PowerTOP is a Linux* tool used to diagnose issues with power consumption and power management. In addition to being a diagnostic tool, PowerTOP also has an interactive mode you can use to experiment with various power management settings, for cases where the Linux distribution has not enabled those settings.
PowerTOP is coded in C++. It was written for Linux-based operating systems.
GNU* libc (glibc) and Linux pthreads are needed for PowerTOP to function
properly. The GNU build system (autoconf, automake, make, libtool), as
well as gettext, are required to build PowerTOP.
In addition, PowerTOP requires the following:
- kernel version => 2.6.38
ncurses-devel(required)libnl-devel(required)pciutils-devel(is only required if you have PCI)autoconf-archive(for building)
Example packages to install in Ubuntu*:
sudo apt install libpci-dev libnl-3-dev libnl-genl-3-dev gettext \
libgettextpo-dev autopoint gettext libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev libtool-bin \
dh-autoreconf autoconf-archive pkg-config
The autogen.sh script needs to be run only once to generate configure.
You need to re-run it only if the build system configuration files
(e.g. configure.ac) are modified. The remaining steps are required whenever
source files are modified.
To build PowerTOP from the cloned source, use the following commands:
./autogen.sh
./configure
make
The following sections go over basic operation of PowerTOP. This includes
kernel configuration options (or kernel patches) needed for full functionality.
Run powertop --help to see all options.
PowerTOP needs some kernel config options enabled to function properly. As of linux-3.3.0, these are (the list probably is incomplete):
CONFIG_NO_HZ
CONFIG_HIGH_RES_TIMERS
CONFIG_HPET_TIMER
CONFIG_CPU_FREQ_GOV_ONDEMAND
CONFIG_USB_SUSPEND
CONFIG_SND_AC97_POWER_SAVE
CONFIG_TIMER_STATS
CONFIG_PERF_EVENTS
CONFIG_PERF_COUNTERS
CONFIG_TRACEPOINTS
CONFIG_TRACING
CONFIG_EVENT_POWER_TRACING_DEPRECATED
CONFIG_X86_MSR
ACPI_PROCFS_POWER
CONFIG_DEBUG_FS
Use these configs from linux-3.13.rc1:
CONFIG_POWERCAP
CONFIG_INTEL_RAPL
The patches in the patches/ sub-directory are optional but enable full
PowerTOP functionality.
When PowerTOP is executed as root and without arguments, it runs in
interactive mode. In this mode, PowerTOP most resembles top.
For generating reports, or for filing functional bug reports, there are two
output modes: CSV and HTML. You can set sample times, the number of iterations,
a workload over which to run PowerTOP, and whether to include
debug-level output.
For an HTML report, execute PowerTOP with this option:
powertop --html=report.html
This creates a static report.html file, suitable for sharing.
For a CSV report, execute PowerTOP with this option:
powertop --csv=report.csv
This creates a static powertop.csv file, also suitable for sharing.
If you wish to file a functional bug report, generate and share a
debug-mode HTML report and share it, using the following command:
powertop --debug --html=report.html
Important Note: As PowerTOP is intended for privileged (root) use, your
reports-- especially when run with --debug-- will contain verbose system
information. PowerTOP does not sanitize, scrub, or otherwise anonymize its
reports. Be mindful of this when sharing reports.
Developers: If you make changes to the HTML reporting code, validate HTML output by using the W3C* Markup Validation Service and the W3C CSS Validation Service:
PowerTOP, when running on battery, tracks power consumption and activity on the system. Once there are sufficient measurements, PowerTOP can start to report power estimates for various activities. You can help increase the accuracy of the estimation by running a calibration cycle at least once:
powertop --calibrate
Calibration entails cycling through various display brightness levels (including "off"), USB device activities, and other workloads.
Our analysis teams use the Extech* Power Analyzer/Datalogger (model number 380803). PowerTOP supports this device over the serial cable by passing the device node on the command line using this command:
powertop --extech=/dev/ttyUSB0
(where ttyUSB0 is the devicenode of the serial-to-usb adapter on our system)
There are numerous ways you and your friends can contribute to PowerTOP. See
the CONTRIBUTE.md document for more details. Elevator summary: "fork, and
send PRs!".
We have a mailing list: powertop@lists.01.org:
- Subscribe at:
- Browse archives at:
If you find bugs, you can file an issue-- see CONTRIBUTE.md for further
details:
- File bugs/wishes at:
PowerTOP contains some code from other open source projects; we'd like to thank the authors of those projects for their work. Specifically, PowerTOP contains code from
Parse Event Library - Copyright 2009, 2010 Red Hat Inc Steven Rostedt <srostedt@redhat.com>
nl80211 userspace tool - Copyright 2007, 2008 Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net>
PowerTOP
Copyright (C) 2020 Intel Corporation
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; version 2.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
See COPYING file for a copy of the aforementioned (GPLv2) license.
/* SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-only */