ThinkPad x220t power saving in Fedora 16/17/19
A script to enable laptop power saving features for Fedora.
We are going to take advantage of a pm-utils feature: any script placed in /etc/pm/power.d/ will automatically run when the AC power is connected or disconnected.
To install the script you only have to copy it to /etc/pm/power.d/:
[chris@thinkpad Downloads]$ sudo mv thinkpad-powersave.sh /etc/pm/power.d/
At the moment I get around 5 hours (update: 8 hours) battery live when reading a PDF and making notes with Xournal on my Lenovo ThinkPad X220T.
[chris@thinkpad ~]$ uname -r
3.9.0-301.fc19.x86_64
The battery reports a discharge rate of 11.8 W and all tunables are marked as good in powertop.
To start / stop it run:
[chris@thinkpad ~]$ sudo sh thinkpad-powersave.sh true
[chris@thinkpad ~]$ sudo sh thinkpad-powersave.sh false
You may also try to run:
[chris@thinkpad ~]$ sudo pm-powersave false
[chris@thinkpad ~]$ sudo pm-powersave true
to see if t works.
To check that the script is running, and to see any errors run:
[chris@thinkpad ~]$ cat /var/log/pm-powersave.log
The script
#!/bin/sh
# List of modules to unload, space seperated. Edit depending on your hardware and preferences.
# In modlist you can put a list of modules to automatically load and unload. The uvcvideo entry will disable most webcams.
# Remove this if you want to use your webcam on battery without having to sudo modprobe uvcvideo first.
# e1000e belongs to my wired network adapter
modlist="uvcvideo videodev media e1000e"
# Bus list for runtime pm. Probably shouldn't touch this.
buslist="pci i2c"
# spindown time for HD (man hdparm for valid values)
# I prefer 2 hours for acad and 2 min for batt
ACAD_HD=244
BATT_HD=24
# Power management level
# 255 (off) on AC
# 128 (medium) on batt
ACAD_PM=255
BATT_PM=96
case "$1" in
true)
logger "Start powersave"
# Enable some power saving settings while on battery
# Enable laptop mode
echo 5 > /proc/sys/vm/laptop_mode
# Less VM disk activity. Suggested by powertop
echo 1500 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs
# Intel Audio power saving
# maybe you have to mute some channels, or stop multimedia apps that your audio controller can turn itself off
echo Y > /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save_controller
echo 1 > /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save
# Set backlight brightness to 50%
# find /sys -iname brightness
# echo 5 > /sys/devices/virtual/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness
echo 2 > /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness
# Disable NMI wathcdog. Suggested by powertop http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Documentation/nmi_watchdog.txt
echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/nmi_watchdog
#echo disable > /proc/acpi/ibm/bluetooth
#echo disable > /proc/acpi/ibm/wan
echo min_power > /sys/class/scsi_host/host0/link_power_management_policy
echo min_power > /sys/class/scsi_host/host1/link_power_management_policy
ethtool -s em1 wol d
# enable wlan0 power saving
#iwconfig wlan0 power on
# rfkill - tool for enabling and disabling wireless devices
# run "rfkill list" to list the current state of all available rfkill-using devices
# run "man rfkill" for more info
# block index|type : Disable the device corresponding to the given index. type is one of "all", "wifi", "wlan", "bluetooth", "wwan", ...
# rfkill block bluetooth
#rfkill block all
rfkill block wifi
rfkill block wlan
rfkill block bluetooth
logger "Setting HD spindown for BATT mode with hdparm -S $BATT_HD /dev/sda."
hdparm -S $BATT_HD /dev/sda > /dev/null 2>&1
logger "Setting HD powersaving for BATT mode with hdparm -B $BATT_PM /dev/sda."
