xref: /freebsd/usr.sbin/powerd/powerd.8 (revision 9199c09a159c4e3e98c212d4eec1edc5252d9e33)
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25.\" $FreeBSD$
26.\"
27.Dd December 21, 2009
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 four modes (maximum, minimum, adaptive and hiadaptive) that can be
49individually selected while on AC power or batteries.
50The modes maximum, minimum, adaptive and hiadaptive may be abbreviated
51max, min, adp, hadp.
52.Pp
53Maximum mode chooses the highest performance values.
54Minimum mode selects the lowest performance values to get the most power
55savings.
56Adaptive mode attempts to strike a balance by degrading performance when
57the system appears idle and increasing it when the system is busy.
58It offers a good balance between a small performance loss for greatly
59increased power savings.
60Hiadaptive mode is like adaptive mode, but tuned for systems where
61performance and interactivity are more important then power consumption.
62It increases frequency faster, reduces the frequency less aggressively and
63will maintain full frequency for longer.
64The default mode is adaptive for battery power and hiadaptive for the rest.
65.Pp
66The
67.Nm
68utility recognizes the following runtime options:
69.Bl -tag -width ".Fl r Ar percent"
70.It Fl a Ar mode
71Selects the
72.Ar mode
73to use while on AC power.
74.It Fl b Ar mode
75Selects the
76.Ar mode
77to use while on battery power.
78.It Fl i Ar percent
79Specifies the CPU load percent level when adaptive
80mode should begin to degrade performance to save power.
81The default is 50% or lower.
82.It Fl n Ar mode
83Selects the
84.Ar mode
85to use normally when the AC line state is unknown.
86.It Fl p Ar ival
87Specifies a different polling interval (in milliseconds) for AC line state
88and system idle levels.
89The default is 250 ms.
90.It Fl P Ar pidfile
91Specifies an alternative file in which the process ID should be stored.
92The default is
93.Pa /var/run/powerd.pid .
94.It Fl r Ar percent
95Specifies the CPU load percent level where adaptive
96mode should consider the CPU running and increase performance.
97The default is 75% or higher.
98.It Fl v
99Verbose mode.
100Messages about power changes will be printed to stdout and
101.Nm
102will operate in the foreground.
103.El
104.Sh SEE ALSO
105.Xr acpi 4 ,
106.Xr apm 4 ,
107.Xr cpufreq 4
108.Sh HISTORY
109The
110.Nm
111utility first appeared in
112.Fx 6.0 .
113.Sh AUTHORS
114.An -nosplit
115.An Colin Percival
116first wrote
117.Nm estctrl ,
118the utility that
119.Nm
120is based on.
121.An Nate Lawson
122then updated it for
123.Xr cpufreq 4 ,
124added features, and wrote this manual page.
125.Sh BUGS
126The
127.Nm
128utility should also power down idle disks and other components besides the CPU.
129.Pp
130If
131.Nm
132is used with
133.Pa power_profile ,
134they may override each other.
135.Pp
136The
137.Nm
138utility
139should probably use the
140.Xr devctl 4
141interface instead of polling for AC line state.
142