So this is a bit different than the average computer question. I’m using linux on an el cheapo laptop I bought for myself (it does the job and cost less than $500, so i’m happy with it). I installed Linux so that the laptop now dual boots to Ubuntu because it supports my laptop (not officially, but I tested it with a livedisk). If you need the model number, it’s a GQ ZX-5361. Anyway, if I’m running Ubuntu and I unplug my laptop from the wall, the laptop immediately decides it needs to hibernate. Conversely, if I close the laptop lid, nothing happens. The screen stays on full brightness, hard disk keeps on whirring, fans keep on spinning, etc. How do I fix this? These problems don’t happen when I’m working in windows, and it’s the only thing that’s keeping me from using Ubuntu 100% of the time. The documentation for Ubuntu was pretty worthless on this issue.
Thanks.
I was hoping someone with more linux laptop experience would come along and try and help, but since I see you are short on responses, I’ll give my 2 cents.
My favored distribution is Gentoo and you can see here that they have a very complicated “recommended” way to set up power management on a Gentoo box (complicated and getting to the guts of it, is the Gentoo way, but good documentation). Although some of that how-to (ie Use flags, they way they set up runlevels) won’t be applicable to a debain/ubuntu box, it’s still good read to really get at root of your power management linux problems.
Since I do have access to a Debian box (which is what Ubuntu is based off of), I might be able to point you in the right direction. A quick “apt-cache search” on acpi reveals the huge number of packages that your laptop might be using.
HOSTNAME:/opt# apt-cache search acpi
acpi - displays information on ACPI devices
acpi-support - scripts for handling many ACPI events
acpid - Utilities for using ACPI power management
acpidump - utilities to dump system's ACPI tables to an ASCII file
acpitool - a small, convenient command-line ACPI client
apmd - Utilities for Advanced Power Management (APM)
athcool - tool to enable powersaving mode for Athlon/Duron processors
batmon.app - Battery monitor for GNUstep
cpudyn - CPU dynamic frequency control for processors with scaling
cpufreqd - fully configurable daemon for dynamic frequency and voltage scaling
fnfxd - ACPI and hotkey daemon for Toshiba laptops
gaim-thinklight - Blinks your ThinkPad's ThinkLight upon new messgaes
gdesklets-data - Applets for gdesklets
gkrellm-x86info - gkrellm plugin displaying the current processor speed
hibernate - smartly puts your computer to sleep (suspend to RAM or disk)
iasl - Intel ASL compiler/decompiler
kpowersave - frontend to powersave for setting user specific policies
powermgmt-base - Common utils and configs for power management
powernowd - control cpu speed and voltage using 2.6 kernel interface
powersaved - power management daemon
procmeter3 - graphical system status monitor
rocklight - an xmms visualization plugin for Thinklights on IBM Thinkpads
sensors-applet - Display readings from hardware sensors in your Gnome panel
sleepd - puts an inactive or low battery laptop to sleep
sylpheed-claws-gtk2-acpi-notifier - Laptop's Mail LED control for Sylpheed-Claws GTK2
toshutils - Toshiba laptop utilities
wmacpi - An ACPI battery monitor for WindowMaker
wmbattery - display laptop battery info, dockable in WindowMaker
xfce4-battery-plugin - battery monitor plugin for the Xfce4 panel
yacpi - ncurses based acpi monitor for text mode
My first step would be to check your BIOS options and then check your kernel to make sure ACPI is compiled in or added as a module. I’d then check to see what of the above programs your paticular box might be using.
OR to cut to the chase of it, you might want to apt-get install kpowersave which I’m guessing is a KDE GUI to power management options.
I hope this helps a little.
LarsenMTL