Battery Powered Linux Mini-HOWTO

Battery Powered Linux Mini-HOWTO
Hanno Mueller, [email protected] http://www.lava.de/~hanno/
v, 21 December 1997

This document describes how to reduce a Linux system's power consump
tion by tweaking some of its configuration settings. This will be
helpful for everyone who runs Linux on a portable computer system.
There is also some general information about how to take care of your
battery. If you are using Linux on a desktop system, you probably
don't need to read all this.

1. Introduction

``Ages 6 and up. Batteries included.''

1.1. Before you ask

This document does not describe how to install Linux on laptops, but
how to optimize a ready-configured Linux for use on laptops. Please
read the Installation-HOWTO or your distributor's handbook for help
with installing Linux.

This document does not describe how to use an uninterruptable power
supply and the powerd daemon, either (even though a ups is a big
battery). Read the UPS-HOWTO for details about that subject.

1.2. What this document is about

More and more people own portable computers these days and in turn,
more and more people install Linux on such machines.

Installing and using Linux on a laptop is usually no problem at all,
so go ahead and give it a try. Unlike some other operating systems,
Linux still supports and runs well on even very old hardware, so you
might give your outdated portable a new purpose in life by installing
Linux on it.

If you need help with installing Linux on a laptop or if you have
questions about laptop hardware, you can check the excellent Linux
Laptop webpage at http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/linux-laptop/
where you will find a lot of useful information and detailed help. The
Linux Laptop page describes hardware configuration for specific laptop
models and chipsets.

This HOWTO however will focus on the one problem that is common to all
portable systems: Power consumption.

Yet, I have not found a Linux distribution that comes with a
configuration optimized for laptops. Since I could not find this kind
of information anywhere else, I have started to collect a few simple
but effective tricks that will help you save battery power and in turn
increase your system's uptime while running on battery.

(Sidenote. I received a complaint by a reader that these tips were not
very effective with his laptop. So does all this really work? Yes, but
don't expect miracles. I was able to increase my laptop's battery time
from 90 minutes to more than 120 minutes.)

1.3. Roadmap

If you are a laptop pro, you can probably skip the ``General
Information'' section. If you are a Linux pro, what you really want to
know can be found in the ``Changing some general system settings''
section. If you are a Linux distributor, please read ``A message to
Linux distributors''.

1.4. Feedback

Your feedback is welcome. Please send comments to [email protected]. Did
it work on your system? Do you have new tips? Are there any outdated
links or addresses in this text?

I am sorry, but I will not be able to help you with questions about
specific laptop models. I don't claim to be a laptop guru, I just
happen to own one laptop myself and I simply want to share the
information I collected. Please check the Linux Laptop webpage first,
probably someone else has already written a page dedicated to your
model. Ask your manufacturer's technical support. Or go the the laptop
newsgroup comp.sys.laptops and ask there.

1.5. Disclaimer

All methods described here were tested by me and worked fine on my
laptop, unless noted otherwise. However, I cannot guarantee that any
of this won't crash or seriously damage your system. Life is
dangerous, so keep backup copies of your important files before
playing with your Linux configuration. If things go wrong, I do not
take any responsibility for your data loss. In other words: Don't sue
me. Thank you.

1.6. Copyright

This document shall be distributed under the standard HOWTO-copyright
notice, found in the HOWTO folder at
http://sunsite.unc.edu/mdw/linux.html.

2. General information

This section describes a few technical things about laptop batteries
and some general power saving tips. This information is not Linux-
specific and if you are experienced with laptops, you might already
know all this.

2.1. Be kind to your battery

(Please note the ``credits'' for this section.)

There are currently three types of batteries commonly used for
portable computers.

NiCd batteries were the standard technology for years, but today
they are out of date and new laptops don't use them anymore. They
are heavy and very prone to the ``memory effect''. When recharging
a NiCd battery that has not been fully discharged, it ``remembers''
the old charge and continues there the next time you use it.

The memory effect is caused by crystallization of the battery's
substances and can permanently reduce your battery's lifetime, even
make it useless. To avoid it, you should completely discharge the
battery and then fully recharge it again at least once every few
weeks.

