battery / AC not distinguished

I have SuSU Pro 9.2 up and running on my Acer C100.

The problem I've posted elsewhere about "GRUB Hard Disk Error" on HDD boot has been solved by choosing LILO as my boot manager.

I can't switch off now, though! After the end of shutting down services, I can hear the HDD park, but then nothing further happens. I have to unplug mains and take the battery out to kill the machine.

When I'm logged in on AC, the AC mains symbol no longer shows a battery icon charging. When I'm logged in on battery only, it still shows that I'm on mains.

All help gratefully received!

Brinley

Sound like you've got problems with acpi (acpi is how the battery and various components report to your operating system- see http://www.acpi.info). In order to have SuSE recognise batteries, mains and when to switch the computer off you need to have acpi working.

First i'd find whether acpi is working:
Open a terminal and then enter the following:

cd /proc
ls

there should be a file/folder listed called acpi. if there is not then SuSE isn't using your acpi. to find out why acpi is not working type:

dmesg | grep -i acpi

the following will read the messages which occured when the kernel was loading and then filter the message to only show lines which contain "acpi".

Chances are that the problem can be fixed by making sure that lilo has "acpi=on" or "acpi=force" as one of the boot options.

This can be done by logging in as root and then opening /etc/lilo.conf in a text editor and then making sure there is a relevant acpi option in the append string for you default boot entry.

For illustrative purposes my lilo append line reads:

append = "selinux=0 splash=silent resume=/dev/hda7 desktop elevator=as showopts acpi=force"

Yeah but enabling acpi causes problems it works better without it enabled

Thanks for checking in to help me here! In the list that your first command reports, pseudonym, there is no acpi included. The second command produces:

BIOS-e820: 000000000ffe0000 - 000000000ffe8000 (ACPI data)
BIOS-e820: 000000000ffe8000 - 000000001000000 (ACPI NVS)
ACPI: RSDP (v000 Acer ) @ 0x000ec250
ACPI: IRQ9 SCI: Edge ste to Level Trigger.
ACPI: Subsystem revision 20040715
ACPI: Interreter disabled.

I'll edit /etc/lilo.conf to include acpi=on and report back.

I've chosen LILO as my boot manager because GRUB didn't work at all (nothing beyond level 1, and I couldn't solve this). Another thing that seems odd is that I no longer get a user log-in / password prompt, but I'm booted straight to desktop without this. I'd like this fixed too: is this a LILO thing? I'm booted into my log-in, not root.

Thanks for your help.

Brinley

No change, unfortunately...


I edited '/etc/lilo.conf' to include 'acpi=force' and on rebooting, I still see only the AC icon on the bottom bar and the system won't switch off without me physically removing the battery.

When I click on this batttery icon and choose to 'Start YaST2 Power Management Module' then choose 'ACPI Settings' button, I get a message box:

Buttons can be configured only for ACPI. Your system probably does not support ACPI and uses APM.

I don't mind if I can't run ACPI--but I do want the box to switch off when I tell it to! :-)

PS: new thing I've found...

If I chose to "Log Out" - "End Current Session" (rather than "Turn Off Computer") then I'm taken to the Username / Password screen which is missing on boot-up, from which I can choose "Menu" then "Shutdown" then "Turn off computer" and low and behold, it does!

This is annoying rather than critical, but I'd still like it how it 'should' be.

Brinley

Brinley

re:autologin
I think you may have somehow configured autologin for your username. Use YaST:

YaST -> Security and Users -> Edit and create users -> (select username) -> Expert options -> Login Settings

and check that "autologin" is not selected/active

renly able to switch-off from boot screen
I've got SuSE installed on my desktop and laptop and noticed that on my laptop i have to be root in order to power down the computer (otherwise the option isn't available).

When you are at the login screen you are effectively logged in as root but don't have access to the internals of the system. So you should be able to shutdown the computer from your desktop by opening a terminal and then:

su
[enter roots password]
poweroff

I'm sure you can give normal users the ability to shutdown the computer but i can't remember how.

re:acpi and powermanagement in general
My only other suggestions would be check the powermanagement settings in your bios.

