.\" Copyright (c) 2005 Nate Lawson .\" All rights reserved. .\" .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions .\" are met: .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. .\" .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF .\" SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .\" $FreeBSD$ .\" .Dd July 4, 2013 .Dt POWERD 8 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm powerd .Nd "system power control utility" .Sh SYNOPSIS .Nm .Op Fl a Ar mode .Op Fl b Ar mode .Op Fl i Ar percent .Op Fl m Ar freq .Op Fl M Ar freq .Op Fl n Ar mode .Op Fl p Ar ival .Op Fl P Ar pidfile .Op Fl r Ar percent .Op Fl v .Sh DESCRIPTION The .Nm utility monitors the system state and sets various power control options accordingly. It offers power-saving modes that can be individually selected for operation on AC power or batteries. .Bl -tag -width ".Ar hiadaptive" .It Ar maximum Choose the highest performance values. May be abbreviated as .Ar max . .It Ar minimum Choose the lowest performance values to get the most power savings. May be abbreviated as .Ar min . .It Ar adaptive Attempt to strike a balance by degrading performance when the system appears idle and increasing it when the system is busy. It offers a good balance between a small performance loss for greatly increased power savings. May be abbreviated as .Ar adp . .It Ar hiadaptive Like .Ar adaptive mode, but tuned for systems where performance and interactivity are more important than power consumption. It increases frequency faster, reduces frequency less aggressively, and will maintain full frequency for longer. May be abbreviated as .Ar hadp . .El .Pp The default mode is .Ar adaptive for battery power and .Ar hiadaptive for the rest. .Pp .Nm recognizes these runtime options: .Bl -tag -width ".Fl r Ar percent" .It Fl a Ar mode Selects the .Ar mode to use while on AC power. .It Fl b Ar mode Selects the .Ar mode to use while on battery power. .It Fl i Ar percent Specifies the CPU load percent level when adaptive mode should begin to degrade performance to save power. The default is 50% or lower. .It Fl m Ar freq Specifies the minimum frequency to throttle down to. .It Fl M Ar freq Specifies the maximum frequency to throttle up to. .It Fl n Ar mode Selects the .Ar mode to use normally when the AC line state is unknown. .It Fl p Ar ival Specifies a different polling interval (in milliseconds) for AC line state and system idle levels. The default is 250 ms. .It Fl P Ar pidfile Specifies an alternative file in which the process ID should be stored. The default is .Pa /var/run/powerd.pid . .It Fl r Ar percent Specifies the CPU load percent level where adaptive mode should consider the CPU running and increase performance. The default is 75% or higher. .It Fl v Verbose mode. Messages about power changes will be printed to stdout and .Nm will operate in the foreground. .El .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr acpi 4 , .Xr apm 4 , .Xr cpufreq 4 .Sh HISTORY The .Nm utility first appeared in .Fx 6.0 . .Sh AUTHORS .An -nosplit .An Colin Percival first wrote .Nm estctrl , the utility that .Nm is based on. .An Nate Lawson then updated it for .Xr cpufreq 4 , added features, and wrote this manual page. .Sh BUGS The .Nm utility should also power down idle disks and other components besides the CPU. .Pp If .Nm is used with .Pa power_profile , they may override each other. .Pp The .Nm utility should probably use the .Xr devctl 4 interface instead of polling for AC line state.