Improve battery life and ACPI functions on the macbookpro

[crocowhile]

I actually have the MBP 13", that has only one GPU (9400) and yet with this system I save at least 4W. I wish I could save more, though.

[Nikos.Alexandris]

I am unsure if all this is worthy for an MBP5,1 15". The difference is the NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT graphics in the 15" models. That's actually the "main" problem with respect to battery life.

In the following thread/post http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=7691208&postcount=905 I've posted a screenshot of the mbp5,1 running for almost 2 hours when using the onboard graphic card. Currently I can't get the power-manager and display/keyboard brightness to work correctly. I suppose that battery life will improve when dealing with these issues.

Kind regards, Nikos

[stockley]

* longer battery life (apple claims up to 7 hours and my experience is on that line)

From my experience its been more like 5 hours max, running word or flicking through the web. Generally thought, its been more like 3 or 4 because of other applications like iTunes or something. But 7 hours... wow... macbooks do have good batteries, but are you sure its 7 hours? Maybe its the new-ish models or the pro, I've got 3 macbooks and an iBook in my house, no pros

[crocowhile]

From my experience its been more like 5 hours max, running word or flicking through the web. Generally thought, its been more like 3 or 4 because of other applications like iTunes or something. But 7 hours... wow... macbooks do have good batteries, but are you sure its 7 hours? Maybe its the new-ish models or the pro, I've got 3 macbooks and an iBook in my house, no pros

This is the one I was referring to:
http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/specs-13inch.html

I haven't measure precisely the 7 hours to be honest, it's more of a feeling.

[hvthao]

Cannot get 7 hours with web surfing!

[raronson]

Thanks for the howto. Using a macbook4,1(non-pro) the suspend-resume portion fixed some issues with not properly waking or waking in a lagged state that made mousing and using the keyboard extremely difficult.

If you don't mind, I'm going to post a link to the Karmic forum and suggest that these tools be looked at instead of the current default.

Thanks again.

[Takala]

I recently got one the newest MacBookPro 13" and after giving a 2 weeks trial period to OSX I decided to switch back to ubuntu and I certainly don't regret it. The only two things I *really* loved in OSX were:

* longer battery life (apple claims up to 7 hours and my experience is on that line)

* very fast and efficient suspend/resume

Those two weren't quite the same in an out-of-the box ubuntu 9.04 installation but with some hacks here and there I got them working not too bad. Here I want to describe what I did and then hopefully with a bit of team work we'll get even better!

Suspend/Resume

Suspend and Resume actually didn't work at all after installation. I figured the reason was that I didn't have the latest EFI version. So I rebooted in OSX, did the upgrade to 1.7 and voila. Worked fine.
They were still a bit slower than OSX, though. Especially resume (which is the one we care the most, of course). To fix it I did the following

install a package called uswsusp

sudo apt-get install uswsusp

the package carries two nice tools: s2ram and s2disk
First of all make sure they work launching

sudo s2ram --force

to suspend to ram or

sudo s2disk

to hibernate.

I personally don't care too much about hibernation. Nice thing about s2ram, though, is that it goes to sleep maintaining somehow the proper wifi settings so that when you open up the lid again the machine is immediately connected to the internet, exactly as it happens in OSX. The resume takes about 5 seconds and you are ready to go.

By default gnome prompts you with the password after resume. If you don't like this behaviour, you can change it running

gconftool -s /apps/gnome-power-manager/lock/suspend -t bool false

you can of course use s2ram and s2disk as default tools. to do so, you need to replace two of the existing scripts.

sudo cp /usr/lib/hal/scripts/linux/hal-system-power-hibernate-linux /usr/lib/hal/scripts/linux/hal-system-power-hibernate-linux.bak
sudo cp /usr/lib/hal/scripts/linux/hal-system-power-suspend-linux /usr/lib/hal/scripts/linux/hal-system-power-suspend-linux.bak

and then

 sudo gedit /usr/lib/hal/scripts/linux/hal-system-power-hibernate-linux

replace what you find with:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
/usr/sbin/s2disk

 sudo gedit /usr/lib/hal/scripts/linux/hal-system-power-suspend-linux

replace what you find with:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
/usr/sbin/s2ram --force

