# Acer laptop and Power Management

## ONEEYEMAN

Hi, ALL,

I've installed Gentoo as a dual-boot OS for my newly bought ACER Aspire.

The installation went thru and I have a working Gentoo environment (see this thread for reference).

However, I believe that my laptop overheats.

I booted Gentoo worked for some time, then closed the lid went to some places and after couple of hours take it up and open the lid. The laptop box was very hot.

When I did the same thing in Windows or just left it working for some big time frame it was not hot (well, comparing to Gentoo boot).

What I need to do in order to fix the overheating? How to make sure that it does overheat?

Thank you.

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## ns4683

Have you installed lmsensors so you can see what the temperature is?

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## ONEEYEMAN

Hi,

Yes, it is installed:

```

IgorReinCloud igor # emerge -pv lm_sensors

 * Last emerge --sync was 34d 14h 51m 26s ago.

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!

[ebuild   R   ] sys-apps/lm_sensors-3.2.0  USE="-sensord" 0 kB

Total: 1 package (1 reinstall), Size of downloads: 0 kB

 * IMPORTANT: 2 news items need reading for repository 'gentoo'.

 * Use eselect news to read news items.

```

And this is the result of configuring "lm_sensors":

```

IgorReinCloud igor # /usr/sbin/sensors-detect

# sensors-detect revision 5861 (2010-09-21 17:21:05 +0200)

# System: Acer Aspire 5253 (laptop)

This program will help you determine which kernel modules you need

to load to use lm_sensors most effectively. It is generally safe

and recommended to accept the default answers to all questions,

unless you know what you're doing.

Some south bridges, CPUs or memory controllers contain embedded sensors.

Do you want to scan for them? This is totally safe. (YES/no): 

Silicon Integrated Systems SIS5595...                       No

VIA VT82C686 Integrated Sensors...                          No

VIA VT8231 Integrated Sensors...                            No

AMD K8 thermal sensors...                                   No

AMD Family 10h thermal sensors...                           No

AMD Family 11h thermal sensors...                           No

Intel Core family thermal sensor...                         No

Intel Atom thermal sensor...                                No

Intel AMB FB-DIMM thermal sensor...                         No

VIA C7 thermal sensor...                                    No

VIA Nano thermal sensor...                                  No

Some Super I/O chips contain embedded sensors. We have to write to

standard I/O ports to probe them. This is usually safe.

Do you want to scan for Super I/O sensors? (YES/no): 

Probing for Super-I/O at 0x2e/0x2f

Trying family `National Semiconductor'...                   No

Trying family `SMSC'...                                     No

Trying family `VIA/Winbond/Nuvoton/Fintek'...               No

Trying family `ITE'...                                      No

Probing for Super-I/O at 0x4e/0x4f

Trying family `National Semiconductor'...                   No

Trying family `SMSC'...                                     No

Trying family `VIA/Winbond/Nuvoton/Fintek'...               No

Trying family `ITE'...                                      No

Some hardware monitoring chips are accessible through the ISA I/O ports.

We have to write to arbitrary I/O ports to probe them. This is usually

safe though. Yes, you do have ISA I/O ports even if you do not have any

ISA slots! Do you want to scan the ISA I/O ports? (YES/no): 

Probing for `National Semiconductor LM78' at 0x290...       No

Probing for `National Semiconductor LM79' at 0x290...       No

Probing for `Winbond W83781D' at 0x290...                   No

Probing for `Winbond W83782D' at 0x290...                   No

Lastly, we can probe the I2C/SMBus adapters for connected hardware

monitoring devices. This is the most risky part, and while it works

reasonably well on most systems, it has been reported to cause trouble

on some systems.

Do you want to probe the I2C/SMBus adapters now? (YES/no): 

Using driver `i2c-piix4' for device 0000:00:14.0: ATI Technologies Inc SB600/SB700/SB800 SMBus

FATAL: Module i2c_piix4 not found.

Failed to load module i2c-piix4.

Sorry, no sensors were detected.

This is relatively common on laptops, where thermal management is

handled by ACPI rather than the OS.

