monitoringpower-managementsoftware-recommendation
The powertop program shows the power usage, but only after about five minutes. Before that, it shows:
no ACPI power usage estimate available
That's one of the limitations of the powertop program. What program is recommended for reliably monitoring the power usage? Is it possible to get a power usage history similar to the memory usage history in the System Monitor as well?
The closest I could find is memtop, a Python script available here on Google Code.
Screenshot:
sudo mv memtop-1.0.0.py /usr/bin/memtop.py and a chmod +x /path/to/memtop.py to make it executable-p 1 to make it 1 minute, etc. (can't go lower than that unless you modify the source)-l N, where N is the number of processes you want to show, depending on the size of your terminal.-m to show "more" information, i.e. the Swap/Page stats at the bottom of the screenshot.If you don't use htop otherwise, it's pretty easy to set it up with the F2-setup option to look like memtop:
~/.config/htop/htoprc, so just delete htoprc to restore normal htop.On my machine, I was able to have the machine suspend after inactivity by modifying the file
/usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.upower.policy/org.freedesktop.upower.policy and set
<defaults>
<allow_inactive>yes</allow_inactive>
<allow_active>yes</allow_active>
</defaults>
I hope this helps
Best Answer
As you surmised in your comment the limitation is not with the software but with your battery not reporting correctly.
To clarify these software tools below will only measure power consumption on laptops when running on battery. For desktop or server machines the only current solution is an electronic watt-meter that plugs into the mains socket.
Power Statistics
In Ubuntu Precise 12.04 there is a new power statistics history window. This can be accessed by clicking the battery item in the application indicator menu then selecting Latop Battery tab.
Powertop
As mentioned by the OP this program provides information on per process/device power usage.
Powerstat
Another alternative that measures process/device power usage is powerstat that was written for Ubuntu by Colin King. There is a detailed review of its features on hecticgeek.com.
It can be installed from the PPA:
ppa:colin-king/powermanagement