debian ibook auto suspends to ram on nonuse. how to set up for other notebooks?

[Mitchell Laks-2]

Hi,

I have an ibook G4 laptop that has run debian powerpc sid for years.

The battery really lasts a long time. I can leave it for days and it will
retain its charge. I assumed it was  the hardware initially.  

However upon reflection,  I credit this, at least in part to the
aggressive memory saving features that it uses. However they just appeared on the laptop
when I did my install and I have no idea which software I installed  is responsible.

I notice that

1. it very agressively dims the display when i don't hit keys
2. It suspends the display to ram very very quickly when it is not used.

I have installed debian on multiple other laptops and I have never had the same luck.
As soon as I disconnect from the power supply they rapidly run down in a short while.  

I am trying to reproduce the "suspend to ram" on "lack of keyboard and mouse interaction". I
don't want to use gnome or kde. I use stumpwm.

I have read many articles on suspend to ram.

Now I am working with one laptop, an old fujitsu lifebook t4010d tablet
pc  that i picked up for $200. It would really be nice to use this off the power cord.

If I do

echo -n mem > /sys/power/state

I can suspend to ram

If I do

echo -n disk > /sys/power/state

I can suspend to disk.

I am hopeful. I see on the fujitsu, If I do suspend to ram the machine will last
for many hours. If I don't suspend to ram it  dies in 1-2 hours. Suspend to ram
is the key.

So how do I set up the fujitsu analgous to the way the debian ibook is setup so that it
will check for lack of keyboard or mouse activty and suspend to ram. What do I monitor?

I can write a  script in bash or shell or else I can use a debian package.

Which package is it on the debian powerpc that does this?

I see on the ibook

pm-utils, powermgmt-base, powerprefs, powersaved powerpc-utils powertop

I suspect that pm-utils is involved, but which script is setting the automatic
suspend to ram feature on lack of keyboard and mouse motion?

Mitchell









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[green-9]

Mitchell Laks wrote at 2009-11-08 22:44 -0600:
> I am trying to reproduce the "suspend to ram" on "lack of keyboard and mouse
> interaction".

I use sleepd for that.

[Mitchell Laks-2]

On 10:11 Mon 09 Nov     , green wrote:
>
> I use sleepd for that.

Thank you very much. That works nicely. I need to play with it to get the right behaviour.

Here is how it works on my ibook G4 running sid.

There are 2 packages which work in synergy.
there is

1. pbbuttonsd provides the daemon which controls the powersave routines.

I see that there is a directory
/etc/power/ controlled by the pbbuttonsd daemon which controls the settings
but the main configuration file seems to be in /etc/pbbuttons.conf


2. powerprefs provides a gui to control it

there is a nice gtk gui to set the policies for suspend to ram and
batttery and dimming of the monitor and EMA (emergency action on low battery).

the web site for both packages is
pbbuttons.berlios.de
by matthias grimm.  

----------
now for an amd/intel processor with acpi
we can use pm-utils (pm-powersave pm-hibernate
pm-suspend), which i guess must be setup to run with  a daemon such as
sleepd. It would be nice to have a nice directory and control structure such as
set up by pbbuttonsd.

Although he hints that powerprefs gui can be used for other than powerpc, i
dont see any debian packages for using powerprefs gui with the 386
processor. Not that the gui is so very important to us debianers. :).

Mitchell



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[green-9]

Mitchell Laks wrote at 2009-11-09 23:40 -0600:
> On 10:11 Mon 09 Nov     , green wrote:
> > I use sleepd for that.
>
> Thank you very much. That works nicely. I need to play with it to get the right behaviour.

> 1. pbbuttonsd provides the daemon which controls the powersave routines.

> 2. powerprefs provides a gui to control it

I personally would use only pm-utils and sleepd and would configure anything
else using /etc/acpi/battery.d and /etc/acpi/ac.d scripts, though I adjust
backlight brightness manually because I often need full brightness in the
sunshine when on battery.

> now for an amd/intel processor with acpi
> we can use pm-utils (pm-powersave pm-hibernate
> pm-suspend), which i guess must be setup to run with  a daemon such as
> sleepd. It would be nice to have a nice directory and control structure such as
> set up by pbbuttonsd.

There is /etc/pm, which is for pm-utils.  The README explains how it works.

sleepd is independent from pm-utils, except that sleepd runs pm-suspend (by
default) to suspend the system.