hdparm -B $BATT_PM /dev/sda > /dev/null 2>&1
cpupower frequency-set -g powersave
# USB powersaving
for i in /sys/bus/usb/devices/*/power/autosuspend; do
echo 1 > $i
done
for i in /sys/bus/usb/devices/*/power/level; do echo auto > $i; done
# SATA power saving
for i in /sys/class/scsi_host/host*/link_power_management_policy; do
echo min_power > $i
done
# Disable hardware modules to save power
for mod in $modlist; do
grep $mod /proc/modules >/dev/null || continue
modprobe -r $mod 2>/dev/null
done
# Enable runtime power management. Suggested by powertop.
for bus in $buslist; do
for i in /sys/bus/$bus/devices/*/power/control; do
echo auto > $i
done
done
;;
false)
logger "Stop powersave"
# Return settings to default on AC power
echo 0 > /proc/sys/vm/laptop_mode
echo 500 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs
echo N > /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save_controller
echo 0 > /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save
# echo 10 > /sys/devices/virtual/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness
echo 15 > /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness
echo 1 > /proc/sys/kernel/nmi_watchdog
#echo enable > /proc/acpi/ibm/bluetooth
#echo enable > /proc/acpi/ibm/wan
# rfkill unblock bluetooth
rfkill unblock all
logger "Setting HD spindown for AC mode with hdparm -S $ACAD_HD /dev/sda."
hdparm -S $ACAD_HD /dev/sda > /dev/null 2>&1
logger "Setting HD powersaving for AC mode with hdparm -B $ACAD_PM /dev/sda."
hdparm -B $ACAD_PM /dev/sda > /dev/null 2>&1
# use sudo cpupower frequency-info for available cpufreq governors
cpupower frequency-set -g performance
#iwconfig wlan0 power off
for i in /sys/bus/usb/devices/*/power/autosuspend; do
echo 2 > $i
done
for i in /sys/class/scsi_host/host*/link_power_management_policy
do echo max_performance > $i
done
for mod in $modlist; do
if ! lsmod | grep $mod; then
modprobe $mod 2>/dev/null
fi
done
for bus in $buslist; do
for i in /sys/bus/$bus/devices/*/power/control; do
echo on > $i
done
done
;;
esac
exit 0
Download the script: thinkpad-powersave.sh
Some tips
Other useful programs: powertop, thinkfan, hdapsd.
I’ve experimented a little bit with my thinkfan‘s configuration and now I think I have a good balance between fan noise, power usage and cpu temperature, my /etc/thinkfan.conf looks like this:
sensor /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon0/temp1_input
(0, 0, 55)
(1, 50, 61)
(2, 52, 63)
(3, 56, 65)
(4, 59, 66)
(5, 63, 70)
(7, 65, 32767)
For more information about thinkfan have a look at its README-file inside the source tarball and visit http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_control_fan_speed.
And some more tips from lesswatts.org/tips/disks.php:
Use the - option in /etc/syslog.conf or /etc/rsyslog.conf
Add a - in front of this line:
*.info;mail.none;authpriv.none;cron.none /var/log/messages
like this:
*.info;mail.none;authpriv.none;cron.none -/var/log/messages
Update
As seen here:
- http://www.heise.de/open/artikel/Die-Woche-Ungenutztes-Stromsparpotenzial-1361381.html
- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=727579
Edit /etc/default/grub and add i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 pcie_aspm=force:
sudo vim /etc/default/grub
GRUB_TIMEOUT=2
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR="$(sed 's, release .*$,,g' /etc/system-release)"
GRUB_DEFAULT=saved
GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU=true
GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT="console"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="rd.md=0 rd.lvm=0 rd.dm=0 rd.luks.uuid=luks-2b38bb0c-9787-4ef3-8803-7af548660aac $([ -x /usr/sbin/rhcrashkernel-param ] && /usr/sbin/rhcrashkernel-param || :) vconsole.keymap=de rhgb quiet i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 i915.i915_enable_fbc=1 i915.lvds_downclock=1 pcie_aspm=force slub_debug=-"
GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"
GRUB_THEME="/boot/grub2/themes/system/theme.txt"
And then run sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg to update your grub.conf
My battery monitor reports now nearly 8 hours remaining:
And powertop says: “The battery reports a discharge rate of 8.40 W”, “System baseline power is estimated at 6.57 W”.
An alternative: http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-linux-advanced-power-management.html
I don’t have the time to write complete HOWTO’s so feel free to ask questions and make comments ...