unix laptop question: closing the lid

Wed Jan 29 15:47:10 PST 2003

What happens when the lid closes is normally a BIOS setting.

I've used a very old Thinkpad 720 as a server in exactly the way you want.

I've had success with Linux when the kernel has been built with APM. You'll
also want to turn on the power saving feature of CONFIG_APM_DISPLAY_BLANK.  
Either switch away from X or don't run it.  You should then be able to close
the lid and it will blank some time later (a BIOS setting controlled this
value as well).

If you don't want the disk to run all the time, then either use the BIOS to
set the idle timeout or use "hdparm".  I've found that shutting disks down
doesn't work well with journaling filesystem (they keep spinning the disk
up), I think there *used* to be special code in Linux's ext2 to not sync if
only the superblock timestamp was to be updated.  I don't know if this is
still true.  Oh, yeah - also mount the FS "noatime" so that cached file
accesses won't cause a disk write.

Caveat:  my ThinkPad is/was very old - a folding keyboard type with only a
486SX processor!  This stuff may not work as well on newer more "fancy"  
hardware.

Good luck,

Simon.

On Wed, 29 Jan 2003, Strata Rose Chalup wrote:

> 
> Hi folks,
> 
> Can anyone point me to an easy way to have BSD or Linux running on
> a laptop and *not* go to sleep or hibernate when the lid is closed?
> 
> Here in our motorhome, space is at a premium, and cats roam all
> horizontal surfaces.  Thus re-using my old laptop as a server requires
> that the lid be kept closed.  Sure, I could break off the plastic
> flanges that activate the "lid is closed" microswitch, but I would
> really rather not trash the laptop.  Of course, if the screen is on
> all the time with the lid closed, that generates quite a bit of
> heat from the backlighting, so I need a way to lie to APM and have
> it turn off the screen for me, too.
> 
> The laptop in question is a Thinkpad 770.  I haven't decided for 
> sure if I am going to run NetBSD or RedHat on it.  I'll be 
> administering it via the local LAN.
> 
> thanks much,
> Strata
> 
> 