KDE4 and Laptop power management

[Jumboag99]

In KDE3, on Gutsy, there was by default a Power management tool installed and on the panel task bar that showed battery status and let you set up speed/brightness profiles for AC/battery.

Is there a KDE4 equivalent I can install? What do I need to do in KDE4 to get power management functionality back?

[Rocket Slug]

Re: KDE4 and Laptop power management

It's a widget, now. Go to Add Widget on the upper right and you'll find a battery display. You can place it wherever you like on your desktop, or you can drag it from the original window onto your task bar.

[Jumboag99]

Re: KDE4 and Laptop power management

the battery widget is just a battery listing. I'm looking for a widget w/ more functionality. For now, I just installed kpowersave

[wastedfluid]

Re: KDE4 and Laptop power management

The program is called

guidance-power-manager

[Jakkals]

Re: KDE4 and Laptop power management

Hi Guys!

I had the same problem with my laptop. If I boot into KDE4 my screen brightness was very dark and to make matters worse my function buttons that sets the brightness were also not responding. After some research and playing around I found a solution.

Open a terminal window and run the following command:

guidance-power-manager

Your screen brightness should instantly go brighter and your function buttons should too work now.

If you get command not found, you will have to install it:

sudo aptitude install kde-guidance-powermanager

I created a symbolic link inside my ~/.kde4/Autostart directory so that it runs the program at logon without me having to manually run it every time.

ln -s /usr/bin/guidance-power-manager ~/.kde4/Autostart

Let me know if this works for you!

[kubicle]

Re: KDE4 and Laptop power management

You should also check out powerdevil
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show...?content=85078
http://vizzzion.org/?blogentry=831
powerdevil is the default power management tool in KDE 4.2, and is installable for 4.1.x
(it has made it to intrepid repos for easy installation)

I always preferred kpowersave to guidance-power-manager...but powerdevil has been a pleasant experience for me (and is a true KDE4 solution :P)

The Plasma applet (seen on the blog post above) is not in the version in the repos yet, though.

[jbernardo]

Re: KDE4 and Laptop power management

I installed powerdevil, but at least suspend and screen lock when closing lid doesn't seem to work. Is there any package I should install besides powerdevil?
I have a Aspire One SCC

[kubicle]

Re: KDE4 and Laptop power management

I installed powerdevil, but at least suspend and screen lock when closing lid doesn't seem to work. Is there any package I should install besides powerdevil?
I have a Aspire One SCC

I don't know if that model has issues with power management under linux, but here's a short checklist to test powerdevil:
1. Is powerdevil enabled and running? (check SystemSettings>Advanced>ServiceManager)
2. Have you set profiles and schemes (SystemSettings>Advanced>PowerManagementPreference s)
3. Does power management work with other applets (kpowersave or guidance). This should tell you if the problem lies with powerdevil or power management on your laptop in general.

[jbernardo]

Re: KDE4 and Laptop power management

I don't know if that model has issues with power management under linux, but here's a short checklist to test powerdevil:
1. Is powerdevil enabled and running? (check SystemSettings>Advanced>ServiceManager)
2. Have you set profiles and schemes (SystemSettings>Advanced>PowerManagementPreference s)
3. Does power management work with other applets (kpowersave or guidance). This should tell you if the problem lies with powerdevil or power management on your laptop in general.

Yes to all three. Powerdevil is running and detects the powermanagement features of the laptop and the CPU (and chimes and warns me when the power is connected/disconnected), I set up the profiles and schemes, and I can suspend the laptop with "sudo hibernate-ram" or with guidance. However, selection "Suspend" in the logout/power off menu doesn't do anything. And the laptop doesn't suspend when I close the lid, even though powerdevil plays a chime.
I think it might be more a problem with kde not suspending than with powerdevil.

[kubicle]

Re: KDE4 and Laptop power management

I think it might be more a problem with kde not suspending than with powerdevil.

That would be my guess as well.

Does 'pm-suspend' work? (Part of the pm-utils package)
Any error output/log messages in /var/log/pm-suspend.log?

[jbernardo]

Re: KDE4 and Laptop power management

pm-suspend didn't seem to do anything - and didn't write any log to /var/log. So I remembered reading about some conflict with uswsusp and removed that package. Now pm-suspend works, and I assume that probably kde4 will now suspend without problems.

Time to read up on how to configure pm-suspend, I need to make it remove ath_pci on suspend and reinsert it on resume.

Thanks for the pointers!

Ok, suspended and resumed as expected when closing the lid. And switching to ath5k instead of ath_pci means no problems with network after resuming.

[jbernardo]

Re: KDE4 and Laptop power management

Now the only thing still not working properly is display power management. Both on a Aspire One and a Fujitsu Pi1505 (both with Intel 945* chipsets) the display won't turn off. It dimms, but never turns off completely.

[kubicle]

Re: KDE4 and Laptop power management

Now the only thing still not working properly is display power management. Both on a Aspire One and a Fujitsu Pi1505 (both with Intel 945* chipsets) the display won't turn off. It dimms, but never turns off completely.

There have been quite some updates to hal and power management recently...so this could be a bug related to those. I'll make a note to test display power management on my laptop when I have the time to check if this is a universal or a chipset issue.

FOLLOW-UP: couldn't get display power management going properly after tinkering with it for an hour, so looks like a bug to me.

[jbernardo]

Re: KDE4 and Laptop power management

It seems that display power management isn't the only thing that is broken. I left my laptop on battery, and it didn't suspend or hibernate when the battery ran down, even though I had it configured to suspend to ram when inactive.