Thursday, June 4, 2009

Cool down your Linux PC

Hey guys if you feel that your linux system throws a lot of heat and its battery expires very soon or you need some automatic power manager, here is the solution. We have got some laptop mode tools. Laptop mode tools is a package mainly designed keeping the power requirements of laptop machines. It helps in extending the battery life and enables the laptop mode in the linux kernal , letting your hard drive spin down.

The inner thing is that laptop mode is generally disabled by default. To reenable it we need to edit the file
/etc/default/acpi-support
and set
ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE=true.

The great thing is that this package is available in Ubuntu's repositories and can be installed directly from synaptic package manager or by typing these commands

sudo dpkg -i laptop-mode-tools_x.y-z_all.deb

and give the required root password. Before installing make sure that your linux kernel supports laptop mode. To check it see if this file exists

/proc/sys/vm/laptop_mode

There are other lots of tweaks available like
ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE_ON_AC, ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE_WHEN_LID_CLOSED,
DISABLE_LAPTOP_MODE_ON_CRITICAL_BATTERY_LEVEL.

These options can be changed by editing the file

/etc/laptop-mode/laptop-mode.conf

You can read more on laptop mode configuration here

man laptop-mode.conf

I hope next time you don't complain..... :P

                  

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