battery drain on suspend and frozen panel apps

[Phil_54]

I have been using Vanilladpup9.20 for 3 weeks and am very happy mostly. Thank you for your work on this. A few issues though.

1. Suspend works with suspend.sh or laptop lid close ok, but if I leave laptop (old chromebook) overnight the battery is empty. This does not happen on my base system galliumos (barely loses a few percent), nor on KLV_Airedale which I sometimes use. I can hear no drive activity, and bluetooth is off, so am unable to determine what processes are running. Sleep state is [deep].

2. On a few occasions, while browsing and viewing files and generally not doing much, the apps in the side panel and top panel are unresponsive, although the auto disappearing sidepanel comes out when cursor moves to side. Also by right clicking for applications menu, none of the apps in the menu open up. I can't launch terminal from keyboard so can't run htop. I have to restart. I cannot think what it is I have done to cause this.

3. Xlock sometimes seems fussy. Sometimes it doesn't accept first or second password input. Is there any way to disable xlock, without removing it (if that were possible) or is there a better alternative?

[Clarity]

Like @Phil_54 I have had this problem-item #2, above, across the current spectrum of Vanillas.

In summary when I do get to the desktop on this v9.20, v10..57.XORG, and DWL; at some point (early/late) the apps become unresponsive forcing a powered shutoff in my cases. In all cases, this happens on pristine RAM only boots.

FYI as Vanilla continues refining.

[dimkr]

1. Suspend works with suspend.sh or laptop lid close ok, but if I leave laptop (old chromebook) overnight the battery is empty. This does not happen on my base system galliumos (barely loses a few percent), nor on KLV_Airedale which I sometimes use.

Can you try a development build of 10.0.x from https://vanilla-dpup.github.io/, please? I want to understand if it's a problem with certain kernel versions or not. 10.0.x is still not suitable for daily use but I'd like to know if this problem is sensitive to kernel versions. I do know that some distros have Chromebook specific kernels, built from the (patched) Chrome OS kernel source, and I'd like to know if this particular model needs any of those.

Also, do you use the latest Chrome OS firmware?

2. On a few occasions, while browsing and viewing files and generally not doing much, the apps in the side panel and top panel are unresponsive, although the auto disappearing sidepanel comes out when cursor moves to side. Also by right clicking for applications menu, none of the apps in the menu open up. I can't launch terminal from keyboard so can't run htop. I have to restart. I cannot think what it is I have done to cause this.

Can you share /var/log/messages and the output of dmesg?

3. Xlock sometimes seems fussy. Sometimes it doesn't accept first or second password input. Is there any way to disable xlock, without removing it (if that were possible) or is there a better alternative?

xlock is definitely stupid and I already fixed years-old, xlock-related issues in Puppy:

https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/woof-CE/pull/3192
https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/woof-CE/pull/2953

However, I prefer not to dig more into xlock because it's X-only and I'd rather focus on polishing Vanilla Dpup 10.0.x instead.

If you want to replace xlock with something else, you can modify /usr/sbin/puplock.

[Phil_54]

@dimkr
1. Downloaded 10.0.63 iso and will install and run today and leave overnight. Report back tomorrow. Edit: After 3 hours battery dropped from 99% to 41% while on suspend. I could try other variants if you think that worth while. I have used X.org iso.
1a. I don't think I changed firmware when removing chromeos and installing galliumos. Mr.Chromebox website suggested Haswell chromebook didn't require update. Maybe I might benefit, but I have had so few issues on GalliumOS, didn't think I needed it. 99% of personal use is browsing/email. Runs wine and some windows games/apps ok.
2. Attached messages and dmesg output, though content is beyond me to interpret. Not compressed. Remove .gz from filename.
3. I'll live with xlock for now. Don't like changing too many things at once.

Thanks so much for this distro. I like its small install size and ease of integration with chromebook keyboard and portable browser from mikewalsh. Please keep developing.
I get fastest boot on KLV_Airedale running from sdcard ~35 secs, but most other 64bit frugal distros and puppies boot in 60 secs.

[dimkr]

@Phil_54 Are you absolutely sure the suspend problem doesn't happen on KLV? As far as I'm aware, the 5.9.11 kernel it uses is identical to the one currently used by Vanilla Dpup 10.0.x development builds.

[Phil_54]

I'll check tomorrow. I recall there was some drain but I didn't think it severe, but memory poor. I'll report back.

[Phil_54]

Ran KLV_Airedale for 3 hours so far. 96% to 93%. Will leave on standby now overnight. Off to bed.
Update:
11 hours later it was on 87%.
This was in beta 19, with kernel 5.16.14-KLV.
Happy to try anything you suggest might throw some light on battery drain issue. Is there a way to log what processes are still running during suspend?

Please don't put time into resolving this if it gets in the way of general development. It could be just my chromebook that is the issue.

update2
Installed an ran latest ScPup64, and tried suspend. 100% to 63% in just under 3 hours. So maybe this is a puppy thing on my chromebook.