[Tfug] Re-nice... erm, and runlevels.

[John Karns]

On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 7:57 PM, JD Rogers <rogersjd at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Exactly. Here there is this pretty awesome concept, already
> implemented and standard, and yet we sorta just ignore it. What really
> kills me if how we regress. I'm not sure if it was one of my trysts
> with another distro that I'm remembering, but I remember only one
> runlevel used to start X. My debian install starts up gdm/xdm/kdm in
> all multi-user runlevels. I don't know, maybe that was never
> standardized, but I always thought that was useful.

Back when I was using SuSE several years ago, they had the runlevels
configured as mentioned in one of the messages in this thread, where
one disnabled networking - that much I seem to remember, but not much
else regarding other distinctions of the runlevel configuration.

AFAIK, Debian configures all the runlevels identically.


>>> I still feel like a runlevel should be dedicated to
>>> low-power mode for laptops whereby switching runlevels
>>> removed power-hungry modules and set certain hardware
>>> into low power mode, or standby and shutdown
>>> unneeded services that otherwise keep spinning up disks.

>> For "laptops in general"?  Or, for laptops running off
>> batteries?  (e.g., I don't like disk-intensive applications
>> running on laptop as most laptop disks are slow).
>
> I was thinking along the lines of 3 modes: AC (all services, all
> modules, full 3D, etc.. leave disks spinning so we don't wear them out
> as fast and we get quicker response times), Battery normal (spin down
> disks, go to lower power where it makes sense, but don't limit the
> available services or interface at all),  Battery airplane (shutdown
> networking, turn off all 3D, stop all services, remove modules where
> possible, basically let me work on a document or a debug code, but
> that's it). Mode 1 and 2 might be controlled by laptopmode within a
> given runlevel, or might be different runlevels, but mode 3 could be
> pretty easy to do with runlevels switching.

That would make a lot of sense!  Sounds like a great idea perhaps for
an add-on package for Debian / Ubuntu.

-- 
John