Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.setup
Date: 2000/05/13

>As, like many, I've got the computer running all the time, I would like
>to activate some power saving modes, have the monitor go on standby,
>etc. I found apm, which seemed simple enough from the man page
>description, but when I do
>
>    apm -s
>or
>    apm -S
>
>(in console mode as root, as it's not accessible from a user login)
>nothing seems to happen. I would probably have to set it to run from a
>configuration file, but I can't find this explained anywhere, nor does
>the KDE Desktop properties (or any other utility that I could find) give
>access to power management.

APM is primarily for laptops. My laptop has ACPI instead of APM. apm -s does put it into a deep suspend, but apm -S (standby) does not work.

>For the time being, I'm experimenting with BIOS level power management
>settings, but there has got to be higher level access, no?

See 'man setterm' for console power saving. I forget exactly how to do this in X, but it would be a setting in XF86Config.

Use hdparm to spin down drives that are idle, although, your primary drive may never spin down due to logging and other things going on.

David Efflandt