(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Ahoy!

Is there any type of laptop battery monitor program in puppy? If not, can anybody suggest one that could be easily added?

Thanks

ND

Puppy has "wmpower".
In Fvwm95, this is in the menu.

Currently though, it is only going to work for APM-enabled BIOSes.

wmpower detects if APM or ACPI is activated in the kernel.

problem is, the 2.4.27 kernel in 1.0.3 doesn't have acpi, and most modern
laptops have acpi-enabled BIOSes.

In other words, it's only maybe going to work on older laptops.

Hey Barry,

Care to check this out for possible inclusion in future puppy?

http://freeunix.dyndns.org:8088/site2/acpitool.shtml

It looks to be quite handy, is very small (less than 40kb), is open source, and is compiled on slackware 10! Could it get more perfect? The only hitch, it requires that the kernel be compiled with ACPI enabled. Is this the case with puppy kernel?

ND

EDIT: After using my brain really hard and doing some reading around the puppy resources, am i correct in thinking that ACPI was a feature enabled in the 2.6 kernel, but not in the 2.4 kernel-based puppies? I say this based on the fact that JM's 50MB version of 1.0.2 included a boot option to disable ACPI, however, searching through my 1.0.3 running system I can find no evidence of any ACPI action going on. So, am I correct? I think I'll burn a 1.0.2 CD tomorrow and see if I can get that little proggie going on my lappy. Wish me luck!

SECOND EDIT: After using my brain a second time EVEN HARDER, I have come to realize that what Barry was saying was that the reason WMpower won't work in 1.0.3 with ACPI bios is because the kernel has not been compiled with this support. So, if we could get the kernel compiled with ACPI, then WMpower should work just fine. I still think that AcpiTool is worth a look, however, because despite its diminutive size, it has the additional ability to put your laptop into sleep mode.

On a similar issue is it possible to have puppy power down to 'sleep mode' as some laptops do, turning off the CPU fan and drawing minimum power? Might that (if at all) be only possible in a ACPI computer or 2.6 kernel?

Hi Lobster,

The little program to which I linked will put your lappy to sleep for you. As I mentioned, it looks to be VERY handy.

According to what Barry has said (and I've been able to figure out), unless you've got a pretty old laptop that uses APM, rather than the newer ACPI, puppy is currently unable to put your lappy to sleep. And even then, I'm not sure that the capability is in puppy.

Hopefully we can get this straightened out for the next version of puppy.

ND

acpi is a double-edged sword.
It has benefits, but if we have an acpi-enabled kernel it may not boot on some systems -- in which case we need the "acpi=off" option at boot time.

So, if I do enable it in the next compile of the 2.4 kernel, will also have to introduce the "acpi off" choice in the boot menu ...which is a hassle if someone has to hit the right menu option every time Puppy boots.

...but then, they can remaster the CD can't they, and put "acpi=off" into the syslinux.cfg file.

Barry, would it be possible to give someone the option to save their boot options to a file (at least in a case where a person was booting from a writable medium)? Such as, the boot menu pops up and the user selects "no acpi" boot option, and then a question pops up asking if you'd like puppy to remember this choice, so that you only have to do it once. Is this possible? or it is too early in the boot process for puppy to be able to access any sort of writable media? if so, it would eliminate the hassel of dealing with the boot menu at every boot. (BTW, the idea of having to remaster the cd to eliminate a boot menu seems like more of a hassle to me than just dealing with the boot menu.)

ND