xref: /freebsd/usr.sbin/powerd/powerd.8 (revision 19797b22561b52658349347f05dc92f69ae08947)
1.\" Copyright (c) 2005 Nate Lawson
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25.\" $FreeBSD$
26.\"
27.Dd November 6, 2005
28.Dt POWERD 8
29.Os
30.Sh NAME
31.Nm powerd
32.Nd "system power control utility"
33.Sh SYNOPSIS
34.Nm
35.Op Fl a Ar mode
36.Op Fl b Ar mode
37.Op Fl i Ar percent
38.Op Fl n Ar mode
39.Op Fl p Ar ival
40.Op Fl P Ar pidfile
41.Op Fl r Ar percent
42.Op Fl v
43.Sh DESCRIPTION
44The
45.Nm
46utility monitors the system state and sets various power control options
47accordingly.
48It offers three modes (maximum, minimum, and adaptive) that can be
49individually selected while on AC power or batteries.
50.Pp
51Maximum mode chooses the highest performance values.
52Minimum mode selects the lowest performance values to get the most power
53savings.
54Adaptive mode attempts to strike a balance by degrading performance when
55the system appears idle and increasing it when the system is busy.
56It offers a good balance between a small performance loss for greatly
57increased power savings.
58The default mode is
59adaptive.
60.Pp
61The
62.Nm
63utility recognizes the following runtime options:
64.Bl -tag -width ".Fl r Ar percent"
65.It Fl a Ar mode
66Selects the
67.Ar mode
68to use while on AC power.
69.It Fl b Ar mode
70Selects the
71.Ar mode
72to use while on battery power.
73.It Fl i Ar percent
74Specifies the CPU idle percent level when
75adaptive
76mode should begin to degrade performance to save power.
77The default is 90% or higher.
78.It Fl n Ar mode
79Selects the
80.Ar mode
81to use normally when the AC line state is unknown.
82.It Fl p Ar ival
83Specifies a different polling interval (in milliseconds) for AC line state
84and system idle levels.
85The default is 500 ms.
86.It Fl P Ar pidfile
87Specifies an alternative file in which the process ID should be stored.
88The default is
89.Pa /var/run/powerd.pid .
90.It Fl r Ar percent
91Specifies the CPU idle percent level where
92adaptive
93mode should consider the CPU running and increase performance.
94The default is 65% or lower.
95.It Fl v
96Verbose mode.
97Messages about power changes will be printed to stdout and
98.Nm
99will operate in the foreground.
100.El
101.Sh SEE ALSO
102.Xr acpi 4 ,
103.Xr apm 4 ,
104.Xr cpufreq 4
105.Sh HISTORY
106The
107.Nm
108utility first appeared in
109.Fx 6.0 .
110.Sh AUTHORS
111.An -nosplit
112.An Colin Percival
113first wrote
114.Nm estctrl ,
115the utility that
116.Nm
117is based on.
118.An Nate Lawson
119then updated it for
120.Xr cpufreq 4 ,
121added features, and wrote this manual page.
122.Sh BUGS
123The
124.Nm
125utility should also power down idle disks and other components besides the CPU.
126.Pp
127If
128.Nm
129is used with
130.Pa power_profile ,
131they may override each other.
132.Pp
133The
134.Nm
135utility
136should probably use the
137.Xr devctl 4
138interface instead of polling for AC line state.
139