Battery Powered Linux Mini-HOWTO

David Lechnyr

<david@lechnyr.com>

Revision History
Revision 2.3	2003-06-29	Revised by: drl
Updated document content and structure
Revision 2.0	2002-10-08	Revised by: drl
Major updates and conversion to DocBook SGML
Revision 1.0	1997-12-21	Revised by: hm
Initial draft by Hanno Muller <kontakt@hanno.de>

This document describes how to optimize and configure power management on a ready-configured Linux system for use on battery-powered laptops. This will be helpful for everyone who runs Linux on a portable computer system. APM/ACPI methods of power management are discussed along with power saving tips and techniques. There is also some discussion about the different types of batteries available.

Table of Contents

1. Power Management

1.1. Advanced Power Management (APM)
1.2. Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI)
1.3. APM vs. ACPI: Which one?

2. Power Management Techniques

2.1. Suspend to Disk
2.2. hdparm Tuning
2.3. syslog Tuning
2.4. XF86Config Tuning
2.5. Energy Star
2.6. Swapfile Tuning
2.7. /tmp Tuning
2.8. Miscellaneous Tuning
2.9. Power Saving Myths

3. Types of Batteries

3.1. Nickel Cadmium (Ni-Cd)
3.2. Nickel Metal Hydride (Ni-MH)
3.3. Lithium Ion (Li-ion)
3.4. Smart Batteries
3.5. General Battery Care

4. Appendix