(A sidenote about the memory effect. James Youngman knows of a
rather drastic method to - uhm - ``repair'' batteries: ``If your
NiCd battery is suffering from the memory effect, remove it from
your computer, hold it about 30cm above a desk or the floor, and
drop it (make sure it lands flat).'' He says that this will break
the whiskers that have formed in the battery and that are the cause
of the memory effect if your battery is already affected by it. ``I
don't know if this works for non-NiCd batteries or not.'')

Cadmium is a very hazardous poison, but if returned to your dealer,
the material can almost be fully recycled.

Just in case you might be interested, here are some specs for NiCd:

Cell voltage: 1,2 V
Energy / mass: 40 Wh/kg
Energy / volume: 100 Wh/l
max. Energy: 20 Wh
Charge temp.: 10 to 35 C (50 to 95 F)
Discharge temp.: -20 to 50 C (-5 to 120 F)
Storage temp.: 0 to 45 C (30 to 115 F)

NiMh batteries are the current standard used in most low price
laptops to date. They can be made smaller and are less affected by
the memory effect than NiCd.

However, they have problems at very high or low room temperatures.
And even though they use less hazardous and non-poisonous
substances, they cannot be fully recycled yet (but this will
probably change in the future).

NiMh specs:

Cell voltage: 1,2 V
Energy / mass: 55 Wh/kg
Energy / volume: 160 Wh/l
max. Energy: 35 Wh
Charge temp.: 10 to 35 C (50 to 95 F)
Discharge temp.: 0 to 45 C (30 to 115 F)
Storage temp.: 0 to 30 C (30 to 85 F)

The new high performance batteries use LiIon technology. In theory,
there is no memory effect at all with these batteries, but on
occasion, they seem to have similar problems. Their substances are
non-hazardous to the enviroment, but they should be returned for
recycling as well.

LiIon specs:

Cell voltage: 3,6 V
Energy / mass: 100 Wh/kg
Energy / volume: 230 Wh/l
max. Energy: 60 Wh
Charge temp.: 0 to 45 C (30 to 115 F)
Discharge temp.: -20 to 60 C (-5 to 140 F)
Storage temp.: -20 to 60 C (-5 to 140 F)

Even if the battery case looks the same, you cannot just upgrade to
another battery technology. The recharging process is different for
the kind of battery you use.

Some manufacturers integrate the recharging circuit inside the
laptop's external ac adapter, so you might just get away with buying a
new power supply to upgrade. A good indication for an external
recharging unit is when your ac adapter uses a proprietary connector
with a lot of power lines.

Other manufacturers put the recharging unit inside the laptop case
where users cannot simply replace it with a newer technology. If your
ac adapter only uses two power lines to connect to the computer (just
like mine), the recharging unit is probably inside the laptop.

When in doubt, ask your manufacturer if your laptop supports a more
modern battery.

A battery that is not used for a long time will slowly discharge
itself. And even with greatest care, a battery needs to be replaced
after 500 to 1000 recharges. But still it is not recommended to run a
laptop without the battery while on ac power - the battery often
serves as a big capacitor to protect against voltage peaks from your
ac outlet.

As the manufacturers change the shapes of their batteries every few
months, you might have problems to find a new battery for your laptop
in a few years from now. Buy a spare battery now - before it's out of
stock.

2.2. Power saving - The obvious stuff

There are some obvious things that you can do to reduce your system's
power consumption. Well, maybe not so obvious, since not very many
people follow these rules...

Decrease or turn off your display's backlight when you don't need
it. By the way, tft displays use more power than dstn (so now you
have a fine excuse why you bought the cheaper laptop...).

(David Bateman tells me that using a crt screen while on battery
and turning off the laptop display will extend battery time by
about 30%: ``Not that this is a very useful piece of knowledge
though, if you've got the crt plugged in then why not the laptop
too.'')

How much processing power do you really need? I doubt that you will
be doing very much more than text editing when on the road (well,
at least I don't compile linux kernels then). While on battery,
reducing the cpu clock speed will decrease power consumption, too.
Quite a few laptops offer a cpu clock selector that will toggle
between normal and slow speed.

Turn off the cpu cooler (if you have one). Many recent laptops
offer a bios option called ``cooling control''. If your system's
cpu is becoming too hot, this option allows you to have it cooled
by a tiny fan (setting ``performance'') or to have its cpu clock
slowed down (setting ``silence''). To increase your uptime while on
battery, use ``silence''.

