Bumblebee 3.2.1 Released With Ubuntu 13.04 Fixes, New Options

<div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Bumblebee 3.2 has been released a few days ago but there was an issue and it didn't work on a lot of setups o version 3.2.1 has been released to fix this. The new version also fixes the Primus backend for Ubuntu 13.04 and adds some new options.</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><a href="http://bumblebee-project.org/">Bumblebee</a> is an unofficial tool that brings Nvidia Optimus GPU switching to Linux. It's useful to increase battery life by only switching the dedicated GPU (Nvidia) on when needed. Nvidia has added <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/2013/04/nvidia-releases-linux-graphics-drivers.html">initial Optimus support</a> in their latest 319.12 beta drivers, but it doesn't have GPU switching yet.</i></div><br /><a name="more"></a><b>Bumblebee 3.2 comes with the following changes:</b><br /><ul><li style="text-align: justify;">new option: "-b" to disable injection of any render offloading bridge (primus or VirtualGL). Use this to invoke nvidia-settings (optirun -b none nvidia-settings -c :8)<i>;</i></li><li style="text-align: justify;">new option: "--no-xorg" for optirun to disable starting secondary X server. Use this to run CUDA or OpenCL applications that do not need the graphics rendering capabilities. Implies "-b none";</li><li style="text-align: justify;">Bumblebee no longer depends on the primusrun script anymore for the Primus backend. However, "primusrun" and "optirun -b primus" have different behaviors: the first one powers on the discrete GPU when needed while the second one will immediately do this; the difference in behavior is most noticeable with WebGL content in Firefox;</li><li style="text-align: justify;">Added support for passing <i>-configdir</i> to X, defaulting to <i>/etc/bumblebee/xorg.conf.d</i>,<i> --xconfdir</i> option added to bumblebeed and XorgConfDir added to <i>bumblebee.conf</i>; this finally fixes a long-standing annoyance with SNA config option for the Intel driver;</li><li style="text-align: justify;">the BusID is added automatically on Ubuntu 13.04 so users no longer need to do this manually. Without this, Bumblebee failed to work on Ubuntu 13.04;</li><li style="text-align: justify;">fix: added <i>/usr/$LIB/mesa/libGL.so.1</i> to default primus libGLd for supporting Ubuntu 13.04;</li><li style="text-align: justify;">fix: fixed a "buffer overflow" issue in bumblebeed;</li><li style="text-align: justify;">fix: removed accesses to PCI config space from the daemon process.</li></ul><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Also, <b><a href="http://www.webupd8.org/2013/04/set-up-bumblebee-with-bumblebee.html">Bumblebee Configurator GUI</a></b>, a tool that allows you to easily setup Bumblebee, has been <b>updated recently with support for the latest Bumblebee 3.2</b>. <b>The latest version also adds an option to install Bumblebee in Ubuntu</b>.</div><br /><br /><br /><h2>Install Bumblebee Configurator GUI in Ubuntu</h2><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFH2WxRju9zKCfbGmfS_LUX2vUKBq57qoqO_aFakjIfyjwLK3e_NnzaiN7gYAgdK8viUdFBzXn3hjrH1LepblhUDYjRIUB4KIeO1yhKqkw6URIl4lz3ZIItRpzNVlVZierePzJTsn2LbAI/s1600/bumblebee-config_1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Bumblebee Configurator GUI" border="0" height="231" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFH2WxRju9zKCfbGmfS_LUX2vUKBq57qoqO_aFakjIfyjwLK3e_NnzaiN7gYAgdK8viUdFBzXn3hjrH1LepblhUDYjRIUB4KIeO1yhKqkw6URIl4lz3ZIItRpzNVlVZierePzJTsn2LbAI/s320/bumblebee-config_1.png" title="Bumblebee Configurator GUI" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkZPW9pWgovei-2iC0KDqI4fgcwSvKBp8LRS51JHWIgXjsiZrch55BqhlsTrajQgLYBHoEy8yqnsBnHoDcb49mPVrbaA2KuSBySodCSSUxI1TBtiIZf34VNEVSvEVtnUcRtCm5IMz0nRAj/s1600/bumblebee-config_2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Bumblebee Configurator GUI" border="0" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkZPW9pWgovei-2iC0KDqI4fgcwSvKBp8LRS51JHWIgXjsiZrch55BqhlsTrajQgLYBHoEy8yqnsBnHoDcb49mPVrbaA2KuSBySodCSSUxI1TBtiIZf34VNEVSvEVtnUcRtCm5IMz0nRAj/s320/bumblebee-config_2.png" title="Bumblebee Configurator GUI" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>To install Bumblebee Configurator GUI in Ubuntu, use the following commands:</b></div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo add-apt-repository ppa:alessandrofac93/bumblebee-config-gtk-dev<br />sudo apt-get update<br />sudo apt-get install bumblebee-config-gui</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Then, you launch the application and use it to install and set up Bumblebee. Or, if you want to manually install Bumblebee, see the instructions below.