battery goes out quickly

[rocky]

Hello all,

I have bought a HP Compaq Presario CQ40-401(au) and I installed FreeBSD 7.1 on it.

My battery is charged to 100%. After 20 minutes of uptime, the battery goes quickly to 69%. I am running FireFox3, pidgin, etc. Not too many, right?

I guess that there's something wrong. But I don't know...

Thanks you for any suggestions and helps,

-- kyanh


$ uptime
7:48PM up 23 mins, 3 users, load averages: 2.38, 1.70, 1.03



$ sysctl -a |grep batt
hw.acpi.battery.life: 62
hw.acpi.battery.time: -1
hw.acpi.battery.state: 1
hw.acpi.battery.units: 1
hw.acpi.battery.info_expire: 5
machdep.apm_swab_batt_minutes: 0
dev.battery.0.%desc: ACPI Control Method Battery
dev.battery.0.%driver: battery
dev.battery.0.%location: handle=\_SB_.PCI0.LPC0.BAT0
dev.battery.0.%pnpinfo: _HID=PNP0C0A _UID=1
dev.battery.0.%parent: acpi0



$ ps x
986 ?? Is 0:00.00 /usr/local/bin/dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 5 --print-address 7 --session
1009 ?? S 0:00.08 /usr/local/libexec/gconfd-2
923 v0 I 0:00.01 -bash (bash)
927 v0 I+ 0:00.01 /bin/sh /usr/local/bin/startx
948 v0 I+ 0:00.00 xinit /home/pi/.xinitrc -- /usr/local/bin/X :0 -auth /home/pi/.serverauth.927
967 v0 S 0:01.04 /usr/local/bin/openbox
970 v0 S 0:08.08 /usr/local/bin/conky
971 v0 S 0:03.02 /usr/local/bin/fbpanel
974 v0 S 0:00.92 /usr/local/bin/xscreensaver -nosplash
975 v0 S 0:58.12 /usr/local/bin/xvnkb
980 v0 S 0:00.66 /usr/local/apps/ROX-Filer/ROX-Filer
981 v0 S 0:02.73 pidgin
985 v0 I 0:00.00 dbus-launch --autolaunch 0c226a9e5676c3a684285a1849c73ad7 --binary-syntax --close-stderr
994 v0 I 0:00.01 /bin/sh /usr/local/bin/firefox3 http://mail.google.com/mail
999 v0 I 0:00.00 /bin/sh /usr/local/lib/firefox3/run-mozilla.sh /usr/local/lib/firefox3/firefox-bin http://mail.google.com/mail
1004 v0 I 2:15.88 /usr/local/lib/firefox3/firefox-bin http://mail.google.com/mail
1027 v0 S 0:00.79 xterm -e screen -A
1030 p0 Ss+ 0:00.03 screen -A
1034 p1 Is 0:00.11 /bin/bash
1117 p2 Ss 0:00.12 /bin/bash
1126 p2 R+ 0:00.04 ps x



Here's a part of `top`'s output:


PID USERNAME THR PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE C TIME WCPU COMMAND
949 pi 1 63 0 301M 39728K select 1 3:27 23.29% Xorg
1004 pi 8 54 0 124M 98256K ucond 1 0:00 20.46% firefox-bin
975 pi 1 8 0 6392K 4164K nanslp 1 1:06 7.28% xvnkb
1117 pi 1 8 0 5468K 3188K wait 1 0:00 0.20% bash
971 pi 1 44 0 36012K 15928K select 1 0:03 0.10% fbpanel
970 pi 1 44 0 5764K 2776K select 0 0:09 0.00% conky
981 pi 1 44 0 46684K 26636K select 1 0:03 0.00% pidgin
967 pi 1 44 0 26396K 10080K select 1 0:01 0.00% openbox
974 pi 1 44 0 5300K 3148K select 0 0:01 0.00% xscreensaver
1027 pi 1 44 0 10824K 8200K select 0 0:01 0.00% xterm
980 pi 1 44 0 45852K 17320K select 1 0:01 0.00% ROX-Filer
1031 pi 1 44 0 3572K 2132K select 0 0:00 0.00% screen
1034 pi 1 8 0 5468K 3188K wait 1 0:00 0.00% bash
1009 pi 1 44 0 21140K 5408K select 1 0:00 0.00% gconfd-2
1030 pi 1 20 0 3572K 1896K pause 0 0:00 0.00% screen
923 pi 1 8 0 4396K 2316K wait 0 0:00 0.00% bash
1128 pi 1 44 0 3580K 1704K CPU0 0 0:00 0.00% top
994 pi 1 8 0 3512K 1688K wait 1 0:00 0.00% sh
1043 pi 1 8 0 3620K 1588K wait 1 0:00 0.00% su
927 pi 1 8 0 3464K 1464K wait 0 0:00 0.00% sh
999 pi 1 8 0 3512K 1700K wait 1 0:00 0.00% sh
948 pi 1 8 0 4396K 1656K wait 1 0:00 0.00% xinit
986 pi 1 44 0 3384K 1736K select 0 0:00 0.00% dbus-daemon
985 pi 1 49 0 4684K 1988K select 0 0:00 0.00% dbus-launch

[SirDice]

It's probably running at full blast. Try setting up acpi or apm.

