Battery Status Innaccurate on 2006 MacBook [Kubuntu]
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Hey everyone. I'm running Kubuntu 11.04 (with KDE 4.6.2) on a first generation (May 2006) MacBook (2.0 GHz Core Duo, Intel GMA945, 2 GB DDR2). I'm having a little issue with my battery meter. It works just fine until I have it plugged in and fully charged for an hour or two, at which point the battery meter suddenly turns blank and it reports anywhere between 1% to 10% battery life remaining, and charging. If I unplug the computer, I can drain from the battery for a while, but I seemingly randomly get a notification after a while that I am low on battery life, and that the computer will hibernate in 30 seconds. In reality, I can run off my battery for a solid 2 to 2.5 hours on a full charge, and I often get this message after running off the battery long before that. I should also note that if I unplug the computer before the meter goes blank, I can always utilize 100% of my battery life without interruption.
I will say that this battery is as old as the laptop, so it is a solid 5 years old. Also, the charging LED on the charger itself switches from orange (charging) to green (charged) every few seconds during the last 30 minutes or so of charging. However, the issue I described in the previous paragraph does not occur when I'm running OS X, Ubuntu with Unity, or Ubuntu with GNOME 2/XFCE 4. It only happens with KDE 4 (and I have not had the opportunity to test other KDE 4 distros - my optical drive is broken, which makes installing another system difficult). Any ideas? I can post whatever additional information that may be needed. Thanks. |
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Can you check what the kernel believes the system battery state to be? Simply run: "cat /proc/acpi/battery/*/*" then paste that output here.
Also, try running the following, prior to it glitching, once it has glitched and once it has started reporting the right values again, then post the results here:
KDE Sysadmin
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Registered Member
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Thanks for the reply, bcooksley. Here's the output of
cat /proc/acpi/battery/*/*:
Here's the output of "qdbus --system org.freedesktop.UPower /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT0 org.freedesktop.UPower.Device.Percentage" before glitching: 60.4671469111548 I'll post the output after glitching when it happens next. I just got home from work. It doesn't ever report the proper values again after the glitch occurs, so I probably won't be able to post that output. EDIT: Oh, is the second command just outputting the battery life percentage? I'll wait until it reads fully charged (before glitching), and will post that as well. |
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Administrator
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Yes, the second command is the battery percentage. Given the percentage and what the kernel thinks prior to glitching, that looks about right.
KDE Sysadmin
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Hello, just wanted to post an update so you don't think I forgot about this post. I've been pretty swamped in the last few days trying to juggle clients, interviews, a broken-down car, and other obligations.
Strangely enough, I have not had this issue re-occur yet, which surprises me, considering it generally happens pretty regularly. Tonight, I'm going to just leave the laptop on overnight to see if it triggers again. But one thing I have noticed is that once the laptop charges to 100%, it begins to slowly decharge toward 99%, though something tells me this might be normal behavior.
Again, I'll leave the laptop on all night tonight to see if the battery meter will glitch out again and turn blank. Once that happens, I'll run this command again. Sorry for the delay between posts. |
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Administrator
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The minor discharge is probably just an inaccuracy which occurs when the system is powered by the charger with a mostly completely charged battery. I have observed a similar thing on my system (An Asus laptop).
The real level of charge will show up when you disconnect it from the charger.
KDE Sysadmin
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Okay, the battery just started acting up again. I have it plugged in and charging. On the bottom of my MacBook, the charging indicator is showing a charge of 80%, going towards 100% (4 out of 5 lights lit), but the indicator applet is showing a 19% charge, as is that qdbus command. The battery indicator is also claiming 19 hours remaining until the battery is fully charged. If I unplug the laptop, it claims to have almost 2 hours of battery life remaining, which is appropriate for a near-full charge, but it continues to read 19%. I'll leave it running and will update if it attempts to shut down before that time is up.
EDIT: Okay, I just got a warning that my battery life has just reached the "warning level." The battery indicator is showing 15%, and qdbus is reporting 15.5%. The battery indicator is claiming 1 hr 30 mins remaining, and 4 out of 5 of my indicator lights on the bottom of the computer are still lit. I'll post again when it says my battery level is critical. EDIT 2: And now I got the critical warning. I have 2 lights lit up on the bottom of my macbook, but both the battery indicator and qdbus were reporting 0%. I immediately plugged in the laptop and ran the qdbus command, and now it's saying 10% as is the battery indicator. Then I unplugged it and ran the command again, and it's remaining at 10%, and allows me to continue using the laptop. The battery indicator says 1 hour of battery life remaining at "10%". |
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Administrator
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Ok, the defect in this case lies in UPower. You need to file a bug with UPower, or your distribution to get this fixed.
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