[Cooker] 2008.1 extremely power hungry?

[Steve Morris-5]

Ever since I have installed 2008.1 from scratch, after wiping 2008.0,
and running kpowersave with the powersave theme is extremely power
hungry. Under 2008.0 my battery lasted about 1 hour 15 minutes, under
2008.1 I am lucky if it lasts 1/2 an hour. How do I increase the time
the battery lasts, or work out what is causing the power drain?

regards,
Steve


[samorris.vcf]

---

begin:vcard
fn:Steve Morris
n:Morris;Steve
email;internet:samorris@...
x-mozilla-html:TRUE
version:2.1
end:vcard

---

[Colin Guthrie-8]

Steve Morris wrote:
> Ever since I have installed 2008.1 from scratch, after wiping 2008.0,
> and running kpowersave with the powersave theme is extremely power
> hungry. Under 2008.0 my battery lasted about 1 hour 15 minutes, under
> 2008.1 I am lucky if it lasts 1/2 an hour. How do I increase the time
> the battery lasts, or work out what is causing the power drain?

Use (i.e. google to learn about) powertop.

This should help identify the bottlenecks.

While I hate to admit it, pulseaudio could be waking up your system a
bit more often than just plain alsa. This will change however with the
next release of pulseaudio which will use dynamic buffer sizing and some
advanced cleverness to actually cause far fewer wakeups... less than
pure alsa surprisingly (if I've understood it correctly!)

So you can always try some metrics by disabling PA and see if that helps
battery life. Also you can disable bluetooth and other wireless if you
don't use them as they are real hogs.

Col

--

+--------------------------+
|      Colin Guthrie       |
+--------------------------+
| cguthrie(at)mandriva.org |
|  http://colin.guthr.ie/  |
+--------------------------+

[Thierry Vignaud]

Steve Morris <samorris@...> writes:

> Ever since I have installed 2008.1 from scratch, after wiping 2008.0,
> and running kpowersave with the powersave theme is extremely power
> hungry. Under 2008.0 my battery lasted about 1 hour 15 minutes, under
> 2008.1 I am lucky if it lasts 1/2 an hour. How do I increase the time
> the battery lasts, or work out what is causing the power drain?

check with powertop

[Sam Bailey]

I also noticed a huge drop in battery time. From 1-1.25hrs to less than 30min.

> Use (i.e. google to learn about) powertop.
>
> This should help identify the bottlenecks.

I've been checking to see wackups with powertop, and cpu usage of apps with
htop.
 

> While I hate to admit it, pulseaudio could be waking up your system a
> bit more often than just plain alsa. This will change however with the
> next release of pulseaudio which will use dynamic buffer sizing and some
> advanced cleverness to actually cause far fewer wakeups... less than
> pure alsa surprisingly (if I've understood it correctly!)
>
> So you can always try some metrics by disabling PA and see if that helps
> battery life. Also you can disable bluetooth and other wireless if you
> don't use them as they are real hogs.
>
> Col
>

I agree. On an idle computer with no sounds playing, pulseaudio regulary takes
2 of the top 3 spots for cpu usage (htop). artsd is also has 2 entries in the
top 6. So... between pulseaudio and artsd, 4 of the top 6 cpu users are sound
related.

By powertop, (again idle computer), pulseaudio usually only rates around 0.4%
(1.2) of total wakeups where as artsd usually has the 3rd spot with 5.8% (17.8).

All this suggests soundservers & systems are a bit of an issue for battery life.

I will do more time based testing to follow this.

[Colin Guthrie-8]

Sam Bailey wrote:
> All this suggests soundservers & systems are a bit of an issue for battery life.

Well it depends how you write them. Read this for an interesting insight
into how the next version of pulse will work:
http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/pulse-glitch-free.html

Everyone with two neurons to rub together agrees artsd is evil and will
hopefully be fully dead once KDE4 becomes mainstream. Yay!

Col


--

+--------------------------+
|      Colin Guthrie       |
+--------------------------+
| cguthrie(at)mandriva.org |
|  http://colin.guthr.ie/  |
+--------------------------+

[Steve Morris-5]

Colin Guthrie wrote:
> Steve Morris wrote:
>> Ever since I have installed 2008.1 from scratch, after wiping 2008.0,
>> and running kpowersave with the powersave theme is extremely power
>> hungry. Under 2008.0 my battery lasted about 1 hour 15 minutes, under
>> 2008.1 I am lucky if it lasts 1/2 an hour. How do I increase the time
>> the battery lasts, or work out what is causing the power drain?
>
> Use (i.e. google to learn about) powertop.
Thanks Col,

Is powertop on the 2008.1 mirrors or is it a third party package that
needs to be installed?

