Greetings to all, I have a quick question about power management. I recently have dumped RH and have installed Slackware 9 with Dropline on all my workstations. Since I dont turn off my desktops this was never an issue until I installed on my laptop. When I select shutdown, the system does shutdown properly, but, does not completly shutdown. I learned this the hard way by selecting shutdown, closing the lid and packing up, only to find out later that I had run my battery down. How can I check to see if APM is installed and or working properly? RH and Mandrake seemed to handle this, but I don't want to go back. Any ideas. Thanks for the support

I have installed slackware on my toshiba not long ago and faced the same problem. I don't know about APM but if you have a bit of time and patience, it is probably better to go for ACPI.

Here is how I did it:
- Get the latest kernel from www.kernel.org
- Take your existing .config file to compile the new kernel. That will prevent you from loosing all your settings if they already work fine. You need to do those 2 steps as by default, slackware doesn't install the kernel with a proper kernel path.
If you don't know how to compile your kernel. see the top thread here.
- download the acpi patch from http://sourceforge.net/projects/acpi and install it. It will basically patch your existing kernel.
- Re-compile your kernel with your previous .config file and enable all the new options for ACPI.

That should be it.
May be there is a shorter route to use ACPI, but this one is the only one I know.

ACPI will allow you to do everything power related, shutwown, battery level, etc.. but also fan speed, cpu temperature, etc...

Hope it helps.

Roger that, I am leary of kernel recompiling. Have to admit I have never tried it, but, I suppose its time to take the plunge. Is it possible to apply the patch with out a recompile. I will research it and give it a shot. Thanks for the reply

I don't know if you can apply the patch on a fresh kernel without compiling it first. I would assume it is possible but haven't tried it.
Let me know if you find out...

Look in /etc/rc.d/rc.modules for a line like this

#/sbin/modprobe apm

remove the # symbol from the front of the line so it looks like this:

/sbin/modprobe apm

Next time you boot up the apm module will be loaded.

If you want to load it by hand type

insmod apm

as root.

Bill

I read about the modprobe bit on another post. I will try it as soon as I get this pesky W2K Advanced Server fixed at work. Thanks Bill.

Richard

Bill, your hint worked out great, uncommented the APM line and the laptop shutsdown perfectly. Thanks