Remaining Pismo issues

Remaining Pismo issues

[Tim Wojtulewicz]

I'm sure you're all getting tired of hearing from me, but this should be
one of the last times I need to write here.  I've managed to get
LinuxPPC 2000 installed and running correctly on my Pismo, and I have
just a couple of remaining issues to resolve.  This is not user-end
stuff, but mostly internal problems.  Here we go:

-  Power management in Linux is not so good.  In comparison with the
MacOS (bad comparison, I know), the battery on my Pismo seems to last
about an hour less.  If I understand correctly, Apple used a new kind of
PMU in the new laptops.  Is this correct, and if so, how well is the new
chip supported?

- Somewhat related to power management problem, the laptop gets much
hotter when using Linux.  The internal fan runs almost constantly.
Plus, the computer will often hit the shutdown point of the
motherboard.  This causes the operating system to freeze, because the
computer can't operate at such high temperatures.  Has anyone seen this
problem before and found a way around it?

- I had tried to run KDE on my machine using the kdm login manager.  For
some reason, this would not work correctly, and X kept returning the
error "stdin: is not a tty".  I switched back over to the gdm login
manager, and everything seems to work ok.

That's all I've noticed recently.  Thanks for any help you can provide.

Tim


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Re: Remaining Pismo issues

[Steven Hanley]

> -  Power management in Linux is not so good.  In comparison with the
> MacOS (bad comparison, I know), the battery on my Pismo seems to last
> about an hour less.

currently power management is still not supported. This is correct. The
power management works with the older PMU on Lombard and such (paulus'
notebook I believe is a lombard and I have seen the power managemant
working on it) People thought it would be better to get linux booting
and running on the Pismo before they attempted to get power management
working. This is obviously the order to do things in, after all, isnt it
better to have power management but not be able to boot into the OS <g>
(sorry for bad joke attempts)

Anyway now that things are working I suspect people will work more on
power management. Read through the list archives if you want to see
further details of all this. This is where I read all the stuff I can
find so far about the new PMU (I only own one ppc machine, a lowly
7220/200)

> If I understand correctly, Apple used a new kind of
> PMU in the new laptops.  Is this correct, and if so, how well is the new
> chip supported?

it isnt, if you read through the archives you will see there is as yet
no full support for the new chip in linux. People have done minimal
things to get through booting and such, but there is no power management
support yet.

> - Somewhat related to power management problem, the laptop gets much
> hotter when using Linux.  The internal fan runs almost constantly.
> Plus, the computer will often hit the shutdown point of the
> motherboard.  This causes the operating system to freeze, because the
> computer can't operate at such high temperatures.  Has anyone seen this
> problem before and found a way around it?

yes almost definitely power management related as I mention above.

> - I had tried to run KDE on my machine using the kdm login manager.  For
> some reason, this would not work correctly, and X kept returning the
> error "stdin: is not a tty".  I switched back over to the gdm login
> manager, and everything seems to work ok.

no idea, however if this other method works, use it, after all the
display manager should ot be a big issue in usability.

	See You
	    Steve

--
sjh@wibble.net http://wibble.net/~sjh/
Look Up In The Sky
   Is it a bird?  No
      Is it a plane?  No
         Is it a small blue banana?
YES

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Re: Remaining Pismo issues

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt]

On Sun, Apr 9, 2000, Tim Wojtulewicz <Tim.Wojtulewicz@NAU.EDU> wrote:

>-  Power management in Linux is not so good.  In comparison with the
>MacOS (bad comparison, I know), the battery on my Pismo seems to last
>about an hour less.  If I understand correctly, Apple used a new kind of
>PMU in the new laptops.  Is this correct, and if so, how well is the new
>chip supported?

The PMU is partially supported by some tools, I think. Once I get a
Pismo, I'll try to improve things ;) But the PMU is not the only piece of
the puzzle.

MacOS is quite good at monitoring CPU activity and reducing dynamically
the power consumtion of the machine depending on it's activity. It will
lower the brightness and reduce CPU speed after short periods of
inactivity, it can cut power to some devices when they are not used, does
more aggressive use of USB suspend feature, etc...

Linux has some power management features (like DOZE'ing the CPU in the
idle thread) but some more general work on power management is needed to
really improve things. The sound chip could be shut down optionally when
the driver is not opened (well, eventually disabling the console beep),
the hard disk could be completely powered off instead of just spun down,
and the overall CPU activity could be monitored by a deamon and the CPU
speed adjusted dynamically.

All this need time and a developer to implement them however. If you have
some time, you are welcome ;)

>- Somewhat related to power management problem, the laptop gets much
>hotter when using Linux.  The internal fan runs almost constantly.
>Plus, the computer will often hit the shutdown point of the
>motherboard.  This causes the operating system to freeze, because the
>computer can't operate at such high temperatures.  Has anyone seen this
>problem before and found a way around it?

That's annoying. I beleive currently, linux has almost every single piece
of hardware of this machine powered on all the time. I'll try to improve
things once I get one of these powerbooks. You can try adjusting the hard
disk sleep time to improve things a bit.


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Re: Remaining Pismo issues

[Geert Uytterhoeven]

On Mon, 10 Apr 2000, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
> Linux has some power management features (like DOZE'ing the CPU in the
> idle thread) but some more general work on power management is needed to
> really improve things. The sound chip could be shut down optionally when
> the driver is not opened (well, eventually disabling the console beep),
> the hard disk could be completely powered off instead of just spun down,
> and the overall CPU activity could be monitored by a deamon and the CPU
> speed adjusted dynamically.

According to my sister (who has a Wallstreet which is currently under repair
because of a broken LCD :-(, the battery lasts longer under Linux than under
MacOS.

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

						Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- Linux/{m68k~Amiga,PPC~CHRP} -- geert@linux-m68k.org

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
							    -- Linus Torvalds


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