>
> This should help identify the bottlenecks.
>
> While I hate to admit it, pulseaudio could be waking up your system a
> bit more often than just plain alsa. This will change however with the
> next release of pulseaudio which will use dynamic buffer sizing and
> some advanced cleverness to actually cause far fewer wakeups... less
> than pure alsa surprisingly (if I've understood it correctly!)
>
> So you can always try some metrics by disabling PA and see if that
> helps battery life. Also you can disable bluetooth and other wireless
> if you don't use them as they are real hogs.
>

How do I disable PA, I have looked for how it is started in cooker and

been unable to find it. I don't have bluetooth or wireless active as far
as I am aware as neither of these is built in to the laptop.

regards,
Steve

> Col
>

[samorris.vcf]

---

begin:vcard
fn:Steve Morris
n:Morris;Steve
email;internet:samorris@...
x-mozilla-html:TRUE
version:2.1
end:vcard

---

[Colin Guthrie-8]

Steve Morris wrote:
>> Use (i.e. google to learn about) powertop.
> Thanks Col,
>
> Is powertop on the 2008.1 mirrors or is it a third party package that
> needs to be installed?

urpmi powertop.... this is a development mailing list, you're expected
to at least *look* before asking this kind of stuff :)

> How do I disable PA,

Read the Release Notes. It's in draksound.

Col.


--

+--------------------------+
|      Colin Guthrie       |
+--------------------------+
| cguthrie(at)mandriva.org |
|  http://colin.guthr.ie/  |
+--------------------------+

[Danilo Cesar Lemes de Paula-2]

On May 14, 2008, at 1:49 AM, Sam Bailey wrote:

> I also noticed a huge drop in battery time. From 1-1.25hrs to less  
> than 30min.


Try to disable slide-show in Kdesktop.

--
Danilo Cesar Lemes de Paula
danilo [at] mandriva.com

[Steve Morris-5]

Colin Guthrie wrote:
> Steve Morris wrote:
>>> Use (i.e. google to learn about) powertop.
>> Thanks Col,
>>
>> Is powertop on the 2008.1 mirrors or is it a third party package that
>> needs to be installed?
>
> urpmi powertop.... this is a development mailing list, you're expected
> to at least *look* before asking this kind of stuff :)
Sorry Col, I had asked this question while I was still running urpmi
updates in the background, and hadn't looked in smart at that stage.
>
>> How do I disable PA,
>
> Read the Release Notes. It's in draksound.
Thankyou. I don't know that I have the release notes on my 2008.1 laptop
as, using it for online courses while train travelling, it has a very
minimal install containing mainly the development packages for the courses.

regards,
Steve

>
> Col.
>
>

[samorris.vcf]

---

begin:vcard
fn:Steve Morris
n:Morris;Steve
email;internet:samorris@...
x-mozilla-html:TRUE
version:2.1
end:vcard

---

[Steve Morris-5]

Danilo Cesar Lemes de Paula wrote:
>
> On May 14, 2008, at 1:49 AM, Sam Bailey wrote:
>
>> I also noticed a huge drop in battery time. From 1-1.25hrs to less
>> than 30min.
>
>
> Try to disable slide-show in Kdesktop.
I am assuming you are referring to the screensaver setting,  and if so
it already is as I have the screensaver completely disabled.

regards,
Steve

>
> --
> Danilo Cesar Lemes de Paula
> danilo [at] mandriva.com
>
>

[samorris.vcf]

---

begin:vcard
fn:Steve Morris
n:Morris;Steve
email;internet:samorris@...
x-mozilla-html:TRUE
version:2.1
end:vcard

---

[Sam Bailey]

> > Try to disable slide-show in Kdesktop.
> it already is as I have the screensaver completely disabled.

As have I on my machines.

Is pasuspender the best to stop pulseaudio? or does it just reduce the load a
little bit?

