Rafael Vanoni wrote: > Eric Saxe wrote: >> Rafael Vanoni wrote: >>> Eric Saxe wrote: >>> >>>> Hi Rafael, >>>> >>>> The man page looks good. Here's some more comments: >>>> >>>> " PowerTOP averages the amount of activity that is preventing >>>> the CPU from entering a lower power state and presents it on >>>> the "Wakeups-from-idle per second" field. This value represents >>>> the total number of events divided by the current interval. >>>> Notice that not all events are displayed on the screen at all >>>> times." >>>> >>>> Actually, because all firing cyclics are displayed (without -i), >>>> does the value represent the number of times a CPU awoke from a >>>> lower power idle state? >>>> >>> No, and I would even like to change "Wakeups-from-idle" to something >>> like "Events" or "Activity". IMHO, "Wakeups" is misleading. >>> >>> >>>> " >>>> If running as root (superuser), the tool will make suggestions >>>> as how the system can be improved from a power management >>>> perspective." >>>> >>>> root..or are the specific privileges that would work? >>>> >>> Only root, as the only supported suggestion at the moment is >>> enabling PM on /etc/power.conf. Don't remember which group is able >>> to modify it, but maybe we can change it to groupid. Would that be >>> the right approach ? >>> >> Well, you could just try to do the change, and then if you get >> EPERM, emit an error message like "Unable to edit /etc/power.conf: >> Permission Denied", or something like that. > > Hmm.. ok. But users would get frustrated if we present a frequent > suggestion they (possibly) can't implement. > >> I'm still having a difficult time stomaching that PowerTOP is editing >> power.conf, running other commands, etc...and it's probably not >> PowerTOP's fault, we just don't have a good programmatic interface >> to do this sort of thing yet. But an alternate way to go might be to >> bring up a screen that gives you a detailed, step by step procedure, >> for implementing the suggestion. >> > > I agree, the functionality is misplaced. > IMO, suggestions will be unnecessary and potentially counter > productive once we have the PM framework in place (phase 2). > Well, I have a different opinion. pm framework phase 2 will not cover this case. suggestions is a major functionality in the original linux powertop. And as far as I know, It's grateful by linux system admin and developer.
For example, solaris cpupm is not enabled by default, and may not be awared by system admin. suggestions will tell system admin: 1) the system can enter cpupm mode 2) just press one key to enter power saving mode. adding cpupm related option and running "pmconfig" may not be easy for the beginner. "editing power.conf, running other command" in powertop may be not the solaris style, just like we can't run powertop as root. It's just hard to understand for me, we are trying to improve power saving of the system, root is required anyway. Thanks, -Aubrey
