Comments on: How do I enable laptop mode to improve Linux laptop battery life?

By: INDY

INDY — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 06:31:28 +0000

We should save changed state of value if we add vm.laptop_mode = 5 in /etc/sysctl.conf

Anyway, true way is:

show current value:
# /sbin/sysctl -n vm.laptop_mode

set value:
# /sbin/sysctl -w vm.laptop_mode=”5″

By: shirish

shirish — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 02:18:57 +0000

While its true its broken, its also due to merge not happening of laptop-mode-tools.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/laptop-mode-tools/+bug/422620

By: gunnar-eee

gunnar-eee — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 20:50:15 +0000

laptop mode is broken in Ubuntu. It keeps spinning the drive up/down at 10 second intervals, seems nobody have gotten the parameters right so it becomes usable.
I hope it becomes sorted out. Until then its off for me.

By: Casey

Casey — Tue, 26 May 2009 09:45:49 +0000

sudo bash -c “echo 5 > /proc/sys/vm/laptop_mode”

By: klez

klez — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 21:17:43 +0000

note that “sudo echo > root-owned-file” doesn’t work, since you echo as root but will still be writing via your shell, which is running as your regular user. I do realize it says ‘do this as root’ but it’s still a bit misleading. And if you’re already root, why sudo?

as non-root try:
sudo -s
echo 5 > /proc/csys/vm/laptop_mode
exit

By: Owen

Owen — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 08:37:49 +0000

Your Welcome,
I’ve ran into that problem on my blog before.

By: vivek

vivek — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 08:21:00 +0000

Owen,

Thanks for the heads up.

By: Owen

Owen — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 04:35:41 +0000

The actual command needs a > symbol in it like follows: sudo echo 5 > /proc/sys/vm/laptop_mode