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Report any Bumblebee Configurator GUI bugs you may find @ <a href="https://bugs.launchpad.net/bumblebee-config-gtk">Launchpad</a>. </div><br /><br /><br /><h2>Install Bumblebee in Ubuntu</h2><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>To add the stable Bumblebee PPA and install the latest Bumblebee in Ubuntu, use the following commands:</b></div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bumblebee/stable<br />sudo apt-get update<br />sudo apt-get install bumblebee</code></pre><br />To use the new Primus backend, you'll also have to install Primus:<br /><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo apt-get install primus</code></pre><br />On 64bit, also install primus-libs-ia32:<br /><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo apt-get install primus-libs-ia32</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">To configure Bumblebee you must decide if you want to use Nouveau or the proprietary Nvidia drivers. If you want to use the proprietary Nvidia drivers, take a look at the version you've installed (e.g.: "nvidia-304"), then, open the bumblebee configuration file as root with a text editor:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>gksu gksu gedit /etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf</code></pre><br />And in this file, change:<br /><ul><li>"Driver" to "Driver=nvidia"</li><li>"KernelDriver" to "KernelDriver=nvidia-VERSION" (e.g.: "nvidia-304)</li><li>"LibraryPath" to "LibraryPath=/usr/lib/nvidia-VERSION:/usr/lib32/nvidia-VERSION" (e.g.: "LibraryPath=/usr/lib/nvidia-304:/usr/lib32/nvidia-304")</li><li>"XorgModulePath" to "XorgModulePath=/usr/lib/nvidia-VERSION/xorg,/usr/lib/xorg/modules" (e.g.: "XorgModulePath=/usr/lib/nvidia-304/xorg,/usr/lib/xorg/modules")</li></ul>Report any Bumblebee issues you may find @ <a href="https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee/issues?state=open">GitHub</a>.<br /><br /><b>For Debian, Arch Linux, Gentoo or Mandriva, see the <a href="http://bumblebee-project.org/install.html">Installing Bumblebee</a> page.</b><br /><br /><br /><br /><h2>Using Bumblebee</h2><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibhqw21rnQ0wrMH0Ukzx6V_SL5VJYOblQxRVojBmU8zPHRHIGfbxnhSyfllNDQnw5RNiJ_UGAgIYceyQE_GVJt4OyG6aPVmnQLM7EcCD2meZymv-Qs7kNLG8GsKHJPlbaadPozPTFmluRh/s1600/bumblebee-3.2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Bumblebee" border="0" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibhqw21rnQ0wrMH0Ukzx6V_SL5VJYOblQxRVojBmU8zPHRHIGfbxnhSyfllNDQnw5RNiJ_UGAgIYceyQE_GVJt4OyG6aPVmnQLM7EcCD2meZymv-Qs7kNLG8GsKHJPlbaadPozPTFmluRh/s320/bumblebee-3.2.png" title="Bumblebee" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">To run a game or application using the dedicated GPU (Nvidia), use the following command:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>optirun APP-EXECUTABLE</code></pre>replacing "APP-EXECUTABLE" with the application (or game) executable.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">To use the <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/2012/11/primus-better-performance-and-less.html">Primus backend</a> (note: you'll only get about 60 frames / sec in glxspheres but this backend should actually work better than Primus) without changing the Bumblebee configuration, use:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>optirun -b primus APP-EXECUTABLE</code></pre>This will immediately turn on the dedicated GPU.<br /><br />Or:<br /><pre class="linux-code"><code>primusrun APP-EXECUTABLE</code></pre>This will only power the discrete GPU on when needed.

