MX 17/18 Repository: The TLP and TLPUI Thread

[Stevo]

TLP is an advanced power management tool for optimizing battery life on laptops running Linux. Its default configuration is usually enough to to see an improvement in battery life, however, TLP offers a wide range of configuration options which can be changed by editing its configuration file. MX ships with version 1.1 currently.
We also have a GUI for configuring it in the test repos called tlpui.



We now have the latest tlp 1.2.2 in the test repo, as well as a newer git pull of tlpui there that is compatible with 1.2.2's new settings.

Please let us know how they install and perform if you give them a try. You may need to reboot before any changes take hold, though. Changes from the 1.1 release:

+++ 1.2.2 --- 04.05.2019 +++

* Bugfixes
Battery Features, tlp-stat -b:
- Show data for batteries named other than BAT0/BAT1 (non-ThinkPads)
- Issue #395: ThinkPad X1C6 discharge malfunction
- Separate checks for charge thresholds and recalibration
- Intelligible recommendation for tp-smapi on ThinkPad X220/T420 et al.
- Explain "Battery Features: Charge Thresholds and Recalibrate"
Disks:
- Fix type determination
Operation Mode AC/BAT:
- MacBookPro 5.3: workaround for false AC offline status
Processor, tlp-stat -p:
- Fix read of /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/boost
- x86_energy_perf_policy: detect unsupported CPUs in newer versions
Radio Devices:
- Issue #404: make RESTORE_DEVICE_STATE_ON_STARTUP=1 persistent again

+++ 1.2.1 --- 18.03.2019 +++

* Bugfix
- Issue #391: unknown command "chargeonce"

+++ 1.2 --- 11.03.2019 +++

* Features
Disks:
- Support for NVMe devices
- Support for removable drives e.g. USB / IEE1394 devices
- Improve support for multi queue I/O schedulers (blk-mq)
General:
- tlp bat/ac: keep manual power settings until tlp start (Issue #349)
- Remove all pm-utils scripts (Issue #363)
- tlp/tlp-stat: Temporarily overwrite configuration for one program
invocation only: -- PARAM=value ...
- Document intrinsic defaults in config file (Issue #353)
- Code verified with ShellCheck
Graphics:
- INTEL_GPU_MIN_FREQ_ON_AC/BAT, INTEL_GPU_MAX_FREQ_ON_AC/BAT,
INTEL_GPU_BOOST_FREQ_ON_AC/BAT: Intel GPU frequency limits
Radio Devices:
- tlp-rdw: new command to disable RDW actions temporarily (until reboot)
- Support ThinkPad Pro Dock CS18 (17ef:306f)
- USB_BLACKLIST_WWAN: disable by default
- Retire compatibility with Network Manager 0.9.8 (Ubuntu 14.04 EOL)
PCI(e) devices:
- RUNTIME_PM_BLACKLIST: add mei_me, pcieport
ThinkPad Battery:
- New native kernel API for battery features "natacpi" (Issue #321);
requires kernel 4.17; enabled by default
- NATACPI_ENABLE, TPACPI_ENABLE, TPSMAPI_ENABLE: make all battery feature
drivers switchable
- tlp discharge/recalibrate: exclude multiple simultaneous invocations
- Support ThinkPad 25, *80 (Coffee Lake) and all newer models
tlp-stat:
- Check systemd-rfkill.socket masked status
- Disks: show all configured devices (consider default)
- Intel GPU: show frequency limits and available frequencies
- Rename "Suggestions" section to "Recommendations"
- Remove invocation via 'tlp stat'
USB:
- Exclude scanners managed by libsane from autosuspend
- Remove long deprecated level/autosuspend attributes

* Bugfixes
- Issue #193: do not try to start NetworkManager (systemd)
- Issue #319: get_disk_dev logic is not compatible with NVMe devices
- Issue #320: AC mode not detected with USB charger
- Issue #331: Process '/usr/bin/tlp auto' failed with exit code 4
- Issue #332: zsh parse error in tlp diskid
- Issue #343, #362, #375: circumvent broken AC/charger detection
- Issue #344: keep ASPM default to enable deeper C-states on AC
- Issue #356: fix writing sequence for start/stop charge thresholds
- Issue #368: recognize Think*p*ad P50
- tlp-stat: filter HWP lines from x86_energy_perf_policy output

[Kulmbacher]

MXPI hung up while notification "tlp conf" has changed, what will you choose, or i`ve been impatiently.

After reboot synaptic shows me 18 updates, started.
Notification: You have to reconfigure dpkg list..., done and everything is working.

tlpui is working, after first short look:
Can`t edit Disk: Disk_Devices_ID, Button has no function

-> Lenovo T520

[rs55]

MXPI hung up while notification "tlp conf" has changed, what will you choose, or i`ve been impatiently.

After reboot synaptic shows me 18 updates, started.
Notification: You have to reconfigure dpkg list..., done and everything is working.

tlpui is working, after first short look:
Can`t edit Disk: Disk_Devices_ID, Button has no function

-> Lenovo T520

I have W520 and x230. I had tlp on initially - have since uninstalled it - not sure it really adds anything. And I dont need several competing pieces of code ( xfce power manager etc) - all fiddling with turning things on and off according their own algorithms. If things fail - its harder to track down what is causing what.