Avoid using external devices (printer, crt screen, zip drive,
portable camera etc.) with your computer while on battery. When
connected to a standard ink jet printer, my laptop's battery time
is reduced from up to 120 minutes down to 20 minutes.

Avoid using any built in device unless necessairy: Diskette drive,
harddisk, cd-rom. Especially cd-rom access will dramatically
decrease your battery time.

Pcmcia cards can also consume a lot of power, so don't leave your
modem or network adapter plugged in when it is not in use. But this
is different between the various pcmcia manufacturers, so check the
product specs before you buy (e. g. some cards never turn
themselves off even when not in use).

(By the way, I recently read that pcmcia cards are the biggest
problem for windows ce palmtops - they drain so much power that the
tiny machines' little batteries have to be replaced within
minutes...)

Use simple software. A full blown multimedia application will
create a lot more system load and harddisk / cd-rom activity than a
small simple word processor.

Grant Taylor has a tip for those of us who want to upgrade their
system: ``Newer versions of some upgradable components consume less
power. For example, IBM's Travelstar 2.5 inch 1.6 gigabyte ide
harddisk drive consumes 20 percent less than the 500 megabyte
toshiba harddisk my laptop came with.''

If you are yet about to buy a laptop - don't buy a laptop with a
2nd level cache if battery uptime is important. A computer with 2nd
level cache is about 10% to 20% faster and it will be a lot better
with multimedia applications and number crunching, but it consumes
a lot of power. Bjoern Kriews tells me that he has two almost
identical laptops and the one without cache ram runs 4h30 compared
to 2h30 with cache.

If you already have 2nd level cache installed, turning it off will
probably not help you very much. Give it a try and write me about
your experience.

Another tip for those still buying a laptop - don't buy the latest,
fastest cpu type. Usually, the older generations are optimized by
the manufacturer after some time without notice. The ``new''
versions of old cpu types often create less heat and consume less
power than the product's premiere version.

There are also frankenstein laptops available that use cpus not
optimized for portable systems. As I wrote this in May 97, the
newest generation pentium-200 laptops ran about 20 minutes on
battery and became so hot that they burnt your lap. When writing
the second revision in Oct 97, pentium-233 laptops run two hours or
longer without ac power. Go figure.

Well, you get the idea. Most of these are restrictions that will
probably stop you from doing any serious work with your Linux system.
(The best way to save power while on battery is... not to do anything
at all. That increases my laptop's battery uptime by almost 100
percent.)

So let's go ahead to some other, more useful measures that will save
power without disturbing your work.
3. Advanced Power Management

Portable systems in general, but even many desktop computers come
equipped with support for apm, the ``advanced power management''
scheme. This section describes how to activate apm support in your
Linux kernel. People who are experienced with Linux may find this
section rather boring and want to skip to the next.

3.1. What APM can do for you

I won't describe it in detail here, check the Linux APM drivers page
at http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/linux-laptop/apm.html for
more information. All that you need to know is that with the help of
apm, the cpu can tell the bios when there's nothing really exciting
going on so that the bios can take care of some power saving by itself
- e. g. reducing the cpu clock, turning off the harddisk, turning off
the display's backlight etc.

Apm is also responsible for the ``system suspend'' (or ``sleep'') mode
and for the ``suspend to disk'' (or ``hiberntation'') mode. And yet
another cool, though not very important feature is that with the help
of apm, shutdown -h will not just halt your system, but also turn it
off.

(By the way, most Linux systems put a shutdown -r in their
/etc/inittab and map it to pressing control-alt-delete. I prefer
having shutdown -h there, so when pressing the famous key combination,
my laptop simply turns itself off.)

Not all manufacturers implement a correct apm bios, so some laptops
have trouble with the Linux apm drivers (if your machine has trouble
with apm, it will most likely either lock up at Linux' boot up or
after returning from suspend). If you are not sure, check the Linux
laptop page for your specific model.

3.2. How to activate APM support in Linux

It's easy - just recompile the Linux kernel. Check the Kernel-HOWTO if
you don't know how to do that.

When the configuration script reaches the ``character devices''
section, the default setting for full apm bios support in kernel
version 2.0.30 or higher is:

Advanced Power Management BIOS support: Yes
Ignore USER SUSPEND: No
Enable PM at boot time: Yes
Make CPU Idle calls when idle: Yes
Enable console blanking using APM: Yes
Power off on shutdown: Yes

Please read the configuration script's help texts. They explain in
detail what each option does, so I won't repeat them here.

