support unmounting wifi modules to reduce wattage

[Severity1]

Binary package hint: laptop-mode-tools

unmounting ath5k and mac80211 by issuing sudo rmmod ath5k and sudo rmmod mac80211 reduces wattage consumption of laptop/netbooks. powertop shows 12.9w consumption while these modules are mounted and when I issue the commands above powertop shows a gradual decrease in wattage up to 11.1 watts. can this be integrated in laptop-mode-tools? it would be nice if laptop-mode-tools can automate this like unmount modules when not in use for x seconds.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Tue Feb 2 13:11:14 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Netbook-Remix 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release i386 (20091028.4)
Package: laptop-mode-tools 1.47-1ubuntu2 [modified: usr/share/laptop-mode-tools/modules/sched-mc-power-savings]
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_PH.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-17.54-generic
SourcePackage: laptop-mode-tools
Tags: ubuntu-unr
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-17-generic i686

[Ritesh Raj Sarraf (rrs)]

On Tuesday 02 Feb 2010 11:42:02 Severity1 wrote:
> Public bug reported:
>
> Binary package hint: laptop-mode-tools
>
> unmounting ath5k and mac80211 by issuing sudo rmmod ath5k and sudo rmmod
> mac80211 reduces wattage consumption of laptop/netbooks. powertop shows
> 12.9w consumption while these modules are mounted and when I issue the
> commands above powertop shows a gradual decrease in wattage up to 11.1
> watts. can this be integrated in laptop-mode-tools? it would be nice if
> laptop-mode-tools can automate this like unmount modules when not in use
> for x seconds.

I think what we need here is a new module, something like exec_cmd.

It definitely will not be a start/stop kind of thing.

In it we can use a variety of things (but all surrounded to general-purpose-
command-execution):

* kill processes (example: nspluginviewer. It generates a lot of wakeups. But
at the same time, it is the killer app for flash. So its mention should be
explicit)

* Your example of module unloads. Instead of creating a separate module, which
would just do module unloads, I want a generic and flexible module to do things
like these and many more (which might be specific to particular devices).

Regards,
Ritesh
--
Ritesh Raj Sarraf
RESEARCHUT - http://www.researchut.com
"Necessity is the mother of invention."

[Severity1 (johnreilly-pospos)]

I suppose if we have a listing of wifi modules and use it as reference for a script to see if any modules in lsmod has a match with the listing then it will unmount that module whenever the wifi module is not busy or not in use in x seconds and mount it again if it requests to use it is detected.

[Bart Samwel (bart-samwel)]

On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 08:20, Ritesh Raj Sarraf <email address hidden> wrote:

> I think what we need here is a new module, something like exec_cmd.
>
> It definitely will not be a start/stop kind of thing.
>

Perhaps the start-stop-programs module can be extended to support in-line
commands to be executed on state changes, in addition to the service
start/stop support that is already there? I must say that the service
starting/stopping support is a bit complicated to configure, it's well
suited for starting/stopping services that have an init script, but not easy
to configure for much else...

Cheers,
Bart