[Colin Guthrie-8]

Sam Bailey wrote:
>>> Try to disable slide-show in Kdesktop.
>> it already is as I have the screensaver completely disabled.
>
> As have I on my machines.
>
> Is pasuspender the best to stop pulseaudio? or does it just reduce the load a
> little bit?

pasuspender tells pulse to release the audio device, but it will still
be running through it's mainloop. It should help, but I wouldn't use
this as a technique to reduce pulse's use of CPU cycles.

Col

--

+--------------------------+
|      Colin Guthrie       |
+--------------------------+
| cguthrie(at)mandriva.org |
|  http://colin.guthr.ie/  |
+--------------------------+

[Steve Morris-5]

Colin Guthrie wrote:

> Sam Bailey wrote:
>>>> Try to disable slide-show in Kdesktop.
>>> it already is as I have the screensaver completely disabled.
>>
>> As have I on my machines.
>>
>> Is pasuspender the best to stop pulseaudio? or does it just reduce
>> the load a
>> little bit?
>
> pasuspender tells pulse to release the audio device, but it will still
> be running through it's mainloop. It should help, but I wouldn't use
> this as a technique to reduce pulse's use of CPU cycles.

Col, I have installed powertop as you suggested, and actioned its

recommendation of turning off hal's polling of the cdrom drive. Its
second recommendation I can't action because the facility doesn't exist
on my laptop (turning on HPET in the bios). The issue now is that the
application that is using most of the power when I am doing my
development work I can't do anything about, which is java consuming
67.5% of the power usage, it is a bit hard to do java development
without java (I am using eclipse and netbeans). What I don't understand,
assuming my assumptions are correct, is that assuming the power
consumptions by java hasn't changed from 1.6.0.4 to 1.6.0.6, why is
2008.1 more sensitive to it than 2008.0 was. The 1.6.0.4 version was
directly from Sun whereas the 1.6.0.6 version is Mandrivas version.

regards,
Steve

>
> Col
>

[samorris.vcf]

---

begin:vcard
fn:Steve Morris
n:Morris;Steve
email;internet:samorris@...
x-mozilla-html:TRUE
version:2.1
end:vcard

---

[Gustavo De Nardin (spuk)]

* Steve Morris <samorris@...> [2008-05-16 07:18 +1000]:

> Colin Guthrie wrote:
> >Sam Bailey wrote:
> >>>>Try to disable slide-show in Kdesktop.
> >>>it already is as I have the screensaver completely disabled.
> >>
> >>As have I on my machines.
> >>
> >>Is pasuspender the best to stop pulseaudio? or does it just reduce
> >>the load a
> >>little bit?
> >
> >pasuspender tells pulse to release the audio device, but it will still
> >be running through it's mainloop. It should help, but I wouldn't use
> >this as a technique to reduce pulse's use of CPU cycles.
> Col, I have installed powertop as you suggested, and actioned its
> recommendation of turning off hal's polling of the cdrom drive. Its
> second recommendation I can't action because the facility doesn't exist
> on my laptop (turning on HPET in the bios). The issue now is that the
> application that is using most of the power when I am doing my
> development work I can't do anything about, which is java consuming
> 67.5% of the power usage, it is a bit hard to do java development
> without java (I am using eclipse and netbeans). What I don't understand,
> assuming my assumptions are correct, is that assuming the power
> consumptions by java hasn't changed from 1.6.0.4 to 1.6.0.6, why is
> 2008.1 more sensitive to it than 2008.0 was. The 1.6.0.4 version was
> directly from Sun whereas the 1.6.0.6 version is Mandrivas version.

Did you measure with powertop the power consumption of java in 2008.0?

[Colin Guthrie-8]

Steve Morris wrote:
>  The issue now is that the
> application that is using most of the power when I am doing my
> development work I can't do anything about, which is java consuming
> 67.5% of the power usage, it is a bit hard to do java development
> without java (I am using eclipse and netbeans). What I don't understand,
> assuming my assumptions are correct, is that assuming the power
> consumptions by java hasn't changed from 1.6.0.4 to 1.6.0.6, why is
> 2008.1 more sensitive to it than 2008.0 was. The 1.6.0.4 version was
> directly from Sun whereas the 1.6.0.6 version is Mandrivas version.

One thing to check is that you are definately using Sun's Java for
eclipse and not using e.g. gcj's version.

You should be able to check with simply java -version.

As they are all handled by an alternatives system it's entirly possibly
you are actually using the slower/more hungry java VM.