If your system does not fully support the apm bios standard, some of
those options might crash your system. Test all apm features with the
new kernel to make sure that everything works as it should.

(A sidenote about console blanking: David Bateman tells me that you
should not enable it because it can cause problems with the current
version of XFree 3.2: ``The symptoms are that the screen will be blank
when X starts, and it can be fixed usually by just hitting a key. It's
a small but annoying problem. The next relase of XFree, will have
pretty good DPMS support for a lot of laptop chipset, which should
include code to turn off the LCD. Check out the manpage for xset in
XFree 3.2A.'' David also notes that the lifetime of your display's
backlight is determined by the number of times it's switched on and
off: ``So its a compromise, lifetime of the battery versus lifetime of
the backlight.'')

(Update: With XFree 3.3, this problem still remained on my laptop. I
am told that this will be fixed in a future kernel version.)

3.3. APM support and the PCMCIA drivers

After recompiling the kernel, don't forget to recompile the linux
pcmcia drivers as well.

The precompiled pcmcia drivers that come with most linux distribution
have apm support disabled, so that the bios can't instruct your card
adapters to turn off.

Also, you must recompile the drivers if you upgrade to a new kernel
version and your old kernel was compiled with module version
information turned on (this option is found in the ``loadable module
support'' section of the kernel configuration).

Read the PCMCIA-HOWTO for detailed instructions on how to compile the
drivers or go to the Linux PCMCIA drivers homepage at
http://hyper.stanford.edu/HyperNews/get/pcmcia/home.html.

3.4. The apmd package

Now that you have APM support installed, go and get the apmd package
from the Linux APM drivers page. You don't really need it, but it is a
very useful collection of programs. The apmd daemon logs your
battery's behaviour and it will send out a warning if you are on low
power. The apm command will suspend your system with a shell command
and xapm shows the current state of your battery.

(BTW, if you have problems with pcmcia cards after returning from
suspend, you can check out an alternative apmd package at
http://www.cut.de/bkr/linux/apmd/apmd.html. It unloads the pcmcia
driver module before going to suspend and reloads the module on
resume.)

Grant Taylor has been playing a little with the apmd package and came
up with helpful tips.

He found that his laptop's harddisk forgets its hdparm -S standby
period when returning from suspend: ``I modified apmd to reset this
setting on each resume. This may be system-specific; but it's an
important thing to do...''

(Note: On my own laptop, the bios takes care of the harddisk standby
period and resets the value on resuming. So I could not test if this
little problem is system-specific. If it happens to you as well, send
me a message.)

Grant also had a nice trick for screen blanking with ``the XFree86
package'' and the help of the apmd package, you'll find it there.

3.5. And if my laptop does not support APM?

If your computer's bios does not offer any power saving settings (even
the old ones without apm should at least allow to set harddisk and
display standby), you can use hdparm -S to define your harddisk's
standby period. This will already help a lot, since harddisk activity
consumes a lot of power. Your system should have hdparm installed, so
read man hdparm for the command syntax.

4. Changing some general system settings

After I got Linux up and running on my laptop, I found it accessing
the harddisk every few seconds, even when there was no user logged in
to the system. The harddisk could never enter its power saving mode.
Reducing harddisk activity can greatly increase the battery runtime,
so this is why I collected the following recipes.

I tested all this with RedHat 4.1, the locations of some configuration
settings may be different for your distribution. (If so, please let me
know.)

4.1. The crond daemon and atrun

Check your /etc/crontab file if it starts a process every minute. You
will often find atrun there.

With the at command, you can spool commands that must be invoked some
time in the future. Some Linux systems use a dedicated atd daemon to
take care of this, others (e. g. RedHat) let the crond daemon run
atrun once every minute.

This is not really necessairy on most systems, since at commands
rarely depend upon being invoked on exact time. So if you find a line
like this in your /etc/crontab:

# Run any at jobs every minute
* * * * * root [ -x /usr/sbin/atrun ] && /usr/sbin/atrun

Then you can safely change this to:

# Run any at jobs every hour
00 * * * * root [ -x /usr/sbin/atrun ] && /usr/sbin/atrun

Read man 5 crontab for details. Some folks can even work fine without
the crond daemon, so if you know what you are doing, you might want to
consider disabling it completely.