Bumblebee 3.2.1 Released With Ubuntu 13.04 Fixes, New Options

Bumblebee 3.2 has been released a few days ago but there was an issue and it didn't work on a lot of setups o version 3.2.1 has been rel...

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Improve Power Usage / Battery Life In Linux With TLP

<div style="text-align: justify;">There are various tweaks that you can apply to your laptop to save battery power, but many of them depend on the hardware, Linux distribution, some are outdated or too hard to apply for regular users and so on. <b><a href="http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-linux-advanced-power-management.html">TLP</a> is an advanced power management command line tool for Linux that tries to apply these settings / tweaks for you automatically, depending on your Linux distribution and hardware</b>.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUoZHLkj-t53y8oc49a1R8Dq7EcZ3V-1TZDEvcpBQWvj1hD36KMhu0xLcfM7RE11gEQRVJaS5ZHj9PbBa8poA-xkO3GjLrX4Wf0PfFWtOb_evtdVnZHJc5bxbK8nXRTfz5wgc9aHPIQhoo/s1600/system76-ubuntu-laptop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Ubuntu laptop" border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUoZHLkj-t53y8oc49a1R8Dq7EcZ3V-1TZDEvcpBQWvj1hD36KMhu0xLcfM7RE11gEQRVJaS5ZHj9PbBa8poA-xkO3GjLrX4Wf0PfFWtOb_evtdVnZHJc5bxbK8nXRTfz5wgc9aHPIQhoo/s320/system76-ubuntu-laptop.jpg" title="Ubuntu laptop" width="320" /></a></div></div><br /><a name="more"></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>TLP applies the following settings depending on the power source (battery / ac):</b></div><ul><li>Kernel laptop mode and dirty buffer timeouts;</li><li>Processor frequency scaling including "turbo boost" / "turbo core";</li><li>Power aware process scheduler for multi-core/hyper-threading;</li><li>Hard disk advanced power management level and spin down timeout (per disk);</li><li>SATA aggressive link power management (ALPM);</li><li>PCI Express active state power management (PCIe ASPM) – Linux 2.6.35 and above;</li><li>Runtime power management for PCI(e) bus devices – Linux 2.6.35 and above;</li><li>Radeon KMS power management – Linux 2.6.35 and above, not fglrx;</li><li>Wifi power saving mode – depending on kernel/driver;</li><li>Power off optical drive in drive bay (on battery).</li></ul><br /><b>Additional TLP functions:</b><br /><ul><li>I/O scheduler (per disk);</li><li>USB autosuspend with blacklist;</li><li>Audio power saving mode – hda_intel, ac97;</li><li>Enable or disable integrated wifi, bluetooth or wwan devices upon system startup and shutdown;</li><li>Restore radio device state on system startup (from previous shutdown);</li><li>Radio device wizard: switch radios upon network connect/disconnect and dock/undock;</li><li>Disable Wake On LAN;</li><li>WWAN state is restored after suspend/hibernate;</li><li>Undervolting of Intel processors – requires kernel with PHC-Patch;</li><li>Battery charge thresholds – ThinkPads only;</li><li>Recalibrate battery – ThinkPads only.</li></ul><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">TLP applies these settings automatically on startup and every time you change the power source. To use it, all you have to do is install TLP, however, there are some settings that you can apply manually, overwriting the TLP default settings, such as enabling or disabling the WiFi, Bluetooth or Wwan (3G or UMTS) radios, switching between AC or battery settings, ignoring the actual power source, apply autosuspend for all attached USB devices or power off the optical drive. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There are also some TinkPad-only settings that you can use, like temporarily changing the battery charge thresholds, temporarily set battery charge thresholds to factory settings, recalibrating the battery and more.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">For more about these settings, see the TLP <a href="http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-linux-advanced-power-management.html">homepage</a> or consult the TLP manpage (type "<i>man tlp</i>" in a terminal).