APM - Advanced Power Management

Support knowledgebase (apm)
Applies to

SuSE Linux: Versions up to (including) 6.3
This article refers to an older version of SuSE Linux. Therefore some of the informations given in this article may be outdated or the article may contain stale links.

Request:

You want to use APM (Advanced Power Management).

Hint:
Since SuSE Linux 6.3 there is a kernel with APM support. You can easily install it via YaST: -> System administration -> Kernel and bootconfiguration -> Select boot kernel.

Procedure:

The SuSE Linux default kernels do not contain APM support. This is because there is a lot of hardware with very differing BIOS implementations...

If you want to use APM, please read the documentation in /usr/doc/packages/apmd and the relevant help texts in the kernel configuration sources. Also of interest is the Battery-Powered Mini-Howto (/usr/doc/howto/en/mini/Battery-Powered.gz)

To configure the kernel, use make menuconfig and choose the following options in the submenu General setup:

[*] Advanced Power Management
[ ] Ignore USER SUSPEND (NEW)
[*] Enable APM at boot time (NEW)
[*] Do CPU IDLE calls (NEW)
[*] Enable console blanking using APM (NEW)
[*] Power off on shutdown (NEW)
[ ] Ignore multiple suspend/standby events (NEW)
[ ] Ignore multiple suspend/resume cycles (NEW)
[*] RTC stores time in GMT (NEW)
[ ] Allow interrupts during APM BIOS calls (NEW)

The options not activated here are special options for certain problematic cases. Normally you don't need them. The option RTC stores time in GMT is important, in order for the system time to be set correctly after returning from a suspend cycle.
If you want Power off on shutdown, you have to change the halt command in the script /sbin/init.d/halt. Add the -p option there. For more on this, have a look at Poweroff on shutdown (http://www.suse.de/Support/sdb/en/poweroff_on_shutdown.html).

Additional info can be found at the Linux Laptop-HOWTO by Werner Heuser at http://www.snafu.de/~wehe/Laptop-HOWTO-5.html.

Please note: Within installation support, we can't help you with compiling your own kernel. If your kernel does not run as you expected, or some other features of your system don't work anymore, then please reinstall one of our default kernels provided with SuSE Linux. (See Reinstalling a precompiled SuSE kernel (http://www.suse.de/Support/sdb/en/bk_originalkernel.html) ).
We cannot provide installation support for a self-compiled kernel, because there are too many possible sources of error.


See also:
o Laptops and Notebooks (PCMCIA) under Linux
o Reinstalling a precompiled SuSE kernel

Keywords: APM, ADVANCED POWER MANAGEMENT, LAPTOP, NOTEBOOK, HALT, STANDBY, SUSPEND

Categories: Hardware

SDB-apm, Copyright SuSE Linux AG, Nürnberg, Germany - Version: 09. Jul 1999
SuSE Linux AG - Last generated: 11. Jun 2002 by zoz (sdb_gen 1.40.0)