Restart
Restart also doesn't seem to work out of the box. With kernels 2.6.28-13 and -14 the system would go throughout the entire rebooting procedure then hang at the very end with "Restarting System". As a workaround, install kexec-tools and make sure it's active. This will enable kexec restart (meaning, when you restart the computer will skip EFI/GRUB and load directly the kernel.

sudo apt-get install kexec-tools
gedit /etc/default/kexec

and make sure the load exec is set to True.

Extend Battery life.


This is a bit trickier. First of all, we should be aware of what the goal is. Let's learn more about the battery:

gg@ggmac:~$ cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/info 
present:                 yes
design capacity:         54500 mWh
last full capacity:      55300 mWh
battery technology:      rechargeable
design voltage:          10950 mV
design capacity warning: 250 mWh
design capacity low:     100 mWh
capacity granularity 1:  10 mWh
capacity granularity 2:  10 mWh
model number:            bq20z45189ABCDEF0123456789ABCDE
serial number:           
battery type:            LIONz45189ABCDEF0123456789ABCDE
OEM info:                DPONz45189ABCDEF0123456789ABCDE

What we are interested in is the total capacity, in my case about 55W.
Now, we need to know what the consumption is. To do this, the best way is to use powertop

sudo apt-get install powertop

and then:

powertop -d

powertop will run for 15 seconds and collect info about the system. There's plenty of documentation out there: go dive. For now let's say what you care the most is this line:

Power usage (ACPI estimate): 16.3W (2.7 hours)

It says that your laptop consumes about 16W/hour meaning that with a full charge you'd get 55/16=~3.5 hours of battery. Our goal is to go down to something between 9 and 10 W.

Here's how. First of all, the video. You probably have some new version of the nvidia driver. Open xorg.conf and add the following lines to the section Device:

    
Option "OnDemandVBlankInterrupts" "True"
Option "RegistryDwords" "PowerMizerLevel=0x3"

and the following to the section screen:

Option       "Coolbits" "1"

these lines will enable VBlankondemand and will set powermizer to "ondemand"; the latter will allow overclocking/downclocking of the GPU.

After having done this, you want to change a couple of kernel settings.
Open /boot/grub/menu.list and add to the kernel line the following:

usbcore.autosuspend=1 hpet=force

so, your kernel line should read something like this:

kernel        (hd0,2)/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-13-generic root=/dev/sda3 ro quiet splash usbcore.autosuspend=1 hpet=force vga=791

Finally, the more juicy part. Create a file called 99-savings

gedit ~/99-savings

and copy and paste the following code

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Go fast on AC power.  Similar to default Ubuntu settings
if on_ac_power; then
  # Set the drive to mostly stay awake.  Some may want to change -B 200
  # to -B 255 to avoid accumulating Load_Cycle_Counts
  hdparm -B 200 -S 240 -M 254 /dev/sda

  # Remount ext3 filesystems so the journal commit only happens every 60
  # seconds.  By default this is 5 but, I prefer to reduce the disk
  # activity a bit.
  mount -o remount,commit=60 /
  mount -o remount,commit=60 /home

  # Turn off the laptop mode disk optimization
  #echo 0 > /proc/sys/vm/laptop_mode

  # Set kernel dirty page value back to default
  echo 10 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_ratio
  echo 5 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_background_ratio

  # Only wakeup every 60 seconds to see if we need to write dirty pages
  # By default this is every 5 seconds but, I prefer 60 to reduce disk
  # activity.
  echo 6000 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs

