Power Management not availible

Moebius · 06-18-2003, 02:29 AM

I'm on a Compaq Armada E500 laptop with SuSE 8.2 (just upgraded from 8.1) and there has always been a red X through the battery monitor. It says that "your computer seems to have a partial ACPI installation." I click help and it goes into a somewhat more detailed explaination. I says that apm is required. Well I go to the YaST2 add/remove software and search for apm the APM daemon is already selected. Installed version: 3.0.2-286. How can I get my battery to read properly?

Brain Drop · 06-18-2003, 12:39 PM

if you check running processes is apm daemon running? how about acpid?

Moebius · 06-18-2003, 05:00 PM

hmmmm, it doesn't look like they are running. how do I get them to run and how do I tell them to run automatically so I don't have to start them every time from now on?

Thanks.

Brain Drop · 06-18-2003, 06:05 PM

i think you are going to want to add a line to your boot parameter, with lilo it would be like append = " apm=off acpi=off" with wichever one you want on. and the other one off cause if you dont do that part(explicitly turn the other off) you can have problems. first though id check your bios and see what it says for apm and acpi cause you might need to enable it there.

camelrider · 06-18-2003, 10:29 PM

Have you tried, as root:
modprobe apmd
or
modprobe apm
?

Just a thought in case SuSE kernel has it configured as a module, but it's not being loaded on boot.

Moebius · 06-19-2003, 01:45 AM

OK I tried the modprobe command and it said it couldn't locate the modual. (same thing for both apm and apmd) I found a suse doc on their web page that said "To start 'apmd' manually use: 'rcapmd start'." I tried that and it said "Starting apmd not supported by kernel". How do I make my kernal support this? I also found a suse doc that said "A kernel with APM support is necessary (since SuSE Linux version 7.1 APM support is included in all kernels)." Since I'm using suse 8.2 I'm not sure why this isn't working. I'll keep trying.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

zmedico · 06-19-2003, 03:11 AM

Have you tried "apm=on" in your boot loader kernel parameters, like Brain Drop suggested? If that doesn't make /proc/apm appear then your kernel must not support it.

Here's those howtos:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Laptop-HOWTO.html
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/Battery-Powered.html

Moebius · 06-20-2003, 04:24 AM

yep, I tried that, it didnt work. I tried to start it manually and it said it was not supported in the kernal. I need to find out how to add that in and recompile the kernal. My friend who uses gentoo told me this set of instructions:

su
make menuconfig
(select the correct ACPI or APM things)
cp /usr/src/linux/arch/1386/boot/bzImage /boot

how do I do that in suse? When i tried to do make menuconfig it said no rule to make target 'menuconfig'. stop.

Any ideas?

btw, Zac, my name is Zac as well, you're the first person I've know to spell it that way.

Thanks,
Moebius (Zac)

Brain Drop · 06-20-2003, 09:12 AM

for this i think you are best doing a search on google.com/linux or even right here om lno for how to compile a kernel since there is so much info on it, beig that it is one of the early things you should learn. then if you have questions about it ask, i would just tell you now but i dont have the time this morning to give a good explanation. your freimd missed a couple of steps though.

zmedico · 06-20-2003, 12:01 PM

Hi Zac,

There are some instructions for compiling the kernel in /usr/src/linux/README. Usually it's something like this:

Code:

su
cd /usr/src/linux
make xconfig
# edit Makefile (you can add a version number, maybe"-apm")
make dep
make bzImage
make modules
make modules_install
# copy your kernel and set up boot loader

One of those howtos I mentioned has some info about kernel configuration.

Moebius · 06-20-2003, 05:09 PM

when my friend put in make menuconfig as root, it just went right to the config program, but I get this error:

make: *** No rule to make target `menuconfig'. Stop.

I've tried to find documentation in the folder you told me and the folder it mentions in some of those how-tos, but /usr/src/linux doesn't exist. The only folder in the /usr/src/ dir is "packages". Maybe its something different in SuSE?

OK i just looked at some more stuff and realized i didn't have kernel-source installed. So I just did that, but the make xconfig is still giving me the same error. I'll keep trying.

Thanks,
Moebius

zmedico · 06-20-2003, 05:32 PM

Maybe you're not in the right directory. You have to do "cd /usr/src/linux" (or wherever the kernel source is) first. Then make xconfig should work.

Brain Drop · 06-20-2003, 07:49 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by zmedico

Code:

su cd /usr/src/linux make xconfig # edit Makefile (you can add a version number, maybe"-apm") make dep make bzImage make modules make modules_install # copy your kernel and set up boot loader

.

ok at the risk of falling into the stupid questions department, how come sometimes(usually) i see the steps like you have them here and sometimes instaed of the copy kernel part there is instead a make install step somewhere after the make bzImage step? whats the diff?

zmedico · 06-20-2003, 08:01 PM

from /usr/src/linux/README:

Quote:

It is also possible to do
"make install" if you have lilo installed to suit the kernel makefiles,
but you may want to check your particular lilo setup first.

Brain Drop · 06-20-2003, 08:24 PM

ah i see...sort of