1.\" Copyright (c) 2005 Nate Lawson 2.\" All rights reserved. 3.\" 4.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without 5.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions 6.\" are met: 7.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright 8.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 9.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright 10.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the 11.\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 12.\" 13.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND 14.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE 15.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE 16.\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE 17.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL 18.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS 19.\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) 20.\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT 21.\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY 22.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF 23.\" SUCH DAMAGE. 24.\" 25.\" $FreeBSD$ 26.\" 27.Dd February 25, 2023 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 M Ar freq 39.Op Fl m Ar freq 40.Op Fl N 41.Op Fl n Ar mode 42.Op Fl P Ar pidfile 43.Op Fl p Ar ival 44.Op Fl r Ar percent 45.Op Fl s Ar source 46.Op Fl v 47.Sh DESCRIPTION 48The 49.Nm 50utility monitors the system state and sets various power control options 51accordingly. 52It offers power-saving modes that can be 53individually selected for operation on AC power or batteries. 54.Bl -tag -width "hiadaptive" 55.It Cm maximum 56Choose the highest performance values. 57May be abbreviated as 58.Cm max . 59.It Cm minimum 60Choose the lowest performance values to get the most power savings. 61May be abbreviated as 62.Cm min . 63.It Cm adaptive 64Attempt to strike a balance by degrading performance when the system 65appears idle and increasing it when the system is busy. 66It offers a good balance between a small performance loss for greatly 67increased power savings. 68May be abbreviated as 69.Cm adp . 70.It Cm hiadaptive 71Like 72.Cm adaptive 73mode, but tuned for systems where performance and interactivity are 74more important than power consumption. 75It increases frequency faster, reduces frequency less aggressively, and 76will maintain full frequency for longer. 77May be abbreviated as 78.Cm hadp . 79.El 80.Pp 81The default mode is 82.Cm adaptive 83for battery power and 84.Cm hiadaptive 85for the rest. 86.Pp 87.Nm 88recognizes these runtime options: 89.Bl -tag -width "-r percent" 90.It Fl a Ar mode 91Selects the 92.Ar mode 93to use while on AC power. 94.It Fl b Ar mode 95Selects the 96.Ar mode 97to use while on battery power. 98.It Fl i Ar percent 99Specifies the CPU load percent level when adaptive 100mode should begin to degrade performance to save power. 101The default is 50% or lower. 102.It Fl M Ar freq 103Specifies the maximum frequency to throttle up to. 104.It Fl m Ar freq 105Specifies the minimum frequency to throttle down to. 106.It Fl N 107Treat "nice" time as idle for the purpose of load calculation; 108i.e., do not increase the CPU frequency if the CPU is only busy 109with "nice" processes. 110.It Fl n Ar mode 111Selects the 112.Ar mode 113to use normally when the AC line state is unknown. 114.It Fl P Ar pidfile 115Specifies an alternative file in which the process ID should be stored. 116.It Fl p Ar ival 117Specifies a different polling interval (in milliseconds) for AC line state 118and system idle levels. 119The default is 250 ms. 120.It Fl r Ar percent 121Specifies the CPU load percent level where adaptive 122mode should consider the CPU running and increase performance. 123The default is 75% or higher. 124.It Fl s Ar source 125Enforces method for AC line state refresh; by default, it is chosen 126automatically. 127The set of valid methods is 128.Cm sysctl , devd 129and 130.Cm apm 131(i386 only). 132.It Fl v 133Verbose mode. 134Messages about power changes will be printed to stdout and 135.Nm 136will operate in the foreground. 137.El 138.Sh FILES 139.Bl -tag -width "/var/run/powerd.pid" 140.It Pa /var/run/powerd.pid 141The default PID file. 142.El 143.Sh SEE ALSO 144.Xr acpi 4 , 145.Xr apm 4 , 146.Xr cpufreq 4 , 147.Xr rc.conf 5 148.Sh HISTORY 149The 150.Nm 151utility first appeared in 152.Fx 6.0 . 153.Sh AUTHORS 154.An -nosplit 155.An Colin Percival 156first wrote 157.Nm estctrl , 158the utility that 159.Nm 160is based on. 161.An Nate Lawson 162then updated it for 163.Xr cpufreq 4 , 164added features, and wrote this manual page. 165.Sh BUGS 166The 167.Nm 168utility should also power down idle disks and other components besides the CPU. 169.Pp 170If 171.Nm 172is used with 173.Pa /etc/rc.d/power_profile , 174they may override each other. 175.Pp 176The 177.Nm 178utility 179should probably use the 180.Xr devctl 4 181interface instead of polling for AC line state. 182