Re: [edlug] What is needed for auto-powerdown?

[Mike Moran <mike_moran@xxx.xxx.xxx>]

H C Pumphrey wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Nov 2003, Mike Moran wrote:
>
>
> > I'm just setting up a computer with Debian 3.0 and I had to do some
> > hdparm stuff so I booted it from Knoppix. I noticed that when Knoppix
> > shutdown it managed to turn off the machine, whereas when I shutdown
> > from Debian it just sits there showing "Power Down". Does anyone know
> > what special steps I have to take to get this working? Is this related
> > to apmd?
>
>
> Definitely. Debian stock kernels don't have apm turned on by default, and
> the "automatic power off" business is part of apm. I have usually built my
> own kernels for my Debian machines in order to support some weird piece of
> HW. I choose build them with apm turned on and find that "auto power
> off" happens automagically.
>
> What I don't know is whether the stock kernels are built with apm
> available but disabled. I suspect they are, but I have never tried to
> enable it. You could run modconf and see if there are some apm modules to
> load. You could also investigate boot parameters to see if apm is built in
> monolithically.

It seems that just installing apmd does the job. I installed both apmd 
and acpid. I then removed each, acpid and apmd, and it failed to 
powerdown when I removed apmd. Install apmd again and it works.

So, it would seem that Debian has apm built-in, at least on the kernel 
I'm using:

Linux censored 2.4.18-bf2.4 #1 Son Apr 14 09:53:28 CEST 2002 i686 unknown

What I don't understand is how it works :-) I presume apmd must be a 
daemon providing communication between user-space and the apm features 
of the kernel? Just curious. As long as it works and is reliable I'm not 
going to spend too much time reading up on it. Are there any gotchas I 
should watch out for?

--
Mike

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