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How does a computer restart itself?

How can a computer restart itself? After it's off, how does it tell itself to come back on again? What kind of software is it that can do this?

Is the CPU active in Sleep mode?

Suppose on a Windows OS, you toggle the computer to go into sleep mode and put it away. As far as I know there will no programs or processes will be running.

But would the processor still be running or be active in background in some way and utilizing the power?

Because when you perform any action maybe with modern computers running Windows 7/8.1/10 I.e. opening the lid, press of a button, touching the mouse it immediately turns itself on without having to press the power button. So, is it because the CPU was actively waiting for those events while in low power state?

What is keeping my PC from sleeping?

How can I find out why my laptop or desktop won't automatically go to sleep

What features does enabling ACPI 2.0 support in BIOS enable?

So I was booting up my box and for some odd reason my BIOS had lost settings (again), thus resetting everything to defaults. I was digging around making sure things were configured to my liking and noticed the option to enable ACPI 2.0 support. It was disabled by default but I was wondering: Do I need ACPI 2.0 support?

Motherboard is ASUS M3A79-T Deluxe.

EDIT: Updated to the newest BIOS version 1702 without any noticeable changes.

I should also note that I primarily use Windows-7 64-bit.

Prevent poweroff on Debian when the physical power button is pressed

I'm on Debian-Lenny.

I want to change the action taken by the system when the power button is pressed. How do I modify the system such that it does not power off when it gets an Power Button ACPI event?

(My server is in my room, and I don't want my girlfriend to power off my server by pressing the physical power button.)

How can I achieve that?

How can I manually control a fan from the terminal?

I'm trying to control the fan speed on my desktop, and I'd appreciate your help.

Goal: Use a script to control the fan speed on my computer.

Motivation: The embedded BIOS "Smart Fan" settings isn't smart enough to speed up the fan when the system gets hot, resulting in a crash when the one of the temps passes the threshold.

Configuration:

• Centos 6.3
• Acer Veriton VN281G-UA425L

• abbreviated lspci output

  00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation N10 Family DMI Bridge
  00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
  00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 3 (rev 02)
  00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 4 (rev 02)
  00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2)
  00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation NM10 Family LPC Controller (rev 02)
  00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation N10/ICH7 Family SATA Controller [IDE mode] (rev 02)
  00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family SMBus Controller (rev 02)
  

• abbreviated /proc/cpuinfo

  processor   : 0
  vendor_id   : GenuineIntel
  cpu family  : 6
  model       : 28
  model name  : Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU D425   @ 1.80GHz
  

• Grub configuration

  title CentOS (2.6.32-279.5.1.el6.x86_64)
          root (hd0,0)
          kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.32-279.5.1.el6.x86_64 ro root=/dev/mapper/vg_hadean-lv_root rd_NO_LUKS rd_LVM_LV=vg_hadean/lv_root LANG=en_US.UTF-8 rd_NO_MD SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 crashkernel=auto rd_LVM_LV=vg_hadean/lv_swap  KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rd_NO_DM rhgb quiet
          initrd /initramfs-2.6.32-279.5.1.el6.x86_64.img
  

Previous attempts:

• Run lm_sensors lm_sensors could only find the temperature output
• Run yum search fan no matches
• add acpi and acpi=strict to kernel opts nothing happened
• check /proc/acpi/fan the directory is empty

I ran acer_ec.pl regs and the output was this:

        00  01  02  03  04  05  06  07  |   08  09  0A  0B  0C  0D  0E  0F
        __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  |   __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __
00 |    255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 |   255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 
10 |    255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 |   255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 
20 |    255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 |   255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 
30 |    255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 |   255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 
40 |    255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 |   255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 
50 |    255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 |   255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 
60 |    255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 |   255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 
70 |    255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 |   255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 
80 |    255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 |   255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 
90 |    255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 |   255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 
A0 |    255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 |   255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 
B0 |    255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 |   255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 
C0 |    255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 |   255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 
D0 |    255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 |   255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 
E0 |    255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 |   255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 
F0 |    255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 |   255 255 255 255 255 255 

I don't know if that's what it's supposed to look like, but something seems amiss here.

I found a link that inspired me to try pwmconfig. The output was: There are no pwm-capable sensor modules installed I'm going to try to find out how I can install those modules.

