[linux-elitists] Simplest power management problem

[Chris Ball]

>> On Tue, 22 Aug 2006 16:52:41 -0700, Don Marti <dmarti@zgp.org> said:

   > Question about power management: What if you don't want to turn the
   > device back on again?  Say you have a motherboard with three
   > different kinds of storage connections and you only have one hooked
   > up, sound hardware you don't listen to because it's in the server
   > room, and USB and VGA you'll only use if you're booted in single
   > user mode for extreme live nude recovery.  What devices can you
   > turn off and forget about?

You can easily turn off all of the above with `rmmod`, providing they've
been built as modules, and you can go farther -- CPU and memory hotplug
support are in newer kernels.  (If you have a dual-core machine and
are feeling particularly gratuitious, you can virtually unplug a CPU.)

The one exception to your list, and it's not really an exception, is VGA
-- X decides whether it's pushing something down the graphics pipe, and
getting it to change its mind might involve having to restart it. 
There's some very neat monitor plug-and-play support on the way[1],
though.

- Chris.

[1]:  http://anholt.livejournal.com/33690.html
-- 
Chris Ball   <cjb@mrao.cam.ac.uk>    <http://blog.printf.net/>