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I've only been using TLP for a couple of hours so I can't say yet how efficient this tool is regarding battery life, but I've noticed that my laptop's temperature is lower than before using TLP. You may have seen an icon on my Unity launcher in some posts on WebUpd8, which displays a number that's usually around 65 - that's <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/2012/07/monitor-hardware-temperature-in-ubuntu.html">Psensor</a> and it displays the CPU temperature (Celsius; it's 165 degrees Fahrenheit) - here's an <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/2013/04/get-ubuntu-touch-feeling-on-unity.html">example</a>. Well, after installing TLP, the CPU temperature didn't go past 55 degrees Celsius (135 degrees Fahrenheit), at least not yet, with regular desktop usage: using a browser with quite a few tabs open, a text editor and a few AppIndicators running, under Unity. This, of course, depends on various factors but so far this tool seems to do its job. Also, some Reddit users have <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/1cdg2h/ubuntu_battery_draining_issues/">reported</a> that TLP makes quite a big difference.</div><br /><br /><br /><h2>Install TLP in Ubuntu</h2><br /><b>Before proceeding with the installation, there are a couple of things you need to do:</b><br /><ul><li>firstly, if you've added any power saving settings / scripts (e.g.: in <i>/etc/rc.local</i>), remove them or else TLP may not work properly;</li><li>remove laptop-mode-tools ("sudo apt-get remove laptop-mode-tools").</li></ul><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Ubuntu (and Linux Mint, etc.) users can install TLP by using its official PPA. Add the PPA and install TLP using the following commands:</b></div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo add-apt-repository ppa:linrunner/tlp<br />sudo apt-get update<br />sudo apt-get install tlp tlp-rdw</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">TLP will automatically start  upon system startup, but to avoid having to restart the system to get it running for the first time, you can start it (required only the first time) using the following command:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo tlp start</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>There are some optional packages you can install for some extra features:</b></div><ul><li><i>smartmontools</i> - needed to display disk drive S.M.A.R.T. data;</li><li><i>ethtool</i> - needed to disable wake on lan.</li></ul><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Install these tools (available in the Ubuntu repositories) using the following command:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo apt-get install smartmontools ethtool</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>There are also some ThinkPad only, optional packages you may need:</b></div><ul><li><i>tp-smapi-dkms</i> - needed for battery charge thresholds and ThinkPad specific status output of tlp-stat;</li><li><i>acpi-call-tools</i> - acpi-call is needed for battery charge thresholds on Sandy Bridge and newer models (X220/T420, X230/T430, etc.).</li></ul><br />Install these packages using the following command:<br /><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo apt-get install tp-smapi-dkms acpi-call-tools</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Other Linux distributions: there are TLP packages for Debian 6.0+, Arch Linux, openSUSE 11.4+, Gentoo, Fedora 16+</b> - see the TLP <a href="http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-linux-advanced-power-management.html">homepage</a> for installation instructions. You can grab the source / report bugs @ <a href="https://github.com/linrunner/TLP">GitHub</a> </div><br />Make sure to also read the <a href="http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-faq.html">TLP FAQ</a>.<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><i>application seen on <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/1cdg2h/ubuntu_battery_draining_issues/">Reddit</a>; image via <a href="https://www.system76.com/">system76.com</a></i></div>

