[mythtv-users] Quick-boot linux?

[Ronald Frazier]

> I'm trying to achieve a low-power system too.
>
> Suspend to RAM... does this mean it's drawing a limited amount of power just
> to keep the system alive? A bit like hibernate?

It's pretty minimal. Maybe 2 watts usage at most. In my case, my
kill-a-watt meter only shows it consuming 1 watt more than the normal
2 watts it consumes when powered down. The kill a watt is bad at
measuring really tiny wattages, however, so I can't be precise. It
could only use 1/4 watt, could be 2 or 3 watts. Hard to say, but it's
very minimal in either case.

As far as lower power for the overall system, it might help if you
definied your goals.

My frontend is diskless. I have a dedicated backend server that serves
up an nfs mount so the frontend can do a pxe boot. I'm using a gigabye
GA-73PVM-S2H motherbaord with a Core 2 Due E4500. The entire system
uses under 35 watts at idle (again...I have no hard drive), and around
55 watts with both cores at 100%. It has an onboard nvidia 7100
graphics chip with vga, dvi, and hdmi outputs. A lot of the hardware
is new, so it only has driver support on the latest kernels (2.6.23
and up) and currently only has beta graphics drivers from nvidia
(though they work great for me). The only problem is that the nic
drivers don't play well with suspend to ram, so they need to be
disabled before suspending and then restarted after wakeup. Thats not
a problem if you have a hard drive in the system (I've tried it and it
works great) however thats not so useful for a diskless system. I had
to throw a PCI network card in to get it to work diskless.

-- 
Ron