this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026
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ISO Homelab Power Saving Methods [SOLVED FOR NOW] (lemmy.world)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by irmadlad@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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In an effort to make the homelab more environmentally friendly, I have started to explore ways to conserve energy consumption. I always see a lot of considerations for choosing equipment that sips power, but other than avoiding enterprise power hogs and very old equipment, I don't see a lot of advice in how to tame the server(s) you may already have.

So far I've looked at:

  • TLP: Adjusts CPU frequency scaling, PCI‑e ASPM, SATA link power‑management
  • Powertop: Used to profile power consumption and has a tune feature sudo powertop --auto-tune
  • cpufrequtils: Used to manage the CPU governor directly
  • logind.conf: Can be used to put the whole server to sleep when idle

Since I am the only user of my network, and since a lot of times the server sits unused until I want to engage maybe listening to my audio collection via Navidrome, or perhaps I'm working on some automation in n8n, et al, there's no need to be at max power 24/7.

So besides just powering off and on the server, which would work but not be quite as elegant of a solution, are there other ways you have come across, read about, deployed on your own server?

ETA: Thanks for everyone's input. I realize that the ideal scenario is to have more energy effecient equipment. Sometimes tho, this is not a ready made solution due to many constraints. The exercise was to try to squeeze out every last little power saving option I could, without obviously replacing equipment.

Many thanks.

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[–] db_geek@norden.social 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

@irmadlad That have also been my intentions, when I created the udev rules.
They are most generic and I use them on several systems for reducing some small power consumption.
Example: enabling of PCI power management

ACTION=="add|change", \\  
 SUBSYSTEM=="pci", \\  
 ATTR{power/control}="auto"

The things, which you listed in your first post are from my view good topics, for getting maximum results from minimum effort.
I started at
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/powertop
and went further from there.

[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for that and the arch link. I may have some follow up questions later on if you don't mind terribly.

[–] db_geek@norden.social 2 points 5 months ago

@irmadlad You are welcome.
The Arch Wiki also has a lot information about Power Management.
And I would say, most of them are independent if Arch Linux is used or not.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power/_management