  # Turn off sound card power savings
  echo 0 > /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save
  
  # Set the SATA to max performance
  echo max_performance > /sys/class/scsi_host/host0/link_power_management_policy
  echo max_performance > /sys/class/scsi_host/host1/link_power_management_policy

  # Make sure ondemand governor is set
  echo ondemand > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor 

  # Enable the webcam driver
#  modprobe uvcvideo

  #restart bluetooth
  sudo /usr/sbin/hciconfig hci0 up

  # Start optional  services
#  sudo /etc/init.d/cron start
  sudo /etc/init.d/bluetooth start
  sudo /etc/init.d/preload start

  #reset brightness of screen and keyboard
  sudo nvclock -S 85
  sudo echo 50 | sudo tee -a /sys/class/leds/smc::kbd_backlight/brightness

  #Enable eth0
  sudo ifconfig eth0 up

  #reset clock nvidia card (requires coolbits=1)
  sudo nvidia-settings -a GPU2DClockFreqs=100,0
  sudo nvidia-settings -a GPU3DClockFreqs=450,0

else # Save power

  # Set the disks to aggressively save power and use the lowest acoustic
  # level.  Some might find these settings too aggressive.  If so, change 
  # "-S 4" to something larger like -S 24 (two minutes) and -B 1 to -B 255.
  hdparm -B 1 -S 4 -M 128 /dev/sda
  
  # Change the ext3 commit times to 10 minutes.  This reduces diskhcd
  # activity
  mount -o remount,commit=600 /

  # Set laptop disk write mode
  echo 5 > /proc/sys/vm/laptop_mode

  # Manually set the iwl3945 driver to power savings.
  echo 5 > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/iwl????/0000\:??\:00.0/power_level  

  # Reduce disk activity by waiting up to 10 minutes before doing writes
  echo 90 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_ratio
  echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_background_ratio
  echo 60000 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs

  # Set sound card power savings
  echo 10 > /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save

  # Set SATA to minimum power
  echo min_power > /sys/class/scsi_host/host0/link_power_management_policy
  echo min_power > /sys/class/scsi_host/host1/link_power_management_policy

  # Make sure ondemand governor is set
  echo ondemand > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor 
  
  # Remove the webcam driver
#  modprobe -r uvcvideo

  #Disable eth0
  sudo ifconfig eth0 down

  # Stop unneccessary  services
#  sudo /etc/init.d/cron stop
  sudo /etc/init.d/bluetooth stop
  sudo /etc/init.d/preload stop

  #poweroff bluetooth
  sudo /usr/sbin/hciconfig hci0 down

  #dim screen and keyboard brightness to minimum
  sudo nvclock -S 15
  sudo echo 0 | sudo tee -a /sys/class/leds/smc::kbd_backlight/brightness

  #downclock nvidia card (requires coolbits=1)
  sudo nvidia-settings -a GPU2DClockFreqs=25,0
  sudo nvidia-settings -a GPU3DClockFreqs=125,0

fi

Most of the content of this script comes from this thread and has been tweaked to my needs. Based on your personal taste you can also decide to uncomment the lines with the load/load video module and cron.

install the script doing

sudo install 99-savings /etc/pm/sleep.d
sudo install 99-savings /etc/pm/power.d

In the thread I linked above you also find a script called 99-nvidia You may want to install that one too.

Doing so I get a usage of 9.5W, equivalent of about 6 hours. This is with WIFI on, browsing the internet and having the screen brightness very low.
Still not quite like OSX but not too bad either.

Let me know how it works for you.
(YMMV)

I just bought a new macbook pro 5,5 and I was horrified how low was the battery life in Ubuntu jaunty. However, I did the quoted tutorial, and the power consumption came down from 16.something W to 8.6W. Amayzing! I created this ubuntuforum account just to say thank you very, very much!

