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POWERD(8)		  BSD System Manager's Manual		     POWERD(8)

NAME
     powerd -- system power control utility

SYNOPSIS
     powerd [-a	mode] [-b mode]	[-i percent] [-n mode] [-p ival] [-r percent]
	    [-v]

DESCRIPTION
     The powerd	utility	monitors the system state and sets various power con-
     trol options accordingly.	It offers three	modes (maximum,	minimum, and
     adaptive) that can	be individually	selected while on AC power or batter-
     ies.

     Maximum mode chooses the highest performance values.  Minimum mode	se-
     lects the lowest performance values to get	the most power savings.	 Adap-
     tive mode attempts	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.  The default mode is adaptive.

     The powerd	utility	recognizes the following runtime options:

     -a	mode	 Selects the mode to use while on AC power.

     -b	mode	 Selects the mode to use while on battery power.

     -i	percent	 Specifies the CPU idle	percent	level when adaptive mode
		 should	begin to degrade performance to	save power.  The de-
		 fault is 90% or higher.

     -n	mode	 Selects the mode to use normally when the AC line state is
		 unknown.

     -p	ival	 Specifies a different polling interval	(in milliseconds) for
		 AC line state and system idle levels.	The default is 500 ms.

     -r	percent	 Specifies the CPU idle	percent	level where adaptive mode
		 should	consider the CPU running and increase performance.
		 The default is	65% or lower.

     -v		 Verbose mode.	Messages about power changes will be printed
		 to stdout and powerd will operate in the foreground.

SEE ALSO
     acpi(4), apm(4), cpufreq(4)

HISTORY
     The powerd	utility	first appeared in FreeBSD 5.5.

AUTHORS
     Colin Percival first wrote	estctrl, the utility that powerd is based on.
     Nate Lawson then updated it for cpufreq(4), added features, and wrote
     this manual page.

BUGS
     The powerd	utility	should also power down idle disks and other components
     besides the CPU.

     If	powerd is used with power_profile, they	may override each other.

     The powerd	utility	should probably	use the	devctl(4) interface instead of
     polling for AC line state.

BSD				April 10, 2005				   BSD

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | SEE ALSO | HISTORY | AUTHORS | BUGS

Want to link to this manual page? Use this URL:
<https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=powerd&sektion=8&manpath=FreeBSD+6.0-RELEASE>

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