Power Management

Power Saving Techniques can be used on Laptops to maximize the battery life, minimize the heat produced, and conserve energy.

Power Saving using TLP

TLP can be used for automatic power management, as explained in the following quote from their website:

TLP brings you the benefits of advanced power management for Linux without the need to understand every technical detail. TLP comes with a default configuration already optimized for battery life, so you may just install and forget it. Nevertheless TLP is highly customizable to fulfil your specific requirements.

All TLP settings are stored in the config file /etc/default/tlp. As the default configuration already provides for optimized battery saving, in many cases there is no immediate need to change it.

TLP is a pure command line tool with automated background tasks. It does not contain a GUI.

How to Install TLP

Note

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TLP conflicts with laptop-mode-tools, so if laptop-mode-tools is installed it will be removed.

TLP is available from the Manjaro repositories, can be installed by entering the following command into your terminal:

sudo pacman -S tlp

iw and smartmontools are among the optional dependencies.

After installation, TLP then needs to be configured to be run automatically when you start up your computer. To do so, enter the following commands into your terminal:

systemctl enable tlp
systemctl enable tlp-sleep.service

With these enabled TLP should automatically start every time you boot your computer.

TLP Configuration

See http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-configuration.html

From the Arch wiki: TLP#Configuration

Using with powertop

See http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-faq.html#powertop

An Alternative to TLP for Laptop Users

Warning

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TLP and laptop-mode-tools conflict with each other, hence only one of them can be installed at a time.

From the Arch Wiki:

'Laptop Mode Tools is a laptop power saving package for Linux systems. It is the primary way to enable the Laptop Mode feature of the Linux kernel, which lets your hard drive spin down. In addition, it allows you to tweak a number of other power-related settings using a simple configuration file.'

To install laptop-mode-tools, enter the following command into your terminal:

sudo pacman -S laptop-mode-tools

Once installed, to enable laptop-mode-tools to start automatically every time you boot your computer, enter the following into your terminal:

sudo systemctl enable laptop-mode.service

laptop-mode-tools automatically configures some settings for you in order to optimize your laptop's battery life.

Laptop-Mode-Tools Configuration

For configuration, the file to edit is /etc/laptop-mode/laptop-mode.conf (primary configuration file)

The individual kernel modules can be configured from the configuration files present in /etc/laptop-mode/conf.d/

See the Arch Wiki for more details.

Minimizing Laptop/Desktop temperatures

For Intel Machines

The Intel pstate driver automatically handles CPU frequency scaling according to system load.

Note that the Intel Pstate works only with kernels >= 3.9, and kernel 3.11+ is recommended.

Primary supported processor families are Intel Sandy Bridge (also known as 2nd generation of i3/5/7 processors) and up.

The Intel Thermal Daemon (thermald) can be installed to automatically manage the CPU temperature.

To install it, following command can be used:

sudo pacman -S thermald

After installing it needs to be configured to automatically start at boot in order to work:

sudo systemctl enable thermald

For AMD Machines

With Linux Kernel 3.11+, AMD introduced Dyanamic Power Management (DPM) for their free (open-source) GPU drivers, which can lead to lower power consumption and better operating temperatures.

To enable it, edit the /etc/default/grub file:

sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

and add/change the line:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="" to
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="radeon.dpm=1"

Then regenerate the grub configuration file:

sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

PowerTOP

PowerTop a diagnostic tool used to identify and report issues with power consumption and management. It can be used to check the power consumption.

It can be installed as-

sudo pacman -S powertop

To run PowerTop to analyze power consumption:

sudo powertop

To save PowerTops output to a file,

sudo powertop --html

For more details, see Powertop : Manjaro Wiki

Support

Following is a link to this page's forum counterpart where you can post any related feedback: [1]

Credit goes to LiberteCzech for posting about TLP, and to Arup for posting about Thermald, and to the Arch Wiki for their documentation, especially on Laptop-Mode-Tools

See Also

• How to undervolt Intel CPUs
• TLP website
• LaptopModeTools - Arch Wiki
• TLP - Arch wiki