[tesla-dev] powertop: new option, non-priv user, code cleanup

[Rafael Vanoni]

Eric Saxe wrote:
> Hi Rafael,
> 
> The man page looks good. Here's some more comments:
> 
> "    PowerTOP averages the amount of activity that is preventing the CPU 
> from
>    entering a lower power state and presents it on the "Wakeups-from-idle
>    per second" field. This value represents the total number of events
>    divided by the current interval. Notice that not all events are
>    displayed on the screen at all times."
> 
> Actually, because all firing cyclics are displayed (without -i), does 
> the value represent
> the number of times a CPU awoke from a lower power idle state?

No, and I would even like to change "Wakeups-from-idle" to something 
like "Events" or "Activity". IMHO, "Wakeups" is misleading.

> "
>    If running as root (superuser), the tool will make suggestions as how
>    the system can be improved from a power management perspective."
> 
> root..or are the specific privileges that would work?

Only root, as the only supported suggestion at the moment is enabling PM 
on /etc/power.conf. Don't remember which group is able to modify it, but 
maybe we can change it to groupid. Would that be the right approach ?

thanks
Rafael