Fri) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link]

I think that it means the scheduler settings which try to control core and hyper-threading usage.

There are two of them. I think one controls if threads are concentrated on one core until it is overloaded, or spread out to all cores evenly. The other one is similar but controls if threads are scheduled on hyperthread siblings first, or scheduled on really separate cores.

PowerTOP v2.0 Release

Posted May 11, 2012 7:19 UTC (Fri) by sheepdestroyer (guest, #54968) [Link]

OK so i've now added the following comands to your script witch activate the last 'bad' knob i've had :

# enable the power aware CPU scheduler
echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/sched_mc_power_savings

# enable HD audio powersave mode
echo 1 > /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save

# Increase the VM dirty writeback time from 5.00 to 15 seconds with:
echo 1500 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs
# This wakes the disk up less frequently for background VM activity

# Disable NMI Watchdog
echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/nmi_watchdog

# Enable Laptop Mode - this one is a bonus
echo "5" > /proc/sys/vm/laptop_mode

PowerTOP v2.0 Release

Posted May 11, 2012 7:49 UTC (Fri) by cmm (guest, #81305) [Link] (8 responses)

You could trade scripts, or you could just use TLP.

PowerTOP v2.0 Release

Posted May 11, 2012 8:15 UTC (Fri) by sheepdestroyer (guest, #54968) [Link] (7 responses)

TLP packages are available for Arch, Debian, Gentoo, openSUSE and Ubuntu

but not for Fedora...

PowerTOP v2.0 Release

Posted May 11, 2012 9:35 UTC (Fri) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]

I guess it's far easier to port the rpm from openSUSE to Fedora than to reinvent TLP from the start. I've done it a couple of times in the other direction and it was usually quite painless.

PowerTOP v2.0 Release

Posted May 11, 2012 11:57 UTC (Fri) by imitev (guest, #60045) [Link] (4 responses)

For somebody not used to (re)build rpms it may seems difficult, but it's really straightforward ; so, here are the rpms for you (opensuse's rpm rebuilt on F15)

http://c3i.bg/unsec/tlp/tlp-0.3.6-10.1.noarch.rpm
http://c3i.bg/unsec/tlp/tlp-rdw-0.3.6-10.1.noarch.rpm

it's just a matter of having a single "%_topdir /home/imitev/build/rpms" line in $HOME/.rpmmacros, having the "rpm-build" package installed and then doing rpmbuild --rebuild tlp-0.3.6-10.1.src.rpm

You should of course check the file hashes of my rpms against the original package...

on my laptop "tlp start" gives an error about upower but it's not needed.

PowerTOP v2.0 Release

Posted May 11, 2012 17:33 UTC (Fri) by jengelh (guest, #33263) [Link] (3 responses)

>it's just a matter of having a single "%_topdir /home/imitev/build/rpms" line in $HOME/.rpmmacros, having the "rpm-build" package installed and then doing rpmbuild --rebuild tlp-0.3.6-10.1.src.rpm

Enabling the Fedora_15 build target for that package on the Open Build Service would have likely been even easier.

PowerTOP v2.0 Release

Posted May 12, 2012 1:32 UTC (Sat) by imitev (guest, #60045) [Link] (2 responses)

Interesting - never really had time to check how OBS worked.

But I'm not a packager of TLP, so how am I supposed to enable that ? I already spent 5 minutes looking around, which is way more than what it took to rebuild the src rpm locally (granted - my system is already setup and the rpm has no fancy build deps).

PowerTOP v2.0 Release

Posted May 12, 2012 23:13 UTC (Sat) by jengelh (guest, #33263) [Link] (1 responses)

http://picpaste.de/meta-SrWWLBjQ.png (I generally edit the xml using the dedicated command-line client). The mousepushers can also click their way through "Repositories" in the webui, though I did not find the link to add_repo in there anymore. Gotta file a bug.

PowerTOP v2.0 Release

Posted May 12, 2012 23:15 UTC (Sat) by jengelh (guest, #33263) [Link]

Or maybe I should actually login to the webinterface.. I dislike webpages setting cookies to expire after browser close (the latter being something that I regularly do given the static memory cost of firefox). http://picpaste.de/meta2-NwdRrfIP.png

PowerTOP v2.0 Release

Posted May 13, 2012 2:51 UTC (Sun) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link]

Fedora and RHEL ships with tuned: https://fedorahosted.org/tuned/ -- you can switch between different power profiles or define your own.

PowerTOP v2.0 Release

Posted May 11, 2012 12:46 UTC (Fri) by arjan (subscriber, #36785) [Link]

The --html report will tell you which commands will toggle a "bad" into a "good".

PowerTOP itself doesn't want to be in the business of making things permanent (many support issues ;-)

PowerTOP v2.0 Release

Posted May 11, 2012 15:28 UTC (Fri) by intgr (subscriber, #39733) [Link] (1 responses)

The more important question is: why aren't these enabled by default in the kernel? Why is there even a tunable?

PowerTOP v2.0 Release

Posted May 11, 2012 16:53 UTC (Fri) by hmh (subscriber, #3838) [Link]

Because they either crash bad hardware, or are bad for performance.