On Sun, 2007-08-19 at 01:15 +0200, Bart Samwel wrote: > Hi Ross, > > > This package depends on a number of hardware-specific packages > > (radeontool, toshset). Shouldn't those be "recommends" or "suggests" > > rather than "depends" relations? > > No, not really. The trouble is that this package is installed by default > on laptops, and that it's supposed to make laptops "just work". If > anybody gets it into their heads to not install "recommends" packages, > then the package will no longer work as intended. And there's no proper > way for the package to complain. > > See also: #410918, #434566. Sorry I missed that: I was looking at acpid bug reports. Yes, this is basically the same issue.
Does the anticipated (or has it happened?) transition of aptitude to install recommends by default change the need to make these "depends"? Also, it seems cleaner to me to make a meta-package that will pull in all the dependencies. Or perhaps they could go directly in the laptop task, since that already is a metapackage. > > > I'm also puzzled by the presence of xbase-clients, and wonder if > > laptop-detect is essential. > > > > I'm running on server. I'm not sure if acpi is going to do me any > > good; my motherboard (Intel 945PSN) definitely claims to support it > > and to have low power modes. Intel support had nothing useful to say > > about using it under Linux. I'd appreciate any clues on using acpi > > in this configuration as well (though that's not really part of the > > bug). > > The acpi-support package is primarily intended for laptops. For laptops, > battery life is essential. And for power saving on laptops, setting > things like screen brightness, DPMS timeouts etc. is definitely > essential. This explains the reasons for depending on xbase-clients and > laptop-detect. What if someone wants to use a laptop in text only mode? > If you want to run acpi-support on a server system, it > will normally do no harm, but it won't do much good either. I was afraid of that. > Do you want > to use it to go into suspend mode or something like that? If you want to > save power on a server, you might be interested in something like > laptop-mode-tools, by itself, without acpi-support. But please, > enlighten me about your needs. I'm quite willing to think along. :-) Thanks for the tip. In response to your later message, this message struck me as helpful, not sarcastic. I'm trying to do my bit to fight global warming--without turning my computer off. There several things I'm hoping for. The simplest is to be able to put the computer into low-power or even suspend mode manually. One question is how to wake it from this state. My motherboard can do a wake triggered by the ethernet card; that way I could recieve emails, serve web pages, etc as needed. But it would be nice to be able to wake it in person (hit the power key? the keyboard or mouse?). The next trick would be for it to go into a low power state automatically. I thought this "just worked," but I suspect it doesn't work too much--I'm not even sure if my CPU and other components throttle down when they are idle. My screen does blank, at least (using KDE). Finally, from what I can tell some of the sleep modes essentially turn things off. But I have stuff I like to do overnight, like run backups. I would like it if those continued to work, either because the machine wasn't really asleep or because it woke up at a set time. My motherboard doesn't appear to support a timed wakeup. Maybe I could do something via my UPS, but it's pretty dumb. This is obviously wandering beyond a bug, but if you have any thoughts or pointers that would be great. I've skimmed the ACPI spec, but things are still a bit fuzzy. If there are good answers to how to do power saving on a server, it might be good for README.Debian (or the package description). But perhaps this isn't the right package for it. I'll have a look at laptop-mode-tools. I hadn't thought to use it, because the package description makes it sound as if it's only for laptops. As I said, I'm not sure how much power-saving I'm getting now, nor how much better I can do. I hope Debian and Linux can move toward making this automatic. Ross -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