4.2. The update / bdflush daemon

Linux deals with a lot of open file buffers at any given moment, so
the system must make sure that file changes are saved to the harddisk
as soon possible. Otherwise, those changes will be lost after a system
crash.

The update / bdflush daemon takes care of this. (These are two names
for the same program, so you can use either name to start the daemon).
The default settings will make this daemon call flush every 5 seconds
and sync every 30 seconds.

With my Fujitsu disk this caused non-stop access. (It seems that this
harddisk flushes its ram cache even when nothing has changed. But this
depends on your harddisk's firmware: Other people told me that their
harddisk does enter its power saving mode even without the following
modification.)

Since Linux does not crash very often anymore, I have changed both
values to 3600 seconds (= one hour). This caused no problems at all
and the constant disk access has stopped. (But if my system crashes
now, there will be more broken files, of course.)

RedHat 4.1: In /etc/inittab, change the update call to:

ud::once:/sbin/update -s 3600 -f 3600

Suse 4.4.1: update is called in /sbin/init.d/boot.

Slackware: update is called in /etc/rc.d/rc.S.

See man update for details.

4.3. The syslogd daemon

The syslogd daemon is responsible for the various Linux system log
files that are found in the /var/log/ directory. By default syslogd
will sync the log file each time after logging a system message.

You can turn that off by preceding the filename with a dash in
/etc/syslog.conf. Here's an example as found in my system's
syslog.conf:

# Log anything (except mail) of level info or higher.
# Don't log private authentication messages!
*.info;mail.none;authpriv.none -/var/log/messages

This again means that if the system crashes, the message that reported
the problem may not have been stored to disk. Dilemma...

4.4. The init command

During the bootup, the initial processes and daemons will be started
using the init command. This command (yet again) calls sync before
each process it creates.

You can change this by removing the sync() call in the source code and
recompiling the command.

To avoid problems with lost file buffers, you should add a call to
sync in your system's /etc/rc.d/init.d/halt script, right before the
script unmounts the file systems.

4.5. The swap partition

The Linux swap partition is used to increase the physical ram space
with virtual memory. This again is a possible reason for harddisk
access. If your laptop already has a lot of ram or if the applications
that you use are quite simple (think of vi), you might want to
consider turning it off.

This of course depends on what you plan to do. 4 to 8 megs are not
enough, you must use a swap partition then. With 8 to 16 megs, text
console applications will work fine and if you can avoid using a lot
of multitasking features, you can safely disable swap. The X-Windows
enviroment requires a lot of ram and you should not use it without a
swap partition unless you really have a lot more than 16 megs.

(Sidenote: My laptop with 16 megs and disabled swap partition can run
an emacs session, four bash shells and compile a kernel without
running out of memory. That's enough for me.)

If you already have installed a swap partition, you can disable it by
preceding the swapon command that is called in /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit
with a hash mark. If you don't want to make it a permanent move, let
the system ask during boot if you want to use the swap partition. In
/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit (RedHat 4.1) or /sbin/init.d/boot (Suse 4.4.1):

echo "Should the system use swap?"
echo " 0: No."
echo " 1: Yes."
/bin/echo "Your choice: \c"
read SWAPCHOICE

case "$SWAPCHOICE" in
0)
# Do nothing.
echo "(Swap partitions disabled)"
;;
*)
# Start up swapping.
echo "Activating swap partitions"
swapon -a
esac

Then you can use the swap partition while on ac power and drop it
while on battery.

4.6. The apache httpd webserver daemon

I am using my laptop to develop and test cgi scipts for websites, that
is why I am running a local webserver on it. The standard
configuration is a bit too much if all you want to do is just test a
script or check a page from time to time.

In httpd.conf, just change the values of MinSpareServers and
StartServers to 1. This will be enough for a local test site.

If you wish to turn off the webserver's logging, you must recompile
the httpd daemon. Read the documentation for details.

Grant Taylor recompiled apache's logging and found that this ``didn't
make it stop churning the disk. So I used another, IMHO better,
solution: I configured apache to run from inetd instead of
standalone.'' Read man inetd for details.