Also check which java is actually running (via the paths in ps aux |
grep java) as there may be some old hardcoded paths somewhere in either
eclipse or netbeans.

I'm no java dev nor user, but I've noticed such things before.

Col


--

+--------------------------+
|      Colin Guthrie       |
+--------------------------+
| cguthrie(at)mandriva.org |
|  http://colin.guthr.ie/  |
+--------------------------+

[Steve Morris-5]

Gustavo De Nardin (spuk) wrote:

> * Steve Morris <samorris@...> [2008-05-16 07:18 +1000]:
>  
>> Colin Guthrie wrote:
>>    
>>> Sam Bailey wrote:
>>>      
>>>>>> Try to disable slide-show in Kdesktop.
>>>>>>            
>>>>> it already is as I have the screensaver completely disabled.
>>>>>          
>>>> As have I on my machines.
>>>>
>>>> Is pasuspender the best to stop pulseaudio? or does it just reduce
>>>> the load a
>>>> little bit?
>>>>        
>>> pasuspender tells pulse to release the audio device, but it will still
>>> be running through it's mainloop. It should help, but I wouldn't use
>>> this as a technique to reduce pulse's use of CPU cycles.
>>>      
>> Col, I have installed powertop as you suggested, and actioned its
>> recommendation of turning off hal's polling of the cdrom drive. Its
>> second recommendation I can't action because the facility doesn't exist
>> on my laptop (turning on HPET in the bios). The issue now is that the
>> application that is using most of the power when I am doing my
>> development work I can't do anything about, which is java consuming
>> 67.5% of the power usage, it is a bit hard to do java development
>> without java (I am using eclipse and netbeans). What I don't understand,
>> assuming my assumptions are correct, is that assuming the power
>> consumptions by java hasn't changed from 1.6.0.4 to 1.6.0.6, why is
>> 2008.1 more sensitive to it than 2008.0 was. The 1.6.0.4 version was
>> directly from Sun whereas the 1.6.0.6 version is Mandrivas version.
>>    
>
> Did you measure with powertop the power consumption of java in 2008.0?
>
>  

No, I didn't know about powertop then. I am basing my judgement on

having implemented powertops suggestions, I am still only getting about
60% of the battery life I was under 2008.0 while using the same
applications.

regards,
Steve


[samorris.vcf]

---

begin:vcard
fn:Steve Morris
n:Morris;Steve
email;internet:samorris@...
x-mozilla-html:TRUE
version:2.1
end:vcard

---

[Steve Morris-5]

Colin Guthrie wrote:

> Steve Morris wrote:
>>  The issue now is that the
>> application that is using most of the power when I am doing my
>> development work I can't do anything about, which is java consuming
>> 67.5% of the power usage, it is a bit hard to do java development
>> without java (I am using eclipse and netbeans). What I don't
>> understand, assuming my assumptions are correct, is that assuming the
>> power consumptions by java hasn't changed from 1.6.0.4 to 1.6.0.6,
>> why is 2008.1 more sensitive to it than 2008.0 was. The 1.6.0.4
>> version was directly from Sun whereas the 1.6.0.6 version is
>> Mandrivas version.
>
> One thing to check is that you are definately using Sun's Java for
> eclipse and not using e.g. gcj's version.
>
> You should be able to check with simply java -version.
>
> As they are all handled by an alternatives system it's entirly
> possibly you are actually using the slower/more hungry java VM.
>
> Also check which java is actually running (via the paths in ps aux |
> grep java) as there may be some old hardcoded paths somewhere in
> either eclipse or netbeans.
>
> I'm no java dev nor user, but I've noticed such things before.
>
> Col
>

Thanks Col, I will check this out. I don't think I am using gcj as I

uninstalled 1.6.0.6 to try the version from sun to check its power
consumption, and wasn't able to install sun's version as it requires
libstdc++5 whereas I have libstdc++6 installed, hence the running java
is presumably 1.7 which I had installed as well. In this situation
powertop indicated that the % interrupts from java dropped by about 10%.
Also I attempted to uninstall Java 1.7 and rpmdrake complained that
openoffice needed java installed.

regards,
Steve


[samorris.vcf]

---

begin:vcard
fn:Steve Morris
n:Morris;Steve
email;internet:samorris@...
x-mozilla-html:TRUE
version:2.1
end:vcard

---

[Colin Guthrie-8]

Steve Morris wrote:
> Thanks Col, I will check this out. I don't think I am using gcj as I
> uninstalled 1.6.0.6 to try the version from sun to check its power
> consumption, and wasn't able to install sun's version as it requires
> libstdc++5 whereas I have libstdc++6 installed, hence the running java
> is presumably 1.7 which I had installed as well. In this situation
> powertop indicated that the % interrupts from java dropped by about 10%.
> Also I attempted to uninstall Java 1.7 and rpmdrake complained that
> openoffice needed java installed.

