I have the 14" 700Z3A-S01US model and I managed to get battery life to around 4-4.5 hours under Linux Mint (should be the same for Ubuntu) by only using the integrated graphics and disabling the ati discrete card (which was acceptable for my purposes). I originally wanted to get both working using switcheroo, but after messing with it for nearly a week I finally gave up. Switcheroo was turned on and I could pass it commands but it never actually powered down either of the graphics cards and the fan was spinning on max when I was just idling.
My solution was to uninstall any ati and fglrx driver, blacklist the radeon kernel module, and finally install a custom module that powers down the ati card using acpi.
Here is how to acomplish that...
1) Uninstall the ATI driver / fglrx from the software manager.
2) Edit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf and add "blacklist radeon" at the bottom. This will prevent the kernel from loading any radeon drivers and will in turn stop switcheroo from loading since there is only one graphics card driver loaded.
3) I modified a kernel module I originally found for a lenovo laptop that I had the same issue with. Save this file as "ati_acpi.c"
Code:
/* Linux kernel module that disables the discrete graphics board for Lenovo
* U330. Other lenovo laptops could work, but I don't know.
*
* Copyright (c) 2009: Sylvain Joyeux <sylvain.joyeux@m4x.org>
*/
#include <acpi/acpi.h>
MODULE_LICENSE("GPL");
static acpi_handle root_handle;
static int __init kill_ati(void)
{
int i;
acpi_status status;
// The device handle
acpi_handle handle;
// The package elements
union acpi_object package_elements[3];
// The arguments to ATPX
union acpi_object atpx_arg_elements[2];
struct acpi_object_list atpx_arg;
// For the return value of ATPX
struct acpi_buffer buffer = { ACPI_ALLOCATE_BUFFER, NULL };
status = acpi_get_handle(root_handle, "\\_SB.PCI0.PEG0.PEGP._OFF", &handle);
if (ACPI_FAILURE(status))
{
status = acpi_get_handle(root_handle, "\\_SB.PCI0.PEG0.GFX0._OFF", &handle);
if (ACPI_FAILURE(status))
{
printk("lenovo_acpi: cannot get ACPI handle: %s\n", acpi_format_exception(status));
return -ENOSYS;
}
printk("lenovo_acpi: in discrete graphics mode\n");
return 0;
}
for (i = 0; i < 3; ++i)
{
package_elements[i].type = ACPI_TYPE_INTEGER;
package_elements[i].integer.value = 0;
}
atpx_arg.count = 2;
atpx_arg.pointer = &atpx_arg_elements[0];
atpx_arg_elements[0].type = ACPI_TYPE_INTEGER;
atpx_arg_elements[0].integer.value = 2;
atpx_arg_elements[1].type = ACPI_TYPE_PACKAGE;
atpx_arg_elements[1].package.count = 3;
atpx_arg_elements[1].package.elements = &package_elements[0];
status = acpi_evaluate_object(handle, NULL, &atpx_arg, &buffer);
if (ACPI_FAILURE(status))
{
printk("lenovo_acpi: ATPX method call failed: %s\n", acpi_format_exception(status));
return -ENOSYS;
}
kfree(buffer.pointer);
printk("lenovo_acpi: disabled the discrete graphics card\n");
return 0;
}
static void dummy(void)
{
}
module_init(kill_ati);
module_exit(dummy);
Save this file as "Makefile"
Code:
ifneq ($(KERNELRELEASE),)
obj-m := ati_acpi.o
else
KERNELDIR ?= /lib/modules/$(shell uname -r)/build
PWD := $(shell pwd)
default:
$(MAKE) -C $(KERNELDIR) M=$(PWD) $(EXTRA_FLAGS) modules
clean:
$(MAKE) -C $(KERNELDIR) M=$(PWD) $(EXTRA_FLAGS) clean
endif
Finally, run the following commands...
Code:
make
sudo cp ati_acpi.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/
sudo depmod
echo ati_acpi | sudo tee -a /etc/modules > /dev/null
That will build and install the kernel module. Next time you reboot the discrete card should be disabled, your fan should actually slow down, and battery life should double. Using powertop both before and after this I went from ~33W to ~15W on battery.
If you have any problems with the kernel module (black screen, crashing, etc) all you need to do is edit /etc/modules from a live cd and remove or comment out the line "ati_apci" and it will stop loading the module on boot.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
