vaio-utils.org

Linux tools for Sony Vaio laptops

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vaiopower project homepage

Vaiopower is a tool for power management of Sony Vaio laptop devices, and it is intended for all the users who strive to extend their battery life as much as possible. Vaiopower provides a higher level interface to the power management options offered by the sony-laptop kernel module. Additionally, prior to powering a device down, vaiopower makes sure that the device has been deregistered from the system correctly, it unloads all corresponding kernel modules and stops relevant system services. After powering a device back up, vaiopower restores its previous state. Vaiopower can be invoked manually, and it is also run automatically during boot when it disables all devices set by user in /etc/vaiopower.conf.

features

• Supported devices: sound card, Bluetooth, DVD drive and WWAN adapter
• Includes a pm-utils script that maintains the power state of all devices across suspends and hibernations
• Monitoring ACPI events generated by killswitch and preserving users' settings
• Automatic powering down of selected devices at boot time configurable through /etc/vaiopower.conf
• When the laptop is placed in a docking station, the Ethernet interface in the station sometimes does not get detected. Vaiopower watches for these issues (via ACPI) and automatically fixes them.

download

supported hardware

Vaiopower uses the SNY5001 (aka Sony Notebook Control or SonyNC) ACPI device for managing DVD and sound card and SNY6001 (aka Sony Programmable I/O Control, SPIC or SonyPI) for Bluetooth and WWAN. However, not all Vaio laptops include these devices, and even if they do, they do not always provide all the functionality. Take a look into the /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/ directory to find out whether the corresponding files (cdpower, audiopower, bluetoothpower and wwanpower) are present. If some of these files are missing, then those devices cannot be managed.

• Model lines including both SNY5001 and SNY6001: PCG-C, PCG-F, PCG-GR, PCG-R, PCG-SRX, PCG-TR, VGN-A, VGN-B, VGN-S, VGN-SZ, VGN-T, VGN-TT, VGN-TX, VGN-TZ, VGN-UX, VGN-Z
• Model lines including only SNY5001: PCG-FR, PCG-K, PCG-Z, VGN-AR, VGN-BX, VGN-C, VGN-CR, VGN-CS, VGN-FE, VGN-FJ, VGN-FS, VGN-FW, VGN-FZ, VGN-N, VGN-NR, VGN-SR, VPC-CW, VPC-F
• Model lines including only SNY6001: none known
• Model lines including neither SNY5001 nor SNY6001: PCG-FX

If you have any additions (you can confirm a line either to work or not to) or corrections to this list, please submit them to the bug tracker or to the e-mail address below.

usage

Vaiopower is a command line interface tool. Typical uses look like sudo vaiopower audio off which disables the audio and powers down the sound card. See the bundled man page or run “vaiopower --help” for further details.

Additionally, vaiopower is invoked at boot time when it powers down all devices set up in /etc/vaiopower.conf. Vaiopower also runs automatically at a few ACPI events, hibernating, suspending and resuming, when it works around several glitches in Sony Vaio laptops' power management (such as network card in docking station not being initialized properly, or power states of particular devices not being preserved). Those actions take place silently in the background, and the user does not need to set up anything in this respect.

note

The functionality provided by vaiopower used to be split into four smaller scripts: vaiopower, vaioboot, vaiosleep and vaioredock. These have all been integrated into one single package.

license

Released as open source under ISC License.

Copyright © 2009–2010 David Jurenka <enable JavaScript to see e-mail>

contact

Please use the bug tracker or the above e-mail address for submitting your comments, suggestions and bug reports.