CMOS-battery status missing in "inxi -B"

[Matthias Sprau]

Feature Request!

Hi togehther,
I'm missing an output of the status of the CMOS-battery. Paket lm-seonsors is installed.
It would be nice, if inxi could provide that information, too, perhaps even the value of the voltage.

Terminal-output on my system:
{{{
~$ inxi -B
Battery:
  Message: No system battery data found. Is one present?
}}}

{{{
~$ cat /proc/driver/rtc | grep batt_status
batt_status : okay
}}}

Thanks for your work, I like inxi really.
Regards

M. Sprau

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
Package: inxi 3.0.38-1-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.4.0-48.52-generic 5.4.60
Uname: Linux 5.4.0-48-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27.9
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Wed Oct 7 09:14:38 2020
InstallationDate: Installed on 2020-05-23 (136 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS "Focal Fossa" - Release amd64 (20200423)
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: inxi
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Harald Hope (lontact)]

This is not a valid issue, and it's not a bug. Also, the poster didn't read the help/man at all, since to see other device batteries listed, you have to use -Bx, not -B alone. -B alone only shows results for laptop batteries, basically. If -Bx does not show the cmos battery, then inxi can't find it, the data is not anywhere it can locate. If -Bx shows the device battery then obviously the issue is completely invalid in the first place, and if it doesn't, it means inxi has no access to it, which means the issue is invalid. /proc is not used to get battery data, that comes from /sys.

[Harald Hope (lontact)]

As an aside, if you have a feature request, file it on https://github.com/smxi/inxi otherwise it won't really make any difference since I don't routinely follow distro issue trackers.

[Matthias Sprau (sprau)]

Hi, I got the following:

~$ inxi -Bx
Battery:
  Message: No system battery data found. Is one present?

[Harald Hope (lontact)]

Then there is no data available, which means the issue is not valid, nor is there anything indicating that that data is available. As an aside I do not remember ever seeing CMOS battery state listed when testing or checking inxi -Bx results or datasets, usually the Device-x: battery states belong to things like wifi mice, keyboards, and other external battery driven devices that report their battery state to the linux system.

[Harald Hope (lontact)]

https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/rtc.txt

just a bit of info on rtc drivers. While rtc is something, it's not necessarily the cmos battery, it's just a chip that the system can use to determine time. So it would not be a cmos battery it would be an RTC battery, since there would be no way for inxi to know what it was, there can be more than one for example.

This bit of data is unlikely to make it into inxi I have to admit since I would need to see much more information about variation and > 1 rtc systems and systems where the battery was dead or whatever else can happen, but in no case would it be a cmos battery state, it would be an rtc chip state, but, again, since I have no real data on this, no examples of complex systems, etc, it's unlikely this will be added.

[Matthias Sprau (sprau)]

Thanks for the detailed information, in this case, the feature request seems not to be possible.