4.7. The XFree86 package

Configuring XFree86 for laptops is a story of its own. And yet again,
I have to refer you to the Linux Laptop page where you will find a lot
of help on this.

X's console blanking only turns the screen black, but does not turn it
off. As mentioned in the ``sidenote about console blanking'', you can
use xset's dpms option to change this. However, this feature depends
on your laptop's graphics chipset and bios.

Grant Taylor uses the following setup to send his laptop to sleep with
the help of apmd and the screensaver:

# Run xscreensaver with APM program
xscreensaver -timeout 5 \
-xrm xscreensaver.programs:apm_standby \
-xrm xscreensaver.colorPrograms:apm_standby &

Where ``apm_standby is a suid perl script that allows only certain
people to run apm -S.''

4.8. The emacs editor

Ok, emacs is not an editor, but a way of life. Here's a tip from
Florent Chabaud: ``If you use emacs, perhaps you have noticed that the
editor makes some automatic saves. This is of course useful and
should not be disabled, but the default parameters can be adjusted to
a laptop use.

I have put in the file /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/site-start.el the
two following lines:

(setq auto-save-interval 2500)
(setq auto-save-timeout nil)

This disables auto-saving based on time, and makes the auto-saving be
done every 2500 keyboard actions. Of course if you are typing a text
this last parameter should be reduced, but for programming it is
sufficient. Since every action (up, down, left, backspace, paste,
etc...) is counted, 2500 actions are reached very rapidly.''

4.9. How to find more ways to optimize

If your Linux system still seems to access the harddisk too often, you
can find out what is going on inside by using the ps ax command. This
will show all running processes and their full name, sometimes it also
reveals the command line arguments of each process.

Now read the man page of each process to find out what it does and how
to change its behaviour. With this method, you will most likely find
the process that is responsible. You may also find strace helpful.

Please send me an email if you found something new.

5. Appendix

5.1. A message to Linux distributors

If you happen to be a Linux distributor, thank you for reading all
this. Laptops are becoming more and more popular, but still most Linux
distributions are not very well prepared for portable computing.
Please make this document obsolete and change this for your
distribution.

The installation routine should include a configuration, optimized
for laptops. The ``mimimal install'' is often not lean enough.
There are a lot of things that a laptop user does not need on the
road. Just a few examples. There is no need for three different
versions of vi (as found in Suse Linux). Most portable systems do
not need printing support (they will never be connected to a
printer, printing is usually done with the desktop system at home).
Quite a few laptops do not need any network support at all.

Don't forget to describe laptop-specific installation problems, e.
g. how to install your distribution without a cd-rom drive or how
to setup the plip network driver.

Add better power management and seamless pcmcia support to your
distribution. Add a precompiled kernel and an alternative set of
pcmcia drivers with apm support that the user can install on
demand. Include a precompiled apmd package with your distribution.

Add support for dynamically switching network configurations. Most
Linux laptops travel between locations with different network
settings (e. g. the network at home, the network at the office and
the network at the university) and have to change the network id
very often. Changing a Linux system's network id is a pain with
most distributions.

Please mail me if your distribution is optimized for portable
computing and what kind of features you added for that. Future
versions of this HOWTO will include a section where you can advertise
your distribution's laptop features.

5.2. Credits

The information about battery technology is mostly based on the
article ``Stromkonserve'' by Michael Reiter, published in ``c't
Magazin fuer Computertechnik'' (Heise Verlag Hannover, Germany),
edition 10/96, page 204. Used by permission. Visit their website at
http://www.heise.de/.

The following people contributed to this document:

Frithjof Anders <[email protected]>
David Bateman <[email protected]>
Florent Chabaud <[email protected]>
Markus Gutschke <[email protected]>
Kenneth E. Harker <[email protected]>
Bjoern Kriews <[email protected]>
R. Manmatha <[email protected]>
Juergen Rink <[email protected]>
Grant Taylor <[email protected]>
James Youngman <[email protected]>

5.3. About this document

This text mentions batteries 53 times.

The current version of this and many other HOWTOs, most of them a lot
more useful than this one, can be found at the main Linux
documentation site http://sunsite.unc.edu/mdw/linux.html or at one of
its many mirror sites.

Most of this text was written during my trips between Hamburg and
Hannover on German rail. (The new ice-2 coaches have power outlets for
laptops, yeah!).

And now hum along with me: ``...on the road again...''