freebsd stable - Feb 2006 - Need serious help with Dell D600 Latitude laptop and Power Management please :)

Hi all :-)

Novice FreeBSD user here, but I absolutely love it.  Thanks to Sam Leffler I
managed to get my RELENG_6 kernel patched to support my new Atheros wireless
card and everything except one really annoying problem is resolved..

I am running a Dell D600 Latitude laptop (2.0ghz Pentium Mobile) and
dual-boot Windows.  In Windows, I get about 3 hours and 30 minutes roughly
of battery time when I am not plugged into the AC Power, but in FreeBSD I
get around only 1.  In Windows, my fans don't generally run until the system
is doing something full load, and runs very cool.  Here in FreeBSD, my fans
are running FULL SPEED all of the time and also seems to be hotter than many
conventional ovens.   It is definitely way hotter than it is in Windows, and
definitely isn't relaxing when the system isn't doing anything
stressful.  I
am a novice user and don't know where to start in solving this problem..
How come it isn't working automatically :(  Are there going to be alot of
manual commands I have to enter just to get it to calm down?

I also ran a distro of Linux called "Kubuntu" (A Debian offspring) and
my
laptop ran nice and cool on it as well, with the battery only lasting
slightly less than when in Windows.  There definitely weren't these heat
problems, fan problems, and extreme power consumption problems..

I really need to get this fixed so ANY advice is highly appreciated :-)
I can happily provide any output you would like, and can't wait to get this
resolved :-)

duckdown@localhost$  sysctl hw.acpi

hw.acpi.supported_sleep_state: S1 S3 S4 S5
hw.acpi.power_button_state: S5
hw.acpi.sleep_button_state: S1
hw.acpi.lid_switch_state: NONE
hw.acpi.standby_state: S1
hw.acpi.suspend_state: S3
hw.acpi.sleep_delay: 1
hw.acpi.s4bios: 1
hw.acpi.verbose: 0
hw.acpi.reset_video: 1
hw.acpi.cpu.cx_supported: C1/1 C2/1 C3/85 C4/185
hw.acpi.cpu.cx_lowest: C1
hw.acpi.cpu.cx_usage: 100.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00%
hw.acpi.acline: 1
hw.acpi.battery.life: 100
hw.acpi.battery.time: -1
hw.acpi.battery.state: 0
hw.acpi.battery.units: 2
hw.acpi.battery.info_expire: 5
hw.acpi.thermal.min_runtime: 0
hw.acpi.thermal.polling_rate: 10
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.temperature: 78.5C
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.active: -1
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.passive_cooling: 0
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.thermal_flags: 0
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._PSV: -1
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._HOT: -1
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._CRT: 102.0C
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._ACx: -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1



Thanks so much in advance :-)

-Ryan

> I am running a Dell D600 Latitude laptop [...] Here in FreeBSD, my
> fans are running FULL SPEED all of the time and also seems to be
> hotter than many conventional ovens.

I'm on a Dell Inspiron 8600C (which is the cheaper consumer-grade 
version of your laptop) and it runs nice and cool for me. You are 
probably missing the power management daemon (powerd). For more 
information, see man powerd and to see whether it helps, add the 
following to your /etc/rc.conf:

powerd_enable="YES"

HTH,
- Bartosz

On 2/20/06, Ryan R <air.lightz@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am running a Dell D600 Latitude laptop (2.0ghz Pentium Mobile) and
> dual-boot Windows.  In Windows, I get about 3 hours and 30 minutes roughly
> of battery time when I am not plugged into the AC Power, but in FreeBSD I
> get around only 1.  In Windows, my fans don't generally run until the
system
> is doing something full load, and runs very cool.  Here in FreeBSD, my fans
> are running FULL SPEED all of the time and also seems to be hotter than
many
> conventional ovens.   It is definitely way hotter than it is in Windows,
and
> definitely isn't relaxing when the system isn't doing anything
stressful.  I
> am a novice user and don't know where to start in solving this
problem..
> How come it isn't working automatically :(  Are there going to be alot
of
> manual commands I have to enter just to get it to calm down?
I'm running -STABLE on a Latitute D800, so I can sympathise. It took a
fair bit of reading and poking around, but I found this to be a good
start:

    * Add these lines to your /etc/rc.conf file: (options are detailed
in powerd(8))
            powerd_enable="YES"
            powerd_flags="-a adaptive -b adaptive -p 2000"

That will probably get you a long way there just by allowing the CPU
to slow down during inactive periods. Don't ask me about getting the
darn thing to suspend, though. Every time I've tried it has failed to
come out correctly. And keep in mind that there is no suspend-to-disk
support (called "Hibernation" in Windows) for FreeBSD.


Dave.

--
"Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords
  is no basis for a system of government."