Frequently Asked Questions

Please read through these common questions and answers before emailing the mailing list.

Please do email the mailing list if you want to change or add items to this page, thanks!

My monitor is broken and treats DPMS standby and off states as 'no-signal' which leaves the monitor powered on.

You have to change the dpms suspend mode gnome-power-manager uses. Open gconf-editor, and then change the keys /apps/gnome-power-manager/ac_dpms_sleep_method and /apps/gnome-power-manager/battery_dpms_sleep_method to one of the modes that work, e.g. standby, suspend or off.

I've set the computer inactive timeout to one minute and it still takes longer than that to suspend.

gnome-screensaver is a session daemon that monitors user input, and if the mouse has not been moved, or the keyboard been pressed then it starts a timeout. When the value of this timeout reaches the value set in gnome-screensaver-preferences, then the login is marked as 'session idle'. This is when GNOME Power Manager performs all the session idle actions such as enabling low-power mode and lowering the laptop panel brightness.

As soon as the session is marked at idle, GNOME Power Manager starts it's own 'system' timer. When the timeout set in gnome-power-preferences is reached, and the CPU load is idle, then the idle action is performed, which is usually to turn off the screen, or to suspend or hibernate.

The sliders in gnome-power-preferences are set to start at the value of the session-timout + 1 minute, as we cannot logically trigger before the session is marked as idle. If you adjust the value of the 'session idle' timeout in gnome-screensaver-preferences then the start of the sliders in gnome-power-preferences will change accordingly. This makes it more obvious for new users.

My time to discharge is always incorrect due to a faulty battery, what can I do?

You might be able to use the percentage charge for g-p-m to use as the policy data. Open gconf-editor, and then change the key /apps/gnome-power-manager/use_time_for_policy to false. You can do this easily by doing:

gconftool-2 --set --type bool /apps/gnome-power-manager/use_time_for_policy false This should get the policy actions working for you, but of course the time remaining will still be incorrect.

How do I make my application stop the computer auto-suspending?

If your application is doing a long operation, you might want to disable the ability to suspend for a little while. You should use this method if you really don't want the user to be able to suspend, or for the computer to save power by hibernating or suspending during: * Copying files in Nautilus * Doing a long kernel compile or Matlab simulation * During a SELinux relabel * Many others...

Then you can use the Inhibit() and UnInhibit() DBUS methods built into the newest versions of gnome-session.

Can I get updates to the progress of GNOME Power Manager? Do you have an RSS feed?

You can get CVS updates from navi.cx in RSS format.