When charging phone/tablet, power management says UPS battery is low and causes immediate shutdown

[Tony Walker]

Short story:
I have a CyberPower 825AVR (USB attached) when attaching my iPhone or iPad (via USB) to charge, the Unity (gnome power manager?) displays a message saying the UPS battery is critically low and the system will shut down immediately. It does shut down immediately. It seems that upowerd or the gnome power manager "confuses" the device's (e.g., my iPhone's) battery with my UPS's battery. Interestingly, if I unplug the UPS cable, plug-in my iPhone, and then plug-in my UPS, the system does not shut down. However, the gnome power manager icon disappears and reappears at an interval of a second or two.

Hopefully Useful Details:
- Fresh install of Ubuntu 15.10 on my mid-2011 (i5-2400S, 20GB RAM) 21.5" iMac.
- Single boot (OS/X is not installed).
- UPS battery is in good health and fully charged.
- Power drain on UPS is minimal: iMac, additional LCD display, and desktop speakers.

upower:
  Installed: 0.99.3-1build2
  Candidate: 0.99.3-1build2
  Version table:
 *** 0.99.3-1build2 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ wily/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

gnome-power-manager:
  Installed: 3.16.1-1ubuntu1
  Candidate: 3.16.1-1ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 3.16.1-1ubuntu1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ wily/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

I wrote a mark in syslog before plugging in my iPhone and attached the (hopefully) relevant part of the log. I think line 41 is the key.

Of course, if you need info or help, please ask.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 15.10
Package: upower 0.99.3-1build2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.2.0-22.27-generic 4.2.6
Uname: Linux 4.2.0-22-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.19.1-0ubuntu5
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Tue Dec 29 20:35:33 2015
InstallationDate: Installed on 2015-12-21 (8 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 15.10 "Wily Werewolf" - Release amd64 (20151021)
SourcePackage: upower
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Philip Machanick (philip-machanick)]

I have exactly the same issue with an iPhone 4S. I also checked with an Android phone, no problem.

Tested repeatably on 2 different systems with completely different logic boards and chipsets, USB and USB 3 both do the same. Both machines were fine with Ubuntu 15.04. Upgrade to 15.10, this error surfaces.

If there is no UPS connected, the phone is still incorrectly reported as a power source in the Power System Settings but the shutdown behaviour doesn't occur.

Another thing: on restart after the crash, I get a system error report showing that /usr/lib/upower/upowerd has core dumped.

This is a pretty bad error that in effect means you can't charge an iOS device on an Ununtu 15.10 machine that is on a UPS. If you unplug the USB connector from the UPS it does appear to stop the false report that the UPS is depleting but that is not a good workaround.

Most relevant entries from /var/log/syslog :

Feb 8 11:50:46 philip-ubuntu-office systemd[1]: Starting Daemon for power management...
Feb 8 11:50:46 philip-ubuntu-office systemd[1]: Started Daemon for power management.
Feb 8 11:50:47 philip-ubuntu-office usbmuxd[2611]: [11:50:47.831][1] config_get_device_record: failed to read '/var/lib/lockdown/86bcd536244b1ef5b32876ad93597a1802bbde93.plist': No such file or directory
Feb 8 11:50:48 philip-ubuntu-office upowerd[2759]: *** Error in `/usr/lib/upower/upowerd': double free or corruption (!prev): 0x0000556d7058d260 ***
Feb 8 11:50:48 philip-ubuntu-office systemd[1]: upower.service: Main process exited, code=dumped, status=6/ABRT
Feb 8 11:50:48 philip-ubuntu-office systemd[1]: upower.service: Unit entered failed state.
Feb 8 11:50:48 philip-ubuntu-office systemd[1]: upower.service: Failed with result 'core-dump'.
Feb 8 11:50:48 philip-ubuntu-office systemd[1]: upower.service: Service hold-off time over, scheduling restart.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Philip Machanick (philip-machanick)]

With latest 15.150 update, UPS monitoring has vanished, a fix but a bad one since my UPS is no longer monitored, though I note upowerd is still running.