[Stevo]

I mainly use it to disable my CPU's turbo mode on battery (up to 4.1 GHz), which means the top speed is 2.2 GHz.

But I do tweak a few of the other powersaving features, too.

[TJ Hoye]

Greetings to all on this tpl thread.

By way of introduction, I have backed into being a staunch tpl fan.
I've been an MX LiveUSB fan ever since I met BitJam a few years back.

Recently, my trusty old Dell 1545 Win7-era laptop developed a bad keyboard.
With this lame excuse I bought a bright shiny new Dell 5570 with a lot of new
bells and whistles. Also one prominent, unfamiliar new problem: 32 dmesg
"ACPI Errors", all or mostly all related to "Cooling" and 8 unhappy cpus.

I think these ACPI Errors are likely the result of someone's syntax screw up
on the uefi/acpi program for the 5570's uefi bios in regard to using the 5570's
cpus at least for some "Cooling" function.

I have not been able to extinguish the occurence of the 32 ACPI Errors, but
I have to my own satisfaction decided that tpl corrects for the missing
"Cooling" function using all 8 of 5570's cpus. I do not use acpi=off as
a boot command, since that part of the acpi code seems to be ok for
such tasks as are related to Battery, Adapter and Thermal tasks, just
not Cooling according to acpi -Vf.

I installed tlp with synaptic and added sudo tlp start as a session start command.
sudo tpl stat -f | less then shows that all 8 cpus now are assigned some
Cooling activities. watch sensors -f gives a nice display of tolerable
temperatures during a 3.2 minute remastering job on my MX-18.2 64-bit LiveUSB.

My LiveUSB is my desktop, I hardly ever operate on battery power, so
I'm not currently inquisitive what happens in that case.
Also, Matthew Garrett has an opinion of interest for this situation.
https://lwn.net/Articles/281629/

TJH

[Stevo]

MXPI hung up while notification "tlp conf" has changed, what will you choose, or i`ve been impatiently.

After reboot synaptic shows me 18 updates, started.
Notification: You have to reconfigure dpkg list..., done and everything is working.

tlpui is working, after first short look:
Can`t edit Disk: Disk_Devices_ID, Button has no function

-> Lenovo T520

It was not a hang, it was waiting for you to answer the question it asked about the change in the tlp file. If in doubt, just hit Enter, which is to keep the present file configuration.

[Kulmbacher]

I chose to save new configuration, after this, no reaction.

[skidoo]

a current reddit topic, 100+ comments:
Why TLP is not used on default on linux distributions? Does it have some serious disaventages?

[Stevo]

We now have tlp 1.3.1 and tlpui 1.2+git20200218 (updated to work with tlp 1.3.X) in our test repository.

New Features in tlp:

New configuration scheme

/etc/default/tlp is replaced by /etc/tlp.conf
Settings are read in the following order:
1. Intrinsic defaults
2. /etc/tlp.d/*.conf - Drop-in customization snippets
3. /etc/tlp.conf - User configuration
In case of identical parameters, the last occurence has precedence
Parse config files instead of sourcing --> no more shell expansion

Battery Features, tlp-stat -b

Charge thresholds: better checks for command line and configuration; clearer error messages
tlp discharge: error message "check your hardware" when battery wasn't completely discharged (Issue #438)
Distinguish between "no kernel support" for natacpi (< 4.17) and "laptop not supported" (>= 4.17)
Supplement battery status "Unknown" with "threshold may prevent charging" when thresholds are available only

General

systemd: replace tlp-sleep.service with /lib/systemd/system-sleep/tlp

Operation Mode AC/BAT

TLP_PS_IGNORE: power supply class to ignore when determining operation mode; workaround for laptops reporting incorrect AC or battery status (Issue #446)

PCI(e) devices

PCIE_ASPM_ON_AC/BAT: add method 'powersupersave' (Issue #425)

Processor

CPU_ENERGY_PERF_POLICY_ON_AC/BAT: backward compatible merge of settings for Intel energy vs. performance policies EPB (ENERGY_PERF_POLICY_ON_AC/BAT) and HWP.EPP (CPU_HWP_ON_AC/BAT); when HWP.EPP is available, EPB is not set; validate parameters; eliminate external tool x86_energy_perf_policy for kernel >= 5.2

tlp-stat

Configuration: show file where the parameter comes from
System Info:
Show SELinux status
Show RDW as 'disabled' when TLP is disabled as a whole
Indicate persistent mode
Intel CPU: don't show EPB values when HWP.EPP is active (see above)
PCIe ASPM: show available policies
Undervolting: remove "PHC kernel not available" message

Bugfixes:

Battery Features

Issue #415: ThinkPad X240 discharge BAT1 malfunction when BAT0 is not installed

Disks

Fix NVMe detection on Linux 4.15

tlp-stat

Issue #430: ignore HID device batteries