[Feature request] PowerManagement and idle detection and powersaving

[Dario Freddi]

On Tuesday 11 May 2010 16:56:50 Tobias Arrskog wrote:
> For 1) I'd say define "idle" as being the abscent of "active". So "ping"
> every X seconds when the system is active.
> For example, XServer could ping UPower on input changes (mouse movement,
> key presses etc.).

This definitely belongs to the desktop/whatever is handling powermanagement 
session wise. You might want to look into XSync to see how you can retrieve 
the idle time from X - both KDE and GNOME use this (or XSS) to find out about 
user idle time.

> Samba Daemon could ping UPower on active connection.
> Session (gnome, kde ...) could ping on IO operations, GStreamer could ping
> on playback. PVR Daemons could ping on recording or reading of recording.

It's quite unrealistic to get every application signaling stuff to $something 
(which, however, should not be upower), also because this would come at a 
cost, which is a lot of wakeups (ironically, this higly impacts on power 
consumption). The only way to get proper information about idle time is using 
X, even if this covers only user input.

And, as Richard said, there's always inhibition. This is what applications 
doing lenghty and delicate jobs should use - but watch out for abuse. Your 
users might end up hating you if they expected their PC to suspend and find it 
dead after a while instead.

> 
> As it is now the session, application or daemon need to do this. For
> example mythbackend has an idle detection and a user need to supply a
> script that tells if it is idle. I would say that this is something that
> could be done once and done correct instead of all that needs it do it.
> 
> For 2) perhaps a difference in the level of "active" would apply? for
> example a noninterruptable active could never make the machine idle, and
> perhaps a screensaver could be regarded as a little active?
> 
> I do agree though that it would be possible to get false idle but I would
> say that it would be far simpler in the end if samba could ping that its
> active since as it is now the computer would shutdown if set so in gnome
> and I don't move my mouse even if a friend streams from my samba share.
> 
> Tobias.
> 
> On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 3:08 PM, Richard Hughes <hughsient at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 11 May 2010 13:53, Tobias Arrskog <topfs2 at xboxmediacenter.com> wrote:
> > > When dealing with PowerManagement in XBMC I've noticed that on linux
> > > side there really doesn't seem to be a general daemon or manager that
> > > can
> > 
> > handle
> > 
> > > if the system is idle or not, this leaves every session to handle it
> > > themself.
> > 
> > Two problems:
> > 
> > 1. Define "idle"
> > 2. What happens if the computer goes idle (screen power off / server
> > powerdown) affects how you define 1).
> > 
> > Richard.

-- 
-------------------

Dario Freddi
KDE Developer
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