UPS USB connection causes power management to freeze system in Hardy

[Martin G Miller]

Binary package hint: gnome-power-manager

Version of Ubuntu: 8.04.1

Version of package: gnome-power-manager 2.22.1-1ubuntu4

What I expected to happen: The panel icon should report state of battery charge, but tell me I am running off the wall. It also should not affect the stability of the system.

What happened: The panel icon said I was running off the battery and the system became unstable resulting in hard freezes.

I am running Hardy with kernel 2.6.24-19-generic #1 SMP Fri Jul 11 23:41:49 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux, as well as all latest packages.
My mobo is Asus A7n-8XE-Deluxe. AMD 64 3200+ 2 gig ram.
I purchased a new Tripplite 1000W UPS that has a USB port to allow the OS to monitor the state of the UPS.
After plugging it in on a fresh boot, the power management applet had a new tab devoted to the the UPS and an icon appeared in my top panel telling me the system was running on battery power with a charge of 100%. This was not entirely true as the UPS was plugged in and it should have been running of the wall, not the internal battery.

Immediately following this, the system became unstable resulting in hard lockups after only a few mins. of use. I tried disabling compiz and made sure cool 'n quiet was disabled in my BIOS. I also tried running the system off a live CD for Hardy 8.04.1 and had the same freezing even with no applications running. This is a hard freeze with no mouse or keyboard input possible. I tried both usb and ps2 keyboards and they all lock up. Only recourse is to hit the reset button on the tower. The system logs in fine and freezes anywhere from 15 seconds to 10 minutes into the session.

After shutting down and unplugging the USB cable from the UPS and restarting. The system has returned to normal. No more freezing.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Could you please attach the resulting log file of: gnome-power-bugreport.sh &> gpm.log to the report? You might also want to take a look to the Debugging instructions located at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingGNOMEPowerManager for submit any other logs related to your problem.Thanks in advance.

[Martin G Miller (mgmiller)]

Since filing this bug report I have changed motherboards and cpu. I am now running as ASUS M3N78 Pro mobo with an AMD phenom triple core & 4 gig of ram (3.5 GB detected as I am running 32 bit). This mobo does not see the UPS at all. lsusb does not show the device as being detected. I have tried both Ubuntu 8.04.1 and the 8.10 beta and neither release is aware of the UPS. I suspect there may be a problem in the USB port on the UPS itself as I have tested the USB ports on the computer and they seem to have no problems working with anything else that I plug into them. I do see an error message on boot up that says "1-0:1.0 unable to enumerate device on USB port 3". I assume that is the UPS as everything else works normally. If you have any suggestions to try to get the system to detect the UPS, I will try them.

[Dimitrios Symeonidis (azimout)]

Martin, is this still an issue for you? Try running lsusb with and without the usb cable connected. Also, watch the output of dmesg while connecting and disconnecting the usb cable.

Since your usb ports otherwise work fine, like you mentioned, it might be your UPS that's broken (even if there's no driver for your ups, it should at least be visible as an unsupported device in lsusb)

[Martin G Miller (mgmiller)]

I am still using the same ASUS M3N78Pro mobo and with Intrepid 32 bit patched up to current, the UPS is detected and functions normally over USB. I have no lockups and all is good. The panel icon does say the system is running off backup power and the battery state is 100%, where I would expect it to say it is running off wall power with battery state of 100%, otherwise I'm happy.

Here is the output of lsusb:
marty@tux:~$ lsusb
Bus 004 Device 002: ID 04a9:1088 Canon, Inc. i965
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 004: ID 0dda:2027 Integrated Circuit Solution, Inc. USB 2.0 Card Reader
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 077d:0410 Griffin Technology PowerMate
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 045e:0039 Microsoft Corp. IntelliMouse Optical
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 06a3:8021 Saitek PLC Eclipse II Keyboard
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 09ae:2007 Tripp Lite
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

The entry for Tripp Lite is the UPS. I have 3 of these UPS's and when I was having the problem, I tried it will all of them and none of them were detected.

Whatever the problem was, it was fixed in some patch right around the release of Intrepid final.

As a final note, I have another machine in my office still running 8.04.2 and it does not see an attached USB UPS (also a tripplite) at all. At least it doesn't lock up. When I get a chance, I will do lsusb on it to see what shows.

Thank you to all the hardworking people who help to make Ubuntu and Linux great.

[Dimitrios Symeonidis (azimout)]

ok then, marking as "fix released" for now.
thank you for your efforts, and good luck