I reset the "Smart Fan" setting and it isn't causing me any more problems, for now. I don't know how that could affect it, but we'll see what happens when I start putting a load back on the system.

I still haven't found the right patches for the kernel (or if that's even the problem). If the problem continues, I'll try to update the kernel to include the acpi support. Using the hardware tool from an arch linux iso, I found out that I'm using the P01-A3L BIOS, release 4/6/2011, revision 8.16 on an Acer Veriton N281G motherboard.

If that doesn't work, I might just scrap it and move to Debian or Arch.

What do the power management tools in Linux do? (acpi, pm-utils, etc...)

I am really really confused about the power management tools available for Linux: I have Arch Linux with XFCE on my laptop.

The guides on the the Arch Linux wiki list

• acpi
• acpid
• pm-utils
• cpufreq
• laptop-mode-tools

to manage power, suspension, disks and CPU, WiFi, etc.

But I can't understand what the relationships between them are. Apparently they don't require each other (dependencies are listed as optional) but it's not clear to me what this implies: do they work together doing different things or are they alternative to each others or conflict with each other or what?

At the moment I only have pm-utils (+upower) installed. Do I also need acpi and/or acpid? And what about laptop-mode-tools: is this kind of supervisor of all the other tools? If so, should I configure only laptop-mode-tools or also each of the other tools separately? How do they interact with lm-sensors and cpufreq?

In addition to this, there is XFCE Power Manager, which seems to be unrelated to any of the above tools, as it works even if they are not installed. So my question is again, if I install the others will they conflict with XFCE Power Manager? And what about the power management options included in Xscreensaver? Do they conflict or do they override the settings in XFCE Power Manager (or acpi or pm-utils)?

All I want to do really is to have an efficient use of energy:

• be able to go to standby/suspension
• don't have the fan running all the time
• don't overheat/damage the CPU and the hard drive
• turn off WiFi when in standby/suspension
• et cetera

System (ACPI.sys) is always using about 15-20% of my CPU

I have a 13" Sony Vaio laptop (model SVS13A1C5E) and I upgraded it to Windows 8 with a fresh install, after upgrading I installed Win8 drivers listed here.

Now I have a problem with the CPU usage (it drains my battery), in Task Manager I can see that the "system" process is always using 15-20% of my CPU (i7-3520M) and looks like the usage is on a single core. This is what I found by using Process Explorer, the usage comes from ACPI.sys which looks like it is generating a lot of hardware interrupts.

By doing some research I found out that should be an issue with some drivers but I don't know how to figure out which one is causing this. (Please do not tell me to "upgrade" to Windows 7)

My computer reboots when I tell it to shutdown

There are about 40 computers at work with this problem. They all have an ASUS P5KPL/1600 motherboard. They are all running SUSE Linux 11.1.

When I tell the computer to shutdown either through the UI or by issuing

shutdown -h now

in a root terminal, the computer wull shutdown for about 1 second and then powers back on again.

I have disabled all the wake on events in the BIOS just to make sure it's not an external event that's causing the computer to restart.

I've tried booting with an Ubuntu live CD to see whether the problem was with SUSE specifically. Shutting down from Ubuntu also doesn't work; the computer just restarts.

The IT guys at work tell me that the same machines (machines with the same motherboard) power down fine when Windows XP is installed.

If I boot the computer, enter the BIOS and save without making any changes, on the next reboot the computer will shutdown and stay off when told to do so from either SUSE or Ubuntu. After that, it goes back to rebooting every time it's suppose to shutdown.

Any ideas as to why I can't power them down with Linux?

Laptop sleep: How to go into S3 easily?

Laptop: Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Pi-3525
OS: Vista

When my laptop is plugged in and I close the lid, it goes into S1 sleep. This means that there is still:

• fan noise (annoying when trying to sleep at night)
• lots of power consumed (so if I then unplug the laptop and toss it in the bag, by the time I'm at school it's already drained and beeping ominously).

What I want is S3 sleep, it solves both problems.

I've found a roundabout way to go into S3 sleep:

• Unplug laptop
• Close lid (or click Sleep in Start menu)
• Plug laptop back in if needed

The question: How do I force Windows to use always use S3 sleep when I close the lid?

