Not all power profiles work on all cards, and in some cases, some modes might even cause crashes. This is not frequent, and in case it happens to you, you should file a bug at freedesktop.org. This is just to alert you that YMMV when using this extension. You can read more about power profiles here.
##This small extension will allow you to change the power profile of your radeon card when using the open source drivers.
Since the "dynpm" mode does not work correctly for many Radeons, it is useful to have an alternative that you can control manually. This extension is exactly for that and it is in my opinion a more elegant solution than using shell scripts. The code still needs some restructuring, but for now it basically does the job. This extension supports setups with multiple cards, just make sure that you apply the usage instructions to both "card0" and "card1".
##Usage instructions:
To use this extension you need:
- A Radeon card that supports power profiles - r1xx and up;
- To be running the open source drivers;
- Make sure that /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_method is set to profile;
- Optional:
- Set the permissions of /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile to be writable by your user (by default only root can change these values);
- chmod a+w /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile will work, but feel free to use any other method;
- to make the changes permanent don't forget to add the chmod line to your rc.local or equivalent in your distro (If your /etc/rc.local contains an exit 0 line, then the chmod line has to be placed before it);
- if you are using systemd, you can create /etc/tmpfiles.d/radeon-power-profile.conf with the following line:
- w /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile 0666 - - - mid;
- this will change the permissions of power_profile so that any user can change the profile;
- If you do not do this, the extension will attempt to use polkit and ask for your password every time you change the profile.
##Credits:
The code for this extension was written using gnome-shell-extension-tool and most of the code was based on the "simple todo list" from bsaleil (https://github.com/bsaleil/todolist-gnome-shell-extension). Big thanks to you! The icons were created by Todd-partridge (https://github.com/Gen2ly) and slightly modified by myself. The polkit approach was blatantly taken form gpiemont (https://github.com/gpiemont/shell-extension-nouveau-perflvl-switcher) who had based his extension on mine and applied some great ideas to it - some of which I have now backported. =-) Open source is awesome.
##License: This software is licensed under the GPLv2.