Power Management

Power Saving Techniques can be used on Laptops to maximize the Battery Life and 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

Warning

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TLP can conflict with laptop-mode-tools, so if you have laptop-mode-tools installed and want to install TLP, then uninstall laptop-mode-tools first!

TLP is available form the [[Arch User Repository], and where access has been enabled, can be installed by entering the following command into your terminal:

yaourt -S tlp

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

systemctl enable tlp
systemctl enable tlp-sleep.service

Now TLP will automatically start every time you boot your computer.

An Alternative to TLP for Laptop Users

Warning

---

Again, TLP and laptop-mode-tools must not be installed together!

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 will automatically configures some settings for you in order to optimise your laptop's battery life.

Manually Setting Laptop-Mode-Tools Configuration

For user 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/

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.

Supported processor families are Intel Sandy Bridge, Ivy Leage and up.

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

Install it with

yaourt -S thermald

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

sudo systemctl enable thermald

For AMD Machines

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

To enable it,

sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

add/change the line

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

and generate grub.cfg

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.

Install it with-

sudo pacman -S powertop

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

For some more configuration, see FadeMind's forum tutuorial here

See Also

PowerTop

TLP

LaptopModeTools-Arch Wiki