Battery Monitor Malfunction

English Hardware
1

I installed openSUSE today on my Acer Aspire 5745 laptop. It is setup to dualboot between Win7 Ultimate 64 bit and openSUSE 11.3. in Win7, I can see the battery charge level just fine, but in openSUSE it is coming up as always plugged in, even when running on the battery, and at 0% charge, so I can’t monitor what my power level is.

I am running KDE 4.4.

How can I fix this?

2

Did you already post a question on this - it seems familiar.

Personally the first thing I would try is creating a new user account and login with it (this is just to test to see if it is the same there).
We can delete the account after.

3

No, I have not posted a question on here before. And I did the new user thing. Still shows up as 0%, and plugged in even when running on battery.

4

Sorry
This was the thread I was thinking of
toshiba L600 battery/AC not recognized by 11.3

I don’t know an answer. But if it were me I would first try Gnome, which means you need to install it. If you go to Yast > Software Management > view by Patterns
And check to install Gnome Desktop and Base Patterns
Once done. Make sure you disable auto login (if your computer just boots straight to the desktop without a login screen) you need to do this:
Disable Auto-Login

Then reboot and at the login screen select Gnome from here:
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_hOiUsWwC6VQ/TC35oXZwzAI/AAAAAAAAAUQ/M1TflY_qkMM/s720/session.type.png

Login and see if it’s any better in Gnome

EDIT: You need to accept the deletion of kde-pure to install gnome

5

I did it on Gnome, and it’s the same issue, telling me the battery is fully charged, and plugged in even when running on battery power. I don’t know what else to do, as this is the first time I’ve ever installed Linux of any sort on a desktop.

6

You could try the* acpi* command in a terminal, for monitoring. This should give you everything, but depends on having /proc/acpi populated:

acpi -V

There are other options to get individual settings. To see options, try acpi -h

7

This is the output of acpi -V. Still looks wrong to me.

 
alan@ArisenPhoenix:~> acpi -V
     Thermal 1: ok, 40.0 degrees C
  AC Adapter 1: on-line
alan@ArisenPhoenix:~>
8

Indeed. This is mine, plugged in:
acpi -V

     Battery 1: charged, 98%
     Thermal 1: ok, 43.0 degrees C
  AC Adapter 1: on-line

and unplugged:

     Battery 1: discharging, 98%, 04:09:47 remaining
     Thermal 1: ok, 42.0 degrees C
  AC Adapter 1: off-line

Sorry I don’t have fix right now.

9

Can I assume you checked the system logs for any problem messages?

/var/log/boot.msg
/var/log/messages (needs root to access)

10

Possibly a BIOS update might help

11

I googled for this here. It describes a similar problem and mentions a 5745G. Seems your not alone, and neither is openSUSE.

12

Also found the submitted kernel bug #16218 here. It’s still open with status NEEDINFO. You could add a comment about your problem, kernel version and hardware details.

13

consused wrote:

> (http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1483062.html). It describes

nice find…seems a bug report is in order, suggest ACParson go here:
http://en.opensuse.org/Submitting_Bug_Reports

–
DenverD
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD [posted via NNTP w/openSUSE 10.3]

14

Thanks.

From the kernel bug report, the penultimate comment suggests the kernel devs have a patch up their sleeve already. Hope is on the horizon for the OP. :wink:

15

Yes, I did check it. I’ll see if there are any updates for my BIOS. Thanks for your help so far.

16

Nevermind. I found the solution, and you will probably think it’s a simple one, which it is, somewhat. It was the BIOS. The latest update to the laptop’s BIOS said it fixed a battery power monitoring issue. The rest of it works just fine, and it shows up properly now. Thank you guys for your help.

Please close this thread, the issue is solved.

17

Darn. I nearly said BIOS update in my **first **reply! At least I got round to it.

We leave threads open here.
Thanks for letting us know the BIOS update worked

18

This is at least the second Acer user this week with some kind of power management problem, where a bios update hasn’t been applied and a kernel bug report is already open and needing info. Hmmm, guess what’s going to be the in the first reply next time:

  1. Check with Acer for a bios update for your machine.
  2. Google your machine’s make, model, for linux (and kernel).

ACParson, glad to hear this one is fixed.