Improve Power Usage / Battery Life In Linux With TLP

There are various tweaks that you can apply to your laptop to save battery power, but many of them depend on the hardware, Linux distributio...

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How To Use Hybrid Suspend In Ubuntu

<b>Firstly, here's what hybrid suspend does:</b><br /><ul><li>initially, the computer is suspended to RAM, which is quick to suspend / resume but it also uses some power</li><li>if the computer doesn't wake up after a configurable amount of time, suspend to disk is used so the computer stops using any power (it's the same as if it was powered off) - this is also known as hibernation</li></ul><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Basically, <b>using the hybrid suspend method from this article, the system initially enters suspend which is quick to resume and after the time you set, the system hibernates so it no longer uses any battery power</b>. This is useful if for example you close the lid when you move from one room to another (between meetings, classrooms, etc.) and you need the system to resume quickly, but you also want to preserve battery power if you don't use it.</div><br /><a name="more"></a><div style="text-align: justify;">There is another "true" hybrid suspend method (available in Linux kernel 3.6 - Ubuntu 12.10 uses Linux kernel 3.5, so it's not in Ubuntu by default yet) in which the system suspends to both the RAM and hard disk in the same time, which is useful to get both a quick resume / suspend and be able to resume the computer in case of power loss or if the system runs out of battery, but the "true" hybrid suspend uses battery power so I prefer the hybrid suspend method in this post.</div><br /><br /><br /><h2>Set up hybrid suspend in Ubuntu</h2><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJX2-u7drTqrRFzLlH-H0SBFGs1a-D7kxO3XYiWh1ZWECR-J4j9SsQm3YeyoTOXPkIuY5lZ9c9VvFNRiSucyrpzgEHRZVUbHPxxl0w8ZOA4jEFgWqPnpku-q33YjVzZtA_yoOHxdFi0PGy/s1600/ubuntu-hybrid-suspend.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="suspend ubuntu" border="0" height="174" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJX2-u7drTqrRFzLlH-H0SBFGs1a-D7kxO3XYiWh1ZWECR-J4j9SsQm3YeyoTOXPkIuY5lZ9c9VvFNRiSucyrpzgEHRZVUbHPxxl0w8ZOA4jEFgWqPnpku-q33YjVzZtA_yoOHxdFi0PGy/s320/ubuntu-hybrid-suspend.png" title="suspend ubuntu" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Before proceeding, please note that I've tested this in Ubuntu 12.10 and it's known to work in Ubuntu 12.04 as well, but I don't know if it works in older Ubuntu versions.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Firstly, check if your system supports hybrid suspend by running the following command in a terminal:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo pm-is-supported --suspend-hybrid && echo "hybrid suspend is supported" || echo "your system doesn't support hybrid suspend"</code></pre><br /><br />To enable hybrid suspend in Ubuntu, create a file called "<i>/etc/pm/config.d/00-use-suspend-hybrid</i>" - you can do it using the following command:<br /><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudoedit /etc/pm/config.d/00-use-suspend-hybrid</code></pre><br /><i>The above command uses the default (usually "nano") command line editor, but you can use a graphical text editor like Gedit if you want (e.g.: "gksu gedit /etc/pm/config.d/00-use-suspend-hybrid").</i><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">And paste the following in the newly opened file (use "Ctrl + Shift + V" to paste in a terminal):</div><pre class="source-code"><code># Always use suspend_hybrid instead of suspend<br />if [ "$METHOD" = "suspend" ]; then<br />METHOD=suspend_hybrid<br />fi<br />PM_HIBERNATE_DELAY=900 # time in seconds until hibernate (suspend to disk) occurs; 900 means 15 minutes</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Then, adjust the "PM_HIBERNATE_DELAY" value to whatever you want (this is the time in seconds until hibernate - suspend to disk - occurs), save the file (to save the file in Nano command line text editor and then exit, use: Ctrl + O, Enter, Ctrl + X) and your system should now use hybrid suspend instead of the regular suspend method.</div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Update: There's also a second method - "true" hybrid suspend</b>, which writes the image to both disk and RAM from the beginning, having the benefits that resuming will always be fast and that the machine will not wake up for a short time to hibernate for real. To use it, instead of he code above, paste the following in the <i>/etc/pm/config.d/00-use-suspend-hybrid</i> file:</div><br /><pre class="source-code"><code># WORKAROUND: always set the default hibernate mode first (normal mode)<br /># (not required if you have the patch mentioned by Rohan below (http://askubuntu.com/a/344879/169))<br />HIBERNATE_MODE=platform<br /><br /># Always use hibernate instead of suspend, but with "suspend to both"<br />if [ "$METHOD" = "suspend" ]; then<br /> METHOD=hibernate<br /> HIBERNATE_MODE=suspend<br />fi<br /><br /># Make sure to use the kernel's method, in case uswsusp is installed etc.<br />SLEEP_MODULE=kernel</code></pre><br />Then save the file (to save the file in Nano command line text editor and then exit, use: Ctrl + O, Enter, Ctrl + X) and that's it, your computer should now use "true" hybrid suspend.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><i>info via <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/145443/how-do-i-use-pm-suspend-hybrid-by-default-instead-of-pm-suspend">AskUbuntu</a> and <a href="http://daniel.hahler.de/use-hybrid-suspend-method-by-default">daniel.hahler.de</a></i></div>

How To Use Hybrid Suspend In Ubuntu

Firstly, here's what hybrid suspend does: initially, the computer is suspended to RAM, which is quick to suspend / resume but it also us...