PowerTOP 1.11   (C) 2007, 2008 Intel Corporation 

Collecting data for 15 seconds 


Cn              Avg residency
C0 (cpu running)        ( 4.4%)
polling          0.0ms ( 0.0%)
C1 mwait      0.0ms ( 0.0%)
C2 mwait      0.1ms ( 0.0%)
C4 mwait      7.0ms (95.6%)
P-states (frequencies)
  2.27 Ghz     0.0%
  2.13 Ghz     0.0%
  1.87 Ghz     0.0%
  1.60 Ghz     0.0%
   798 Mhz   100.0%
Wakeups-from-idle per second : 137.2    interval: 15.0s
Power usage (ACPI estimate): 8.6W (0.9 hours) 
Top causes for wakeups:
  27.2% ( 57.5)       <interrupt> : ohci_hcd:usb3 
  27.2% ( 57.5)   USB device  3-6 : Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad (Apple Inc.) 
   9.8% ( 20.7)      <kernel IPI> : Rescheduling interrupts 
   6.2% ( 13.2)     <kernel core> : hrtimer_start (tick_sched_timer) 
   5.4% ( 11.4)     <kernel core> : scan_async (ehci_watchdog) 
   5.2% ( 11.0)       <interrupt> : extra timer interrupt 
   3.6% (  7.6)       <interrupt> : ahci 
   2.8% (  6.0)    wpa_supplicant : wl_add_timer (wl_timer) 
   2.6% (  5.6)       <interrupt> : ehci_hcd:usb2 
   2.2% (  4.7)   USB device  2-5 : Card Reader (Apple) 
   2.2% (  4.6)    gnome-terminal : schedule_hrtimeout_range (hrtimer_wakeup) 
   1.9% (  4.0)       <interrupt> : eth1, HDA Intel 
   0.5% (  1.1)           firefox : futex_wait (hrtimer_wakeup) 
   0.5% (  1.0)       <interrupt> : ohci1394, nvidia 
   0.5% (  1.0)              Xorg : nv_start_rc_timer (nv_kern_rc_timer) 
   0.4% (  0.9)   hald-addon-stor : schedule_hrtimeout_range (hrtimer_wakeup) 
   0.3% (  0.7)     <kernel core> : neigh_table_init_no_netlink (neigh_periodic_timer) 
   0.3% (  0.7)              Xorg : schedule_hrtimeout_range (hrtimer_wakeup) 
   0.2% (  0.3)    gnome-terminal : do_nanosleep (hrtimer_wakeup) 
   0.2% (  0.3)   gnome-power-man : schedule_hrtimeout_range (hrtimer_wakeup) 
   0.1% (  0.3)       compiz.real : schedule_hrtimeout_range (hrtimer_wakeup) 
   0.1% (  0.2)   update-notifier : schedule_hrtimeout_range (hrtimer_wakeup) 
   0.1% (  0.2)       gnome-panel : schedule_hrtimeout_range (hrtimer_wakeup) 
   0.1% (  0.2)              hald : schedule_timeout (process_timeout) 
   0.1% (  0.1)       <interrupt> : acpi 
   0.1% (  0.1)         ssh-agent : schedule_hrtimeout_range (hrtimer_wakeup) 
   0.1% (  0.1)    NetworkManager : schedule_hrtimeout_range (hrtimer_wakeup) 
   0.0% (  0.1)     <kernel core> : input_handle_event (input_repeat_key) 
   0.0% (  0.1)           syslogd : hrtimer_start (it_real_fn) 
   0.0% (  0.1)     <kernel core> : neigh_add_timer (neigh_timer_handler) 
   0.0% (  0.1)          gconfd-2 : schedule_hrtimeout_range (hrtimer_wakeup) 
   0.0% (  0.1)              hald : schedule_hrtimeout_range (hrtimer_wakeup) 
   0.0% (  0.1)              Xorg : laptop_io_completion (laptop_timer_fn) 
   0.0% (  0.1)           pdflush : schedule_timeout (process_timeout) 
   0.0% (  0.1)     <kernel core> : queue_delayed_work (delayed_work_timer_fn) 
   0.0% (  0.1)           firefox : schedule_hrtimeout_range (hrtimer_wakeup) 

A USB device is active 100.0% of the time:
USB device  2-5 : Card Reader (Apple)

Suggestion: Enable USB autosuspend by pressing the U key or adding 
usbcore.autosuspend=1 to the kernel command line in the grub config

Suggestion: Enable SATA ALPM link power management via: 
  echo min_power > /sys/class/scsi_host/host0/link_power_management_policy
or press the S key.

