xref: /freebsd/usr.sbin/powerd/powerd.8 (revision b3c9af56153c29b91cc1ea2089403e4f15a67e54)
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25.\" $FreeBSD$
26.\"
27.Dd February 26, 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 mode
36.Op Fl b mode
37.Op Fl i percent
38.Op Fl n mode
39.Op Fl p ival
40.Op Fl r percent
41.Op Fl v
42.Sh DESCRIPTION
43The
44.Nm
45utility monitors the system state and sets various power control options
46accordingly.
47It offers three modes (max, min, and adaptive) that can be
48individually selected while on AC power or batteries.
49.Pp
50Maximum mode chooses the highest performance values.
51Minimum mode selects the lowest performance values to get the most power
52savings.
53Adaptive mode attempts to strike a balance by degrading performance when
54the system appears idle and increasing it when the system is busy.
55It offers a good balance between a small performance loss for greatly
56increased power savings.
57The default mode is
58adaptive.
59.Pp
60The
61.Nm
62utility recognizes the following runtime options:
63.Bl -tag -width -i_percent
64.It Fl a Ar mode
65Selects the
66.Ar mode
67to use while on AC power.
68.It Fl b Ar mode
69Selects the
70.Ar mode
71to use while on battery power.
72.It Fl i Ar percent
73Specifies the CPU idle percent level when
74adaptive
75mode should begin to degrade performance to save power.
76The default is 90% or higher.
77.It Fl n Ar mode
78Selects the
79.Ar mode
80to use normally when the AC line state is unknown.
81.It Fl p Ar ival
82Specifies a different polling interval (in milliseconds) for AC line state
83and system idle levels.
84The default is 500 ms.
85.It Fl r Ar percent
86Specifies the CPU idle percent level where
87adaptive
88mode should consider the CPU running and increase performance.
89The default is 80% or lower.
90.It Fl v
91Verbose mode.
92Messages about power changes will be printed to stdout and
93.Nm
94will operate in the foreground.
95.El
96.Sh SEE ALSO
97.Xr acpi 4 ,
98.Xr apm 4 ,
99.Xr cpufreq 4
100.Sh HISTORY
101The
102.Nm
103utility first appeared in
104.Fx 5.5 .
105.Sh AUTHORS
106.An Colin Percival
107first wrote
108.Pa estctrl ,
109the utility that
110.Nm
111is based on.
112.An Nate Lawson
113then updated it for
114.Xr cpufreq 4 ,
115added features, and wrote this man page.
116.Sh BUGS
117The
118.Nm
119utility should also power down idle disks and other components besides the CPU.
120.Pp
121If
122.Nm
123is used with power_profile, they may override each other.
124.Pp
125.Nm
126should probably use the
127.Xr devctl 4
128interface instead of polling for AC line state.
129