hjdskes / powersave

Linux power save settings, compatible with systemd

Powersave

These files enable power saving on Linux. Note that these settings are applied regardless of whether the system is on battery or AC. Power saving is applied to:

• Audio card (modprobe.d/99-powersave.conf)
• Backlight brightness (rules.d/50-powersave-brightness.rules)
• Bluetooth (disabled completely: modprobe.d/blacklist.conf)
• NMI watchdog (sysctl.d/99-powersave.conf)
• Writeback times (sysctl.d/99-powersave.conf)
• Laptop mode (sysctl.d/99-powersave.conf)
• Network interfaces, both wired and wireless (modprobe.d/50-powersave-net.rules)
• Buses (ASPM, PCI, USB, SATA ALPM, tmpfiles.d/powersave.conf and modprobe.d/50-powersave-[pci|usb|sata].rules)

Power saving is not applied to:

• HDD, since it is replaced with an SSD. SSD power usage is simply ignored, since I have yet to look into this (and I believe it isn't that high). Tips are welcome!
• CPU frequencies, since the default is fine (using the intel_pstate driver).
• Swappiness, since I don't use a swap partition.

You might also want to edit /etc/fstab to add commits=<seconds> to the options column of your partitions. See the mount man page.

It is fit for my own laptop (Lenovo Thinkpad Edge E130), which means that this script will not work on every setup. Please check this before running it on your computer! Things might break otherwise and I am not responsible for any damage that has been done.

TODO

• git grep TODO
• Test the suspend-on-low-battery udev rule (rules.d/50-powersave-suspend.rules)
• SSD powersaving?
  • Apply noop schedular in powersave instead of boot config?

Installation

The script will need the following dependencies to run:

• iw
• ip
• ethtool
• udev
• systemd

Just run make install as root to install the whole set.

To enable the ASPM setting to work, append pcie_aspm=force to your kernel parameter list. However, before doing so, verify that all PCIe hardware on your system support ASPM!

powersave's Issues

What is the use of sysctl.d/99-powersave.conf for an SSD drive?

Most of the content of sysctl.d/99-powersave.conf refer to delaying disk writes, which should be, if I'm not mistaken, not necessary on an SSD drive. Is this wrong? Did you do any testing?

Thanks

Check udev rule at startup

Hi Unia,

I was inspired by your udev rule to check whether my laptop is on AC or not. However, in case I was on battery, turned off the system and plugged in the charging cable, after restart the udev rules is not run and my laptop remains with the settings for battery mode.

How can I get the udev rule checked on boot?

Regards,

Robert