```

And when I tried to configure it couldn't find anything.

Or maybe I am doing something wrong/not doing something at all?

Thank you.

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## NeddySeagoon

ONEEYEMAN,

Did you select Acer laptop support in your kernel?

If its hot after some time with the lid shut, you probably don't have suspend to RAM operating.   Thats some kernel options.

Do you use gentoo-sources or the tuxonice kernel ?

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## PaulBredbury

You probably want:

$ zgrep ACER /proc/config.gz 

CONFIG_ACER_WMI=y

And try pcie_aspm=force - Phoronix.

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## ONEEYEMAN

Hi, guys,

I don't have such option in my kernel:

```

IgorReinCloud linux # grep ACER .config

CONFIG_NOP_TRACER=y

CONFIG_HAVE_FUNCTION_TRACER=y

CONFIG_HAVE_FUNCTION_GRAPH_TRACER=y

CONFIG_CONTEXT_SWITCH_TRACER=y

CONFIG_GENERIC_TRACER=y

# CONFIG_FUNCTION_TRACER is not set

# CONFIG_IRQSOFF_TRACER is not set

# CONFIG_SCHED_TRACER is not set

# CONFIG_BRANCH_TRACER is not set

# CONFIG_STACK_TRACER is not set

IgorReinCloud linux # uname -a

Linux IgorReinCloud 2.6.38-gentoo-r6 #2 SMP Mon Jun 20 13:09:46 PDT 2011 x86_64 AMD E-350 Processor AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

```

And suspend is selected:

```

IgorReinCloud linux # grep -i suspend .config

CONFIG_ARCH_SUSPEND_POSSIBLE=y

CONFIG_SUSPEND=y

CONFIG_SUSPEND_FREEZER=y

```

The strange thing is that the screen does not go off after some idle time in GNOME. If I go to "System"->"Power Management"->"Put display to sleep when inactive for" I put 30 minutes for AC power and 10 minutes for battery, but the monitor does not turn off.

And if I select "System"->"Log out" I don't see options to suspend, hibernate or stand by. Only "Log out" and "Cancel".

Thank you.

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## NeddySeagoon

ONEEYEMAN,

In menuconfig, pressing / and entering acer returns:-

```

  │ Symbol: ACER_WMI [=n]                                                                                        │  

  │ Type  : tristate                                                                                             │  

  │ Prompt: Acer WMI Laptop Extras                                                                               │  

  │   Defined at drivers/platform/x86/Kconfig:18                                                                 │  

  │   Depends on: X86 [=y] && X86_PLATFORM_DEVICES [=n] && ACPI [=y] && BACKLIGHT_CLASS_DEVICE [=n] && SERIO_I80 │  

  │   Location:                                                                                                  │  

  │     -> Device Drivers                                                                                        │  

  │       -> X86 Platform Specific Device Drivers (X86_PLATFORM_DEVICES [=n])                                    │  

  │   Selects: LEDS_CLASS [=y] && NEW_LEDS [=y] && INPUT_SPARSEKMAP [=n] 
```

If you don't have it, something it depends on is off too.

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## ONEEYEMAN

NeddySeagoon,

I turned this option on, but "lm_sensors" still fails with the same error message.

Is it normal?

And how do i turn on Suspend/Hibernate in GNOME "Log Off" menu?

Thank you.

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## NeddySeagoon

ONEEYEMAN,

Modern laptops do thermal management using APCI, so you don't need lm-sensors.

You will have temperatures in /sys somewhere.

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## ONEEYEMAN

NeddySeagoon,

So, I can safely unmerge lm_sensors? That's good.

Now, all I need is to turn on Suspend/Hibernate in the GNOME "Log Off" menu and the possibility to turn off the monitor after some time.

Thank you.

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