29.2 APM
Some of the power saving functions are performed by the APM BIOS itself.
On many laptops, standby and suspend states can be activated with key
combinations or by closing the lid without any special operating
system function. However, to activate these modes with a
command, certain actions must be triggered before the system is suspended.
To view the battery charge level, you need special program
packages and a suitable kernel.
SUSE® Linux Enterprise kernels have built-in APM support.
However, APM is only activated if ACPI is not implemented in the
BIOS and an APM BIOS is detected. To activate APM support, ACPI must be
disabled with acpi=off at the boot prompt. Enter
cat /proc/apm to check if APM is
active. An output consisting of various numbers indicates that everything is
OK. You should now be able to shut down the computer with the command
shutdown -h.
BIOS implementations that are not fully standard-compliant can cause
problems with APM. Some problems can be circumvented with special boot
parameters. All parameters are entered at the boot prompt in the form of
apm=parameter.
parameter is one of:
- on or off
-
Enable or disable APM support.
- (no-)allow-ints
-
Allow interrupts during the execution of BIOS functions.
- (no-)broken-psr
-
The GetPowerStatus
function of the
BIOS does not work properly.
- (no-)realmode-power-off
-
Reset processor to real mode prior to shutdown.
- (no-)debug
-
Log APM events in system log.
- (no-)power-off
-
Power system off after shutdown.
- bounce-interval=n
-
Time in hundredths of a second after a suspend event
during which additional suspend events are ignored.
- idle-threshold=n
-
System inactivity percentage from which the BIOS function
idle is executed (0=always,
100=never).
- idle-period=n
-
Time in hundredths of a second after which the system activity is
measured.
The APM daemon (apmd) is no longer used. Its functionality is now handled by
the new powersaved, which also supports ACPI and provides many other
features.