As long as you use the Mandriva provided Java packages for Sun's
JDK/JRE, then our other packages will not complain. The main problem
will come when you try to install Sun's RPM package... Try not to do
that, and stick to the Mdv packages if you can.


--

+--------------------------+
|      Colin Guthrie       |
+--------------------------+
| cguthrie(at)mandriva.org |
|  http://colin.guthr.ie/  |
+--------------------------+

[Steve Morris-5]

Colin Guthrie wrote:

> Steve Morris wrote:
>> Thanks Col, I will check this out. I don't think I am using gcj as I
>> uninstalled 1.6.0.6 to try the version from sun to check its power
>> consumption, and wasn't able to install sun's version as it requires
>> libstdc++5 whereas I have libstdc++6 installed, hence the running
>> java is presumably 1.7 which I had installed as well. In this
>> situation powertop indicated that the % interrupts from java dropped
>> by about 10%. Also I attempted to uninstall Java 1.7 and rpmdrake
>> complained that openoffice needed java installed.
>
> As long as you use the Mandriva provided Java packages for Sun's
> JDK/JRE, then our other packages will not complain. The main problem
> will come when you try to install Sun's RPM package... Try not to do
> that, and stick to the Mdv packages if you can.
>

I was attempting to install Sun's version just to see if there were any

power consumption differences, as I know from 1.6.0.4 that Mandriva's
java package is not necessarily the same as Sun's. Hence I am trying to
isolate where the issues might be, which for me at the moment is taking
up time I can't afford, as I am trying to do online development courses
while travelling on a train to/from work, and the power consumption
issue is starting to severely impact my ability to undertake the
coursework in available timeframes. These issues have already put me
almost two weeks behind, and it is looking like I may not pass the
course because I can't meet the required timeframes.

regards,
Steve


[samorris.vcf]

---

begin:vcard
fn:Steve Morris
n:Morris;Steve
email;internet:samorris@...
x-mozilla-html:TRUE
version:2.1
end:vcard

---

[Steve Morris-5]

Steve Morris wrote:

> Colin Guthrie wrote:
>> Steve Morris wrote:
>>> Thanks Col, I will check this out. I don't think I am using gcj as I
>>> uninstalled 1.6.0.6 to try the version from sun to check its power
>>> consumption, and wasn't able to install sun's version as it requires
>>> libstdc++5 whereas I have libstdc++6 installed, hence the running
>>> java is presumably 1.7 which I had installed as well. In this
>>> situation powertop indicated that the % interrupts from java dropped
>>> by about 10%. Also I attempted to uninstall Java 1.7 and rpmdrake
>>> complained that openoffice needed java installed.
>>
>> As long as you use the Mandriva provided Java packages for Sun's
>> JDK/JRE, then our other packages will not complain. The main problem
>> will come when you try to install Sun's RPM package... Try not to do
>> that, and stick to the Mdv packages if you can.
>>
> I was attempting to install Sun's version just to see if there were
> any power consumption differences, as I know from 1.6.0.4 that
> Mandriva's java package is not necessarily the same as Sun's. Hence I
> am trying to isolate where the issues might be, which for me at the
> moment is taking up time I can't afford, as I am trying to do online
> development courses while travelling on a train to/from work, and the
> power consumption issue is starting to severely impact my ability to
> undertake the coursework in available timeframes. These issues have
> already put me almost two weeks behind, and it is looking like I may
> not pass the course because I can't meet the required timeframes.
>
> regards,
> Steve
>

Hi,

    My problem with the laptop battery power consumption problem has now
gone away as the laptop battery has now failed. The worst part about
this is that it is more cost effective to buy a new laptop than buy a
new battery, given the cost of the replacement battery.

regards,
Steve


[samorris.vcf]

---

begin:vcard
fn:Steve Morris
n:Morris;Steve
email;internet:samorris@...
x-mozilla-html:TRUE
version:2.1
end:vcard

---