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ACER Aspire 5536 has half battery life and idles up to 80*c in Debian Squeeze

Hey devoted LQ members,

I've had a problem since my distro switch from Ubuntu to Debian ( squeeze ). My laptop quickly goes up to 65-75 degrees Celsius, idling there and sometimes going up to 80. For a desktop computer, this would be reasonable, but on a laptop that shows huge amount of power is being wasted.

In fact that is my second problem. Here my battery life is < 1.5 hours, while in Vista ( which I have not used except for downloading and burning my first Linux iso ) it goes to 3 or more. This is approximate life idling, not use.

My ACER Aspire was bought late last year new. It has an AMD Athlon 64 X2 which scales to full and half speed only, and an ATI Radeon HD 3200. The Radeon ( chipset? card? ) has been a pain for me since my install of Debian, and it is probably the problem in this case. The official closed-source FGLRX drivers only worked with Xorg 1.6, but I'm using 1.7 on Squeeze. At first I dealt with some other free drivers in the Debian repos ( which were so slow they couldn't even stretch video to fill my screen realtime ) but then I installed the radeonhd modules using smxi which give me a tonne more performance.

The battery problem existed with the previous free drivers I used as well, but not in Ubuntu.

Top shows nothing is using even 1% of my cpu, and the problem still exists when X is not running.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.

Sounds like 2 issues
1. ACPI may not be set up correctly. I suggest running sensors-detect
2. All that fancy stuff for on demand scheduling is not working in the kernel.Before you rebuild, I'd check on the Debian forums and site.

I ran sensors-detect and was told I needed the k10temp module. Not already with me and not in the Debian repos I was lead from this page to this with the k10temp source and makefile.
It however does not want to compile. I am very uninteligent with kernel and compilation issues. Hopefully I won't need to compile the kernel itself.

Code:

root k10 # make

make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.32-3-amd64'

  CC [M]  /root/k10/k10temp.o

  Building modules, stage 2.

  MODPOST 1 modules

  CC      /root/k10/k10temp.mod.o

  LD [M]  /root/k10/k10temp.ko

make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.32-3-amd64'

root k10 # make install

cp k10temp.ko /lib/modules/2.6.32-3-amd64/kernel/drivers/hwmon

depmod -a -F /lib/modules/2.6.32-3-amd64/build/System.map 2.6.32-3-amd64

FATAL: Could not open '/lib/modules/2.6.32-3-amd64/build/System.map': No such file or directory

make: *** [modules_install] Error 1

Where do I get the system.map file from?

Easily fixed :)

Code:

# locate System.map

/boot/System.map-2.6.31-14-generic

/boot/System.map-2.6.31-16-generic

/boot/System.map-2.6.31-17-generic

/boot/System.map-2.6.32-3-amd64

/home/whales/.wine/drive_c/games/meteor2_beta/base/maps/07_05_DefenceSystem.map



# ln -s /boot/System.map-2.6.32-3-amd64 /lib/modules/2.6.32-3-amd64/build/System.map

I have now compiled and modprobed it.

Now I don't know whether I need to do anything else or not. My system is still running hot.

Problem still unsolved. What do I need to do now?

Thanks, William

Configure grub to boot on your new kernel, with your new initrd and system.map. Symlink your new System.map-whatever to /boot/System.map
Then reboot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by business_kid (Post 3921383)

Configure grub to boot on your new kernel, with your new initrd and system.map. Symlink your new System.map-whatever to /boot/System.map
Then reboot.

I have not compiled a new kernel, only the k10temp module to work with my current kernel. It is inserted, which gives me a third temperature monitor but that is all it seems to do.

I must be missing something. Sorry, but I'm entirely clueless with most kernel issues.

If that worked, it's good. Check in /lib/modules to see you don't have a second module tree, and try installing that module specifically

modprobe k10temp

I have three directories for different kernels in /lib/modules.

Code:

root modules # ls

2.6.32-3-amd64  2.6.32-3-vserver-amd64  2.6.32-trunk-amd64

I have not got a clue what vserver kernel is, and the trunk kernel was my previous kernel. Is it safe to delete these two?

By insertion I mean I have modprobed the k10temp module and it inserts. But the temperature and battery problem is untouched. The only advantage it gives me is a third temperature sensor reading from my computer. It too reads in the 60 - 80*c range.

The way I went about this was:
install lm_sensors and run sensors-detect. We had a bit of stupidity because due to lack of modules, it misdetected a chip, which then functioned poorly. But once I got past that, all was fine.
Install acpitools. acpi -t then gives you temperature.

The acpi tool has always given me temperature readings, before and after k10temp was compiled and insered. acpi however only ever shows two temperature readings, while sensors shows the third from k10temp.