One thing I've tried is: dumppo admin minsleep=s3 (dumppo from here)
Afterwards running just dumppo admin confirms that minsleep has been set, but closing the lid still goes into S1. Also, after a reboot, minsleep is reset to s1. I think dumppo is incompatible with Vista... MCE Standby Tool was recommended as a Vista-compatible alternative to dumppo, but it doesn't have any effect either.

I looked in the BIOS settings, but there are no settings relating to ACPI sleeps/suspends there.

What does an ACPI BIOS configure during boot?

When a PC boots with an ACPI BIOS, what does it exactly do?

I understand that the point of ACPI is to allow the OS to control hardware resources and power management but before the OS is loaded does ACPI configure just the devices needed to boot and then let the OS configure the rest?

If the OS wants to re-asign hardware resources does it store this information in the ACPI tables so that the next time the system is booted it assigns them how the OS wants?

The ACPI driver asks the PCI bus driver (Pci.sys) to enumerate devices on its bus once the OS is loaded, how are these devices configured whilst the PC is booting when it doesn't have other bus drivers?

Any help with any of the above questions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

How can I tell Windows or Linux to put a specific (PCI[e]) device into sleep/off (D3) state?

How can I tell Windows or Linux to power a specific device (e.g. USB controller, network card, video card) down, that is put it in the D3 state? From the very little I know about ACPI and such, the operating system has control over this, as it puts devices in said D3 state (if supported) for example when putting the computer into sleep (S3) mode. I am wondering if there is a way to do this manually for certain devices.

For Linux I found this thread, suggesting enabling the driver to control the power of the device using e.g.

 echo -n "auto" > /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/power/control' 

and then unloading the driver:

 echo -n "0000:00:02.0" > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/i915/unbind

so that the device will sleep.

Is there another way? Perhaps to emulate what happens when the whole system is put to sleep mode?

Additionally, how would this work in Windows 7?

What is acpitz-virtual?

lm-sensors gives the following output for this machine:

acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:       +60.0°C  (crit = +105.0°C)                  
temp2:       +56.0°C  (crit = +105.0°C)                  
temp3:       +35.3°C  (crit = +105.0°C)                  
temp4:       +75.0°C  (crit = +110.0°C)                  
temp5:       +65.0°C  (crit = +256.0°C)                  
temp6:       +63.0°C  (crit = +105.0°C)                  

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 0:      +66.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)  

coretemp-isa-0001
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 1:      +66.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C) 

I would like to know what the acpitz-virtual sensor is. It seems to be some sort of replication of acpi thermal zones but /proc/acpi only contains

ac_adapter
battery
button
event
wakeup

so there don't seem to be any temperature sensors. Can somebody make sense of this?

Keyboard doesn't work after Windows resume from sleep (S3) -- how to fix?

I have a weird issue with my keyboard after resuming from S3 sleep: I can type perfectly for maybe 5 seconds, but afterwards the keyboard ceases to work until I hibernate or restart (or sleep again -- see below.) The rest of my system runs just fine -- just the keyboard apparently "freezes" up.

Some closer observations:

1. The keyboard will work for 5 seconds (and freeze again) every time I resume from sleep, even if it was frozen from a previous sleep
2. The caps lock light will work fine within the 5 seconds. But after the keyboard "freezes", the light will remain on, but I'll be unable to turn it off. Perhaps this means power wasn't cut off from the keyboard, but it's just some software freezing up the port???

Given this info, would this indicate a problem with Windows itself? Drivers, maybe? Can I rule out the BIOS as the culprit? Finally, any ideas on how to fix? Thanks!

Specs:
Windows 7 x64
HP tx1000 laptop

will boot command params acpi=off or acpi=noirq ruin my hardware?

Dell xps 15z here. Really, really trying to install linux distro to dual boot from.

first goto is bt. cant even get past 'initramfs live media filesystem not found' on usb boot.

next was ubuntu, fedora..may try gentoo

Im learning it is not a distro problem. it is a hardware problem.

with ubuntu i can get boot. i havent tried the install yet, because i need acpi=off to get boot success.

my question is will boot params acpi=off or acpi=noirq burn out my hardware if im driving in the linux distro all day everyday?