[Mageia-discuss] Why would runlevel 3 take more power?

[Norman Carver]

On Monday, October 03, 2011 12:33:14 PM Liam R E Quin wrote:
> You could check with powertop. If you're measuring (e.g. via ssh from
> another system) when the system is inactive, it might be that the video
> driver for X turns the video card into a power-saving mode when it's
> idle, and the console driver isn't doing that.
> 
> Are you including the display in your measurement? How exactly are you
> measuring?

Using powertop to try to see what is using power is a good idea, thanks.

I was using a power meter that reads the power being drawn from the
outlet by the computer.

Readings were being made while I had a monitor hooked up and being
used, so video card could not have been inactive.

I was interested in idle power draw, so not doing anything (and waited
for draw to stabilize after boot, login, etc.).  top shows cpus as around
98% idle even when in runlevel 5, but the X11 process is one of the
top cpu users so odd that eliminating it would cause power increase.
Norm