Ubuntu power management type options

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Soldato
Joined
1 Jun 2005
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Kent
Recently my ubuntu thinkpad (powered off AC, not battery) which I only use for basic stuff, and running irssi 24/7, has been getting a little hot, and I have been closing the lid enough that the screen turns off (but the computer doesn't go into sleep or standby mode, its just the screen that goes off). What I want to know is if there is any way to induce this with the lid fully open to allow better cooling, such as creating a hotkey like fn+f1 to turn the screen off, and then again to turn on.

I could further help reduce heat by logging off (leaving it still running) but I'm not sure if a hotkey setup like I mentioned would still work in the login screen, and closing the lid goes into sleep mode which I don't want to do.

So any advice on if its possible to setup a hotkey to toggle the screen/backlight on and off, and a guide on how to do it would be great, even better if it works in the logon screen (which I would assume is less power intensive than a logged in client, even when idle).
 
You could force the CPU to throttle to a slower speedstep speed, if it's not doing anything too demanding? Throttle the GPU too, depending on the graphics chipset it has?

To answer your original question, to set up a keyboard shortcut you could use the acpi events or gconf. Run gconf-editor, click apps > metacity. For the ACPI method, see here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ACPI_hotkeys

For the gnome gconf method (yes, this works on ubuntu 11.04), see here:

Click keybinding_commands and select one of the command_[0-12] items, edit it and either reference a command or script. I'd suggest gnome-screensaver-command (check the man page for options); maybe "gnome-screensaver-command -a" to activate it.

Then, go back to global_keybindings in gconf-editor and find the command_[0-12] item you edited in keybinding_commands. Use the other examples as reference and simply enter your key combo for activation, e.g. <ctrl><alt><s> or something like that.
 
You might also want to look into the power management regression which affects kernels 2.6.38 and later, which has led to many people reporting overheating laptops, noisy fans etc.

There seems to be a combination of causes, but Phoronix found that one factor is different handling of ASPM (Active-State Power Management) - you can work around this by editing /etc/default/grub so that the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT line reads GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash pcie_aspm=force" (don't forget to run "sudo update-grub" afterwards).

It may or may not make a difference for you, but worth a shot.
 
I have found that my ubuntu pc sometimes defaults to "performance" mode rather than "ondemand". This means that CPU is always running full power rather than using speedstep/coolnquiet.

Assuming you are NOT using unity. Then you can add a panel applet which monitors the CPU speed and lets you view and set the powersaving mode. Setting this to ondemand brings my CPU back to 1ghz.
 
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