Re: PowerTop on Debian Stretch

Thanks fo reporting, this is actually good practice, so that others can
benefit.

Loredana
On Thu, 2016-02-11 at 09:33 +0400, Dwijesh Gajadur wrote:
> Guys, I am glad to tell you that my problem has been solved.
> 
> The problem was actually with my AMD GPU. Thank you Arian, for driving
> my attention on the GPU.
> 
> I followed the instructions on
> https://wiki.debian.org/AtiHowTo#Debian_Stretch_.28testing.29
> 
> and installed the missing firmwares and packages. After that I ran
> powertop --calibrate and then powertop --auto-tune.
> 
> I can now get a battery life of up to 6-7 hr on Debian 😁
> 
> 
> What happened according to me was that PowerTop was not able to detect
> my AMD GPU as the required firmware was not installed. After
> installing the firmware, PowerTop was able to calibrate properly and
> take the correct measurements.
> 
> 
> Richard Owlett wrote:
> 
> >Please note use of present tense.
> >I see two possible interpretations:
> >  1. he has a multi-boot installation. In which case he is NOW
> getting longer run
> >     times in Windows and Ubuntu than in Debian.
> >  2. he did a clean install of Debian and saw an IMMEDIATE decrease
> in run time.
> 
> >If that is not so, I ask Mr. Gajadur to clarify.
> 
> 
> Yes I actually have a dual boot installation. I first Dual booted
> Windows 7 and Debian 9. After finding that the battery life on Debian
> was only 3 hr, I replaced the Debian installation with Ubuntu 15.10
> installation just to see how the battery life is on Ubuntu. I found
> that I could get a battery life of up to 5hr after using PowerTop on
> Ubuntu. However I am not a fan of Ubuntu. Debian is the only linux
> distro I love. So I removed Ubuntu and re-installed Debian and tried
> to find out what was causing the low battery life on Debian.
> 
> But now there is nothing to worry about as the problem has been solved
> thanks to Arian.
> 
>  
> 
> I want to thank you all for your comments and help  😀
> 
> 
> Best Regards,
> 
> 
> Dwijesh
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 11:39 PM, David Wright
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>         On Wed 10 Feb 2016 at 11:32:48 (+0530), Jos Collin wrote:
>         > Hi, I'm not answering your question. But my suggestion is:
>         don't bother about
>         > your battery life. Because even if you get 10 hours now, it
>         is going to reduce
>         > slowly and reach 30 mins or 10 mins with in a few years.
>         Then you have to
>         > replace your battery with a new one.
>         >
>         > I had a battery that drains to 0% with in 30 secs. I
>         replaced that in 2012 with
>         > a 9 cell battery, when I started traveling with my laptop.
>         The new battery also
>         > drains to 0% within 30 secs now.
>         >
>         > So I advice you to forget about battery life and move on to
>         other important
>         > things. :-)
>         
>         The (small size) battery on this laptop contains 42Wh fully
>         charged.
>         Discharging it in 30 seconds would generate 5kW which is two
>         high-power electric kettles in the UK, over three in the US.
>         
>         So either your battery hasn't charged properly, or else it's
>         not
>         discharging properly, probably because there's a duff cell. In
>         the
>         latter case, the battery remains a hazard because it still
>         contains a
>         lot of charge if only it could find a discharge path.
>         
>         > On 10-Feb-2016 11:05 AM, "Dwijesh Gajadur"
>         <[email protected]> wrote:
>         >     I have a Dell Inspiron 5559 laptop which has a 40WHr,
>         4-cell battery. On
>         >     Windows 7 I get a battery life of 6-7 hours. On Ubuntu I
>         get a battery life
>         >     of 5 hours after using PowerTop.
>         >     However on Debian I get only 3 hours of battery life. I
>         have done
>         >     calibration several times and for several hours but I
>         get only 3 hours of
>         >     battery life.
>         
>         If these timings can be achieved at will, I'd be interested to
>         know if
>         the laptop was running at the same temperature on the various
>         OSes. A
>         poor video driver might waste a lot of power. I suspect this
>         is the
>         case with my own Dell laptop; given the chance it would make a
>         cuppa.
>         I occasionally see the CPU at 96.5°C.
>         
>         >     My Question is, is it normal to get the lines:
>         >       □ Cannot load from
>         file /var/cache/powertop/saved_parameters.powertop
>         >       □ Devfreq not enabled
>         >     Is it because of these lines that PowerTop is unable to
>         extend the battery
>         >     life?
>         >     Debian Stretch is currently using PowerTop version 2.8
>         and I heard
>         >     somewhere on a forum that there is a bug in the 2.8
>         version. Is it true
>         >     that there is a bug ? And is it that bug which is
>         causing the problem?
>         
>         Does
>         https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?dist=unstable;package=powertop help?
>         
>         Cheers,
>         David.
>         
> 
>