Debian Eabi Power Issues

[HRH_H_Crab]

While I am hugely impressed with Debian Eabi, one thing alarms me, it seems to drain power very very quickly.
I don't think this has anything to do with screen brightness or the machine not suspending when I have it in my pocket.
Infact, I first noticed the problem when I had just installed Debian, and was navigating around the install in console (hadn't started X).

For information, I am using a C3200 and I have installed to the microdrive. I am using the Yonggun kernel (Sharp bootloader version).

The power consumption even when just using something like mpd with the case shut and no X, seems to drain the battery much faster than I am used to compared to say Angstrom.

Could it be the kernel? Would it be worth trying the Angstrom kernel?
For users who have used Titchy is there a similar problem with that distro?

Is this something unique to my install or have other users noticed a similar thing?

[koshman]

I use yonggun's Andromeda Debian package on C3000 and haven't noticed any such issues. I would say the battery life is comparable to Cacko or pdaXrom.

[koshman]

btw I run from microdrive, too.

[HRH_H_Crab]

Hmm. Well at least it sounds like its something I've done wrong and not a problem with the software per se.
/me goes to investigate!

Thanks for posting!

[koan]

What sort of battery times are we talking about ?

[HRH_H_Crab]

What sort of battery times are we talking about ?

It seemed like I only got about 45 mins or so in console.
I did do a full apt-get update though over wifi.

I expect the whole thing is an error on my part, but over the weekend (im new to debian on z) ill do a lot more testing and hopefully confirm that its just an illusion!

[koshman]

What sort of battery times are we talking about ?

It seemed like I only got about 45 mins or so in console.
I did do a full apt-get update though over wifi.

I expect the whole thing is an error on my part, but over the weekend (im new to debian on z) ill do a lot more testing and hopefully confirm that its just an illusion!

Well, installing updates over wifi - microdrive spinning all the time + wifi active + backlight set above average (by default, before decreasing it in X) would suck the battery quite fast. 45 minutes seems extremely short, though. I normally get 3+ hours with backlight set to minimum, no wifi, but quite intensive tasks such as playing games in emus, multimedia etc. (my battery is more than a year old).

[koan]

I'm just about to install Andromeda so I'll be able to tell you my experiences soon.

45 minutes on full backlight, wifi, MD access doesn't sound outrageous. I'd hope it would be a little
bit longer though.

[pelrun]

Wifi annoyingly doesn't have power-saving enabled by default; you have to issue something like "iwconfig wlan0 power 1" to turn it on. Doing that made a massive difference on my Z; in fact I can't tell the difference in runtime between a wifi card in powersave mode (but still being used) and having no wifi card inserted at all!

[born2wonder]

What sort of battery times are we talking about ?

It seemed like I only got about 45 mins or so in console.
I did do a full apt-get update though over wifi.

I expect the whole thing is an error on my part, but over the weekend (im new to debian on z) ill do a lot more testing and hopefully confirm that its just an illusion!

Well, installing updates over wifi - microdrive spinning all the time + wifi active + backlight set above average (by default, before decreasing it in X) would suck the battery quite fast. 45 minutes seems extremely short, though. I normally get 3+ hours with backlight set to minimum, no wifi, but quite intensive tasks such as playing games in emus, multimedia etc. (my battery is more than a year old).

You can change the back light in andromeda while in console by issuing:
 display-brightness.sh (up/down)  

Wifi annoyingly doesn't have power-saving enabled by default; you have to issue something like "iwconfig wlan0 power 1" to turn it on. Doing that made a massive difference on my Z; in fact I can't tell the difference in runtime between a wifi card in powersave mode (but still being used) and having no wifi card inserted at all!

You are absolutely right,  enabling power saving extends the battery life greatly . The iwconfig manual has examples on controlling the power and rate of your card; here are the related parameters for iwconfig:

txpower
    For cards supporting multiple transmit powers, sets the transmit power in dBm. If W is the power in Watt, the power in dBm is P = 30 + 10.log(W). If the value is postfixed by mW, it will be automatically converted to dBm.
    In addition, on and off enable and disable the radio, and auto and fixed enable and disable power control (if those features are available).
    Examples :
    iwconfig eth0 txpower 15
    iwconfig eth0 txpower 30mW
    iwconfig eth0 txpower auto
    iwconfig eth0 txpower off

power
    Used to manipulate power management scheme parameters and mode.
    To set the period between wake ups, enter period 'value'. To set the timeout before going back to sleep, enter timeout 'value'. You can also add the min and max modifiers. By default, those values are in seconds, append the suffix m or u to specify values in milliseconds or microseconds. Sometimes, those values are without units (number of beacon periods, dwell or similar).
    off and on disable and reenable power management. Finally, you may set the power management mode to all (receive all packets), unicast (receive unicast packets only, discard multicast and broadcast) and multicast (receive multicast and broadcast only, discard unicast packets).
    Examples :
    iwconfig eth0 power period 2
    iwconfig eth0 power 500m unicast
    iwconfig eth0 power timeout 300u all
    iwconfig eth0 power off
    iwconfig eth0 power min period 2 power max period 4