This is the output of acpi -t

Code:

Thermal 0: ok, 71.0 degrees C

Thermal 1: ok, 78.0 degrees C

This is the output of sensors

Code:

acpitz-virtual-0

Adapter: Virtual device

temp1:      +78.0°C  (crit = +99.0°C)                  

temp2:      +71.0°C  (crit = +126.0°C)                  



k10temp-pci-00c3

Adapter: PCI adapter

temp1:      +76.8°C  (high = +70.0°C)

This is what happens when I run sensors-detect

Code:

root ~ # sensors-detect 

# sensors-detect revision 5818 (2010-01-18 17:22:07 +0100)

# System: Acer Aspire 5536 (laptop)

# Board: Acer JV50PU



This program will help you determine which kernel modules you need

to load to use lm_sensors most effectively. It is generally safe

and recommended to accept the default answers to all questions,

unless you know what you're doing.



Some south bridges, CPUs or memory controllers contain embedded sensors.

Do you want to scan for them? This is totally safe. (YES/no): y

Silicon Integrated Systems SIS5595...                      No

VIA VT82C686 Integrated Sensors...                          No

VIA VT8231 Integrated Sensors...                            No

AMD K8 thermal sensors...                                  No

AMD Family 10h thermal sensors...                          No

AMD Family 11h thermal sensors...                          Success!

    (driver `k10temp')

Intel Core family thermal sensor...                        No

Intel Atom thermal sensor...                                No

Intel AMB FB-DIMM thermal sensor...                        No

VIA C7 thermal sensor...                                    No

VIA Nano thermal sensor...                                  No



Some Super I/O chips contain embedded sensors. We have to write to

standard I/O ports to probe them. This is usually safe.

Do you want to scan for Super I/O sensors? (YES/no): y

Probing for Super-I/O at 0x2e/0x2f

Trying family `National Semiconductor'...                  No

Trying family `SMSC'...                                    No

Trying family `VIA/Winbond/Nuvoton/Fintek'...              No

Trying family `ITE'...                                      No

Probing for Super-I/O at 0x4e/0x4f

Trying family `National Semiconductor'...                  Yes

Found unknown chip with ID 0xfc11



Some hardware monitoring chips are accessible through the ISA I/O ports.

We have to write to arbitrary I/O ports to probe them. This is usually

safe though. Yes, you do have ISA I/O ports even if you do not have any

ISA slots! Do you want to scan the ISA I/O ports? (YES/no): y

Probing for `National Semiconductor LM78' at 0x290...      No

Probing for `National Semiconductor LM79' at 0x290...      No

Probing for `Winbond W83781D' at 0x290...                  No

Probing for `Winbond W83782D' at 0x290...                  No



Lastly, we can probe the I2C/SMBus adapters for connected hardware

monitoring devices. This is the most risky part, and while it works

reasonably well on most systems, it has been reported to cause trouble

on some systems.

Do you want to probe the I2C/SMBus adapters now? (YES/no): y

Using driver `i2c-piix4' for device 0000:00:14.0: ATI Technologies Inc SB600/SB700/SB800 SMBus

Module i2c-dev loaded successfully.



Next adapter: SMBus PIIX4 adapter at 8040 (i2c-0)

Do you want to scan it? (YES/no/selectively): y

Client found at address 0x50

Probing for `Analog Devices ADM1033'...                    No

Probing for `Analog Devices ADM1034'...                    No

Probing for `SPD EEPROM'...                                Yes

    (confidence 8, not a hardware monitoring chip)

Probing for `EDID EEPROM'...                                No

Client found at address 0x51

Probing for `Analog Devices ADM1033'...                    No

Probing for `Analog Devices ADM1034'...                    No

Probing for `SPD EEPROM'...                                Yes

    (confidence 8, not a hardware monitoring chip)



Now follows a summary of the probes I have just done.

Just press ENTER to continue: 



Driver `k10temp' (autoloaded):

  * Chip `AMD Family 11h thermal sensors' (confidence: 9)



No modules to load, skipping modules configuration.



Unloading i2c-dev... OK

The problem is still here after running sensors-detect

Just taking the subject here - the answer is pretty obvious
"ACER Aspire 5536 has half battery life and idles up to 80*c in Debian Squeeze"

Your cpu must be idling at full whack. see about loading up a conservative scheduler to let it have a siesta while idling. The way you can prove this is to make a kernel. If the power usage doesn't go up, your cpu is being needlessly overworked. Look at the help in the cpu frequency scaling stuff in the kernel stuff and read the help. It sounds like a new kernel would help

Quote:

Originally Posted by business_kid (Post 3929634)

I know currently both cores scale down to half-speed ( 1050 Mhz) when I'm not intensively using the computer ( eg right now writing this ). Are you talking about just this scaling or to a larger/different degree?

I would like to see one cpu off and the other as slow as practical on idle - you don't need a lot of cpu power to do nothing, do you?

Quote:

Originally Posted by business_kid (Post 3932559)

I would like to see one cpu off and the other as slow as practical on idle - you don't need a lot of cpu power to do nothing, do you?

Thanks Business kid, I'll look into configuring and compiling my own kernel.

*shivers run down spine*

You need CPU HOTPLUG, ACPI_CPU_HOTPLUG and a frequency scheduler like ondemand