Suggestion: Disable 'hal' from polling your cdrom with:  
hal-disable-polling --device /dev/cdrom 'hal' is the component that auto-opens a
window if you plug in a CD but disables SATA power saving from kicking in.

Recent USB suspend statistics
Active  Device name
100.0%    USB device 4-1.1 : Bluetooth USB Host Controller (Apple, Inc.)
100.0%    USB device  3-6 : Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad (Apple Inc.)
100.0%    USB device  3-5 : IR Receiver (Apple Computer, Inc.)
100.0%    USB device  4-1 : BCM2045B2 (Broadcom)
100.0%    USB device  2-5 : Card Reader (Apple)
100.0%    USB device  1-4 : Built-in iSight (Apple Inc.)
100.0%    USB device usb4 : OHCI Host Controller (Linux 2.6.28-15-generic ohci_hcd)
100.0%    USB device usb3 : OHCI Host Controller (Linux 2.6.28-15-generic ohci_hcd)
100.0%    USB device usb2 : EHCI Host Controller (Linux 2.6.28-15-generic ehci_hcd)
100.0%    USB device usb1 : EHCI Host Controller (Linux 2.6.28-15-generic ehci_hcd)

[ercoppa]

I have an error:

ercoppa@ercoppa-laptop:~/Desktop$ sudo nvidia-settings -a GPU2DClockFreqs=25,0

  Attribute 'GPU2DClockFreqs' (ercoppa-laptop:0.0) assigned value 25,0.
The program 'nvidia-settings' received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was 'BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation)'.
  (Details: serial 69 error_code 2 request_code 139 minor_code 3)
  (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
   that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
   To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
   option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
   backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)
ercoppa@ercoppa-laptop:~/Desktop$ sudo nvidia-settings -a GPU3DClockFreqs=125,0

  Attribute 'GPU3DClockFreqs' (ercoppa-laptop:0.0) assigned value 125,0.
The program 'nvidia-settings' received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was 'BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation)'.
  (Details: serial 69 error_code 2 request_code 139 minor_code 3)
  (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
   that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
   To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
   option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
   backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)

What's wrong? I have an MacBook 5,1.

[HighCommander540]

Just an FYI, this script helps a lot, but there is now way you can get 6-7 hours if you are using the computer.

If you look in finer detail to what MAC says you can get 7 hours from. It uses pretty much nothing. The tests are for no wireless no bluetooth. And running small *** programs that use no memory.

I can get mine to run for 7 hours on Ubuntu, but only if I have everything turned off and the lib closed...Then I an get like 8 hours or 9. But there is no way even using your computer at its lowest, is going to get you 7 hours. Unless you like to watch your screen saver.

Anyway, everyone should use this script if they have a MacBook or Pro. It helps with power consumption a lot. Plus, if you just let Ubuntu's own ACPI do it's thing it helps a bit.

[MadEgg]

I see the script is deactivating bluetooth... While I do not use bluetooth most of the time and I do have bluetooth disabled on Mac OSX when on battery power, this seems an important limitation.

Isn't there any way the bluez stack could implement a feature to enable/disable bluetooth so the various bluetooth front-ends in KDE and Gnome can disable this from the GUI? Just like wireless using network-manager?

Anyway, as soon as I fix my stability and wifi problems on Kubuntu 9.10 on my MBP 5,5, I'll try some of these things, thanks!