Sorry i can't be more helpful

I'm very grateful that you've been able to help this far, though, pseudonym: you were spot on with both suggestions. Somehow, the 'autologin' was checked active and the poweroff command from root does the trick. Good!

I'll wait to hear what SuSE central has to say in reply to my install support enquiries, and hope that this battery icon thing can be resolved. I have a feeling that when I was using GRUB as boot loader, the battery icon was present and reporting properly. GRUB didn't work, so I switched to LILO and I think it was after that that the battery stopped being recognised. BTW, this isn't just a missing icon thing--although that too may inadvertently have been switched off--but when I'm running from battery, the only icon to appear is the AC one, which confidently states that that is what I'm running from when I hover the cursor over it. Or could it be that this is all the system can report if the battery icon is set never to report?

Anyone know how to check that?

Thanks for your help.

PS. I'm about to open one more strand about downloading and installing software (I'm VERY newbie!). I've searched this site, but can't find a simple 'how to' although I'd have thought it was a FAQ. Two of my reasons for choosing SuSE--Thunderbird and nvu--are on the DVD only, which I can't load from. I guess I can get them from SuSE's website, but I don't know what to point to in the 'change source of installation' submenu.

Originally posted by Brinley@Feb 28 2005, 09:00 AM
I'm very grateful that you've been able to help this far, though, pseudonym: you were spot on with both suggestions.* Somehow, the 'autologin' was checked active and the poweroff command from root does the trick.* Good!

I'll wait to hear what SuSE central has to say in reply to my install support enquiries, and hope that this battery icon thing can be resolved.* I have a feeling that when I was using GRUB as boot loader, the battery icon was present and reporting properly.* GRUB didn't work, so I switched to LILO and I think it was after that that the battery stopped being recognised.* BTW, this isn't just a missing icon thing--although that too may inadvertently have been switched off--but when I'm running from battery, the only icon to appear is the AC one, which confidently states that that is what I'm running from when I hover the cursor over it.* Or could it be that this is all the system can report if the battery icon is set never to report?*

Anyone know how to check that?

Thanks for your help.

PS. I'm about to open one more strand about downloading and installing software (I'm VERY newbie!).* I've searched this site, but can't find a simple 'how to' although I'd have thought it was a FAQ.* Two of my reasons for choosing SuSE--Thunderbird and nvu--are on the DVD only, which I can't load from.* I guess I can get them from SuSE's website,* but I don't know what to point to in the 'change source of installation' submenu.

[snapback]72449[/snapback]

http://slforums.typo3-factory.net/in...showtopic=7568

Thanks--I had found this, but couldn't make sense of it--I had a fiddle but couldn't get my guesses to work. I tried again this lunchtime and could get it to work--just coincidence that the server must have been down during my first efforts. I will start another strand for this though, to get another few basic questions posted in the right place. (I can't figure out how to split the UK ftp mirror that Novell list for SuSE into the two boxes that YaST asks for.) I do have Thunderbird and nVu though--thank, you!

Nearly at a fully working system! I'm very pleased with how it's going, too. Speed and easy-on-the-eye appearance are both superb in Firefox.

Brinley

A few days later...

I have found that my BIOS cannot be updated, but that it does support ACPI. In SuSE, I've found that ACPI isn't running (won't run), but APM should be (and is, I think). Even so, I see no icon for the battery in the taskbar (and I've checked that this box is marked properly where it's an option in "Laptop Battery"). On that screen, it shows that the battery is "-1%" (charged?) and "Present".

I think I must have fried some hardware when I was confused about how to power off: the only way I found I could get the machine to stop completely was to remove the battery... It works though (it's not -1% full and appears to charge and run as it ever did--if anything I get longer out of it now), so I'm not too gutted.

Is there anything else sensible to try, please?

BTW, on the shutdown privilege issue--I think I might have found this, pseudonym. Follow: Control Centre - System Adminstration - Login Manager - Shutdown. Would putting in a different command in there make the system power off rather than 'halt', which is what mine did. As is, I'm now happily doing this from a console with the command, feeling a bit more grown-up for doing so. I'll learn more 'under the lid' in time, I hope, especially with the helpful (and patient) people I've been lucky enough to stumble across here in this forum.

Many thanks!

Brinley