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/acpi-overview.html

[richardpl]

Enable powerd in /etc/rc.conf.
Install,enable and configure ataidle from ports.
Add
cpufreq_load="YES"

Edit /etc/rc.conf:

performance_cx_lowest="HIGH" # Online CPU idle state
performance_cpu_freq="NONE" # Online CPU frequency
economy_cx_lowest="HIGH" # Offline CPU idle state
economy_cpu_freq="NONE" # Offline CPU frequency

[rocky]

Thanks SirDice and richardpl. I will try and report soon.

[rocky]

Dear richardpl,

I followed your helps and the battery still went out quickly. More over, I got some more errors in `dmesg`:


FreeBSD 7.1-RELEASE #3: Tue Mar 24 01:40:52 ICT 2009
toor@icy.local:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/ICY
module_register: module cpu/ichss already exists!
Module cpu/ichss failed to register: 17
module_register: module cpu/est already exists!
Module cpu/est failed to register: 17
module_register: module cpu/p4tcc already exists!
Module cpu/p4tcc failed to register: 17
module_register: module cpu/powernow already exists!
Module cpu/powernow failed to register: 17
module_register: module cpu/smist already exists!
Module cpu/smist failed to register: 17

Any idea?

Regards,

--rocky

[richardpl]

What you did?
What are your powerd flags.
Post your rc.conf.

[richardpl]

Also send output of uptime.

[foo_daemon]

These settings made all the difference in the world for my laptop:

/etc/rc.conf:

powerd_enable="YES"
powerd_flags="−a adaptive −b adaptive" # CPU Frequency Scaling on AC and Battery


100% Battery charge went from 1.5 hour usage to over 3 :)

[rocky]

Hi all,

I am so sorry for my very late reply. I have no time to test my battery: at office I just get it out and use AC instead.

I am now using FreeBSD-7.2-RELEASE (FreeBSD kool!!). I see that battery still goes out quite quickly.

After 23 minutes of uptime, the battery remains 67%. I guess that I have to replace the battery in next 23 mintures :)

Any idea?

Thank you for your helps.

=================

My information:

powerd flags: "−a adaptive −b adaptive"

uptime

7:07PM up 17 mins, 4 users, load averages: 1.37, 1.21, 0.78
7:14PM up 24 mins, 5 users, load averages: 0.63, 0.94, 0.81

About cpu.0:

dev.cpu.0.%desc: ACPI CPU
dev.cpu.0.%driver: cpu
dev.cpu.0.%location: handle=\_PR_.CPU0
dev.cpu.0.%pnpinfo: _HID=none _UID=0
dev.cpu.0.%parent: acpi0
dev.cpu.0.freq: 2200
dev.cpu.0.freq_levels: 2200/-1 1925/-1 1650/-1 1375/-1 1100/-1 825/-1 550/-1 275/-1
dev.cpu.0.cx_supported: C1/0
dev.cpu.0.cx_lowest: C1
dev.cpu.0.cx_usage: 100.00%

[richardpl]

cx_lowest is still C1 it should be C2 or C3:

Add
economy_cx_lowest="C3"
to your /etc/rc.conf

[rocky]

Thank you, richardpl.

As you can see my CPU supports only C1/0:

dev.cpu.0.cx_supported: C1/0

So how can I use C3 state? My CPU is AMD Turion RM74 and I built the kernel with option I686_CPU (see http://viettug.org/attachments/download/147/icy_kernel.txt):

Below some heading lines from `dmemsg`:


CPU: AMD Turion(tm) X2 Dual-Core Mobile RM-74 (2200.09-MHz 686-class CPU)
Origin = "AuthenticAMD" Id = 0x200f31 Stepping = 1
Features=0x178bfbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,P GE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CLFLUSH,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,HT T>
Features2=0x2001<SSE3,CX16>
AMD Features=0xea500800<SYSCALL,NX,MMX+,FFXSR,RDTSCP,LM,3DNow!+,3DNow!>
AMD Features2=0x131f<LAHF,CMP,SVM,ExtAPIC,CR8,Prefetch,<b9>,<b12>>
TSC: P-state invariant
Cores per package: 2

[richardpl]

It either is not supported by your CPU or ACPI is broken.

[richardpl]

Modify
powerd flags: "−a adaptive −b adaptive"
to
powerd flags: "−a adaptive −b adaptive -n adaptive"

Does:
dev.cpu.0.freq: 2200 ever change?

[lme@]

Using C3 causes a problem with the internal timer. In 8-Current there is a patch that enables you to use an external timer, so you can use C3 safely.

Take a look at
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2009-May/006436.html
for suggestions how to save power.

[rocky]

Thank you all for helps.

I will try and report the result.

Regards,

-- rocky