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Install PowerTOP 2.1 In Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin Via PPA

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht1kSDwmTI4icFT2v89RTlMpL-ObVEs16b-BhnJB0fj1jYG0iQBh0SDn2SLu_tXopTsD-5oZAnPdVwzhT_IW32VOJO_ulfZcwgv2rJYg4_CFxLh7QMh2gid9z4KfnVsgj26Qx3HycvOOBu/s1600/powertop-overview.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="powertop" border="0" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht1kSDwmTI4icFT2v89RTlMpL-ObVEs16b-BhnJB0fj1jYG0iQBh0SDn2SLu_tXopTsD-5oZAnPdVwzhT_IW32VOJO_ulfZcwgv2rJYg4_CFxLh7QMh2gid9z4KfnVsgj26Qx3HycvOOBu/s320/powertop-overview.png" title="powertop" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><a href="https://01.org/powertop/">PowerTOP</a> is a command line tool that helps diagnose issues with power consumption and provides suggestions on how to improve power usage.</b></div><br /><a name="more"></a><div style="text-align: justify;">PowerTOP 2.1, released a few days ago, introduces support for Intel GPUs and for cores without P-states, a new manual page along with an option to specify workload to run during measurement and an option to suppress output to the terminal.</div><br /><br /><h2>Install PowerTOP 2.1 in Ubuntu 12.04 via PPA</h2><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">The latest PowerTOP 2.1 is available in the Ubuntu 12.10 official repositories, and for Ubuntu 12.04 in the main WebUpd8 PPA. Add the PPA and install PowerTOP 2.1 using the following commands:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8<br />sudo apt-get update<br />sudo apt-get install powertop</code></pre><br />The latest PowerTOP 2.1 source can be downloaded from <a href="https://01.org/powertop/">HERE</a>.<br /><br /><br /><br /><h2>Usage</h2><br />To use PowerTOP, you need to run it as root:<br /><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo powertop</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">PowerTOP doesn't just diagnose power consumption issues, but it can also provide solutions. On the Tunables tab, you can see what you can do to save some power:</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihIlPZjwevRXmOfx7n3e7ejAJ44Hux_clvvEPxiOZqR58h2xVUjFzgZMddj9yRj8OTPJKQicPCcp1_tK-ih-85XOltAzkuis4MdFroL7fxwTEAPUrk7obkvi3AUxx_bvyjF9I0996TN9QM/s1600/powertop-tunables.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="powertop" border="0" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihIlPZjwevRXmOfx7n3e7ejAJ44Hux_clvvEPxiOZqR58h2xVUjFzgZMddj9yRj8OTPJKQicPCcp1_tK-ih-85XOltAzkuis4MdFroL7fxwTEAPUrk7obkvi3AUxx_bvyjF9I0996TN9QM/s320/powertop-tunables.png" title="powertop" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">However, most of the settings are not saved and they are lost after a reboot. You, can, however, make them permanent, by using the commands provided in the PowerTOP html report. To generate an HTML report, run the following command:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo powertop --html=powertop.html</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">This will generate an HTML page which you can open in your web browser:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIr2L9HyHDmm73zs1Tfg7vPSfX4uafjscB33cVt08LGtrI1H4ajzPGXzI3c0r_NdTm1M5Z3PnAcz2aoeW2JPtrH22ASnYCjiXuSR_Sc0cGEFBrc2vPa70Vdu53TmjqYVobY7BGV-37i8So/s1600/powertop-html.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="powertop html" border="0" height="124" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIr2L9HyHDmm73zs1Tfg7vPSfX4uafjscB33cVt08LGtrI1H4ajzPGXzI3c0r_NdTm1M5Z3PnAcz2aoeW2JPtrH22ASnYCjiXuSR_Sc0cGEFBrc2vPa70Vdu53TmjqYVobY7BGV-37i8So/s320/powertop-html.png" title="powertop html" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Here, you can see various information related to power usage as well as a "Tuning" tab where the settings that need tuning are displayed, along with the commands required to apply them. Add these commands to the <i>/etc/rc.local</i> file to make them permanent.</div>

Install PowerTOP 2.1 In Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin Via PPA

PowerTOP is a command line tool that helps diagnose issues with power consumption and provides suggestions on how to improve power usage. P...

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