Changes/TunedReplacesPower-profiles-daemon

Tuned Replaces Power-profiles-daemon

This is a rejected Change proposal for Fedora Linux.
This document represents a proposed Change that has been rejected or withdrawn as part of the Changes process. This page is preserved for historical record.

Summary

Tuned and power-profiles-daemon provide a similar function to set and tune the power status of a system. Both of them have similar features, if they can be integrated into one, it allows the fedora user to have more options for power settings of their system and benefits the users. In this proposal, we set up tuned to be the default power profile management daemon for the Fedora workstation, including GNOME and KDE plasma. Tuned already provides power profiles for different use cases. Recently, tuned released the translation API layer called tuned-ppd which can translate the power-profiles-daemon API to tuned. The applications that use power-profiles-daemon API can access tuned without modifying the code. For now, the Fedora user can immediately switch to tuned by installing the tuned-ppd package without impacting the user experience. Therefore, tuned can be the default power profile management daemon for Fedora.

Owner

• Name: Kate Hsuan, Jaroslav Škarvada
• Email: <hpa@redhat.com>, <jskarvad@redhat.com>

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora Linux 41
• Last updated: 2024-05-02
• Announced
• Discussion thread
• FESCo issue: #3103
• Tracker bug: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>
• Release notes tracker: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>

Detailed Description

This work would replace power-profiles-daemon (power-profiles-daemon) with tuned. Since tuned already provides a wide range of power profiles for different purposes, this allows the user to have more options for configuring the system power profile. As far as we know, tuned provides many kinds of advanced and basic profiles for different purposes. Power-profiles-daemon provides the basic power profiles and the profiles can be set to the system through platform_profiles, Intel p-state and AMD p-state. That is simple and clever. However, if the users want to ask for an advanced profile, they need to install another power utility, such as tuned to fine-tune their system. If tuned can be the default power profile management daemon, the users would have a wide range of profiles to fine-tune the system.

Tuned released a new translation API service called tuned-ppd . tuned-ppd can translate the power-profiles-daemon API to tuned API so the application can talk with tuned without modifying the codes. Moreover, the GUI settings, such as gnome-control-center can configure tuned profile through tuned-ppd. tuned-ppd also allows the user to override the basic three power profiles, including power-saver, balanced, and performance through the config file /etc/tuned/ppd.conf . If the user wants to use a customized profile, they can edit the config file and map the custom profile to the basic three power-profiles-daemon profile names. In this way, gnome-control-center can keep the original design to configure the customized profile.

The work expects the tuned to replace the power-profiles-daemons to offer a wide range of power profiles to the fedora users. tuned-ppd resolved the API translation issue so the application can access tuned service through power-profiles-daemon API without converting to tuned API. Moreover, tuned allows the three profiles to be overridden with custom power profiles if the user wants to use custom profiles for the specific use cases. It also benefits GNOME applications that can keep the original design and designing a new GUI tool for custom profiles is unnecessary. Therefore, tuned can be the default power setting service for Fedora.

Feedback

From fedora-devel

https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/B3UJKFOCRAY3BEEPTHVPW4RY5GFBZWHU/#B3UJKFOCRAY3BEEPTHVPW4RY5GFBZWHU

1. The dependency concern. Since tuned is written by Python, that causes a dependency impact on Fedora installation.

2. The power-profiles-daemon API should be ported to tuned to provide the function to the application that uses power-profiles-daemon API, such as gnome-shell and gnome-control-center.

From the hardware vendor

Moreover, we discuss it with vendors through the mail.

1. Since tuned covers several kinds of system tuning schemes that allow the vendor to implement their power profile for different devices or workloads. For power-profile-daemon, it only has three profiles to set and every detail setting should be done through the firmware level. If tuned can replace power-profiles-daemon, they can imagine they can develop the profile in a much more flexible manner.

Benefit to Fedora

1. Benefits the user. The user would have more options to tune their system.

2. Benefits the maintainer. Integrate similar software into one software to reduce the maintenance effort.

Scope

• Proposal owners:

• Other developers:

• Release engineering: #Releng issue number

• Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)

• Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)

• Alignment with Community Initiatives:

Upgrade/compatibility impact

Since tuned-ppd provides the ppd APIs and features, there is no impact on other applications.

How To Test

1. Install tuned and tuned-ppd through the following command
$ sudo dnf install tuned $ sudo dnf install tuned-ppd

2. Run gnome-control-center and switch to the power panel and then select one of the three power profiles. Click the top-right corner of the screen and you can see the “Power Mode” shows the profiles name that you selected previously. 3. Run the following command to show the active profile. Since tuned-adm shows the tuned profile name, the profile name mapping can be found in /etc/tuned/ppd.conf. $ tuned-adm active

User Experience

1. The workstation user can set the power profile through the gnome-control-center.

2. The server users switch the profile through the tuend command line.

Dependencies

1. tuned is written by Python so it depends on python packages and its 40 packages.

Contingency Plan

• Contingency mechanism: (What to do? Who will do it?) N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Use the original power-profiles-daemon

• Contingency deadline: N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Before F41 beta freeze.

• Blocks release? N/A (not a System Wide Change), Yes/No

No, tuned-ppd provides all the ppd APIs otherwise the original power-profile-daemon can be used.

Documentation

I have talked with tuned about this information. https://github.com/redhat-performance/tuned/issues/559

N/A (not a System Wide Change)