[Karmic] Battery monitor applet doesn't show battery remaining time

[Martin Gamache]

Binary package hint: gnome-power-manager

I'm not sure if this relates to the right package...

On my HP DV-2620CA, the battery monitor in my top gnome panel does not show the remaining time, in Karmic Beta. I only get the percentage of remaining power.

Up to now, I had this information in previous versions of Ubuntu.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Tue Oct 6 16:30:32 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia wl
Package: gnome-power-manager 2.28.0-0ubuntu2
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_CA.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-12.39-generic
SourcePackage: gnome-power-manager
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-12-generic x86_64

[Dylan McCall (dylanmccall)]

I can confirm this bug on an HP Mini 1035nr netbook. Given our rather different bits of hardware, it strikes me as reasonably possible that it affects a larger selection of HP computers.

Something particularly interesting to note is that the lack of 'time remaining' info means that gnome-power-manager doesn't seem to perform any action for low battery. It gives a warning, but doesn't enter sleep mode; it just lets the battery drain and perform a hard shutdown. (Which can't be good. It's partly a bug in gnome-power-manager, which should NOT rely on time remaining alone to decide when to do a safe shutdown, but it definitely makes this bug more significant).

[Jason Lane (cerevisia)]

This also appears to be the case with my Dell Mini 9 (Inspiron 910). Only the percentage is given. This is using a fresh install from the daily UNR build.
The power statistics applet reached via right clicking the battery icon report the battery give both time to charge and time to empty as 0 seconds, but reports the percentage charge OK.
Results from: cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT1/state
present: yes
capacity state: ok
charging state: discharging
present rate: 0 mA
remaining capacity: 1920 mAh
present voltage: 11100 mV

This would indicate that the kernel isn't reporting the discharge rate, which I assume would allow the power manager to calculate the time left.

[William Davis (hotshotdj)]

I can confirm this bug on a System76 Pangolin Performance 5 (PanP5). I'm getting percentage information, but no time estimate. IBAM also reports:

$ ibam -b
Bios: 0:00:00
Battery time left: 0:00:00
Adapted battery time left: 0:00:00

Recompiling the kernel with "CONFIG_ACPI_AC=m" corrected this problem in Jaunty, but has no effect in Karmic.

[Waldir Leoncio (wleoncio)]

Confirmed on version 2.28.1. Running Karmic beta on a Microboard Ellite (brazilian vendor). Screenshot attached.

[findepi (piotr-findeisen)]

Problem present also on Kubuntu Karmic using default power mgmt applet (PowerDevil is the name?)
I'm running on Asus UL30 — does it really matter?

[alberto (albertopassarella)]

Same problem with compaq presario f770el and acer asprire one

[Mika (dudleyperkins)]

exact same problem here, just upgraded to karmic on a Fujitsu Siemens S6120, and this is really annoying.

[alberto (albertopassarella)]

Acer Aspire One problem's about battery remaining time solved by routine upgrade. The problem persist for Compaq Presario F770EL.

[rakudave (rakudave)]

confirmed, since I upgraded to Karmic yesterday (Axxiv NG20)

[alberto (albertopassarella)]

Strange things now Acer Aspire One continue to don't show battery remaininng time

[magabriel (magabriel)]

Confirmed in HP Compaq 6510b

[Luciano Ziegler (emaildoluc)]

on my hp pavillon dv3 it doesnt work neither, it shows the battery as 100% but when I unplug the charger the computer just turn off, I have dual boot with windows, and it works well on it!!!

[Helen H (thehelenho)]

My acer aspire one's battery meter is being inconsistent, as alberto above mentioned. The meter wasn't working; the icon stayed the same as when charging and showed "laptop battery is fully charged" even though it's not plugged in and I know the battery's discharging. Then it started working fine - a couple seconds after disconnecting from AC power, the icon changed and showed discharging rate and % charged. But now it's not working again (back to original issue)! Dang.

[alberto (albertopassarella)]

I've upgraded the system now Acer Aspire One seems to show time remaining. I hope that doesn't change.

[Sydney (davidhal91)]

I can confirm this bug on my Gateway M275, just upgraded and still doesn't show the time remaining.

[santiago (santiparalosamigos)]

On a Toshiba nb200 it doesn't display battery remaining time, only displays percentage

[Sir Wallsy (sir-wallsy)]

Confirmed:

Dell Mini 9
9.10 UNR

[Dougie Nisbet (dougie-highmoor)]

confirmed. on a Toshiba Equium A80-132. worked fine on 9.04.

[Sean Parsons (ubuntu-futurenotfound)]

On an Inspiron 1525 my battery meter seems to start at 60%, which it wasn't doing with 9.04.

[IKT (ikt)]

On my acer aspire the battery sits at 100% until I restart, then it shows the proper batter life remaining, not sure whether this is worthy of making a seperate bug report for.

[ewi (launchpad-ewald-arnold)]

The same on my dell mini9 after updating from 9.04. My other laptop was freshly installed at the same time and showed the correct remaining time after some hours of learning.

The only difference as far as I can see: the dell always shows a discharging rate of 0.0 (it also did with 9.04) So I assume some calculation has changed in gpm after 9.04. I played a bit with the settings via gconf-editor but without luck.

[wombalton (wombalton)]

same here for me. worked perfectly fine till I upgraded to 9.10. now there is only a percentage of the remaining battery life, but no predicted time... i really liked this feature. Why is it gone?
btw: i'm using a lenovo 3000 n200 if that's any help...

[haydn (haydnv)]

Exact same issue for me on a system76 serval performance.

[haydn (haydnv)]

If it's any help, powertop does give me an estimate (but I much prefer the GNOME panel applet).

[Dylan McCall (dylanmccall)]

It has been confirmed that this specific issue is very real. Therefore, I ask that anything with different symptoms be filed in different bug reports. (This includes gnome-power-manager reporting inaccurate battery level percentages. In this case, it knows the percentage).

The bug is not present on my Asus f8sv-a1, so it is hardware-specific.

I suspect that it may be apt to file this against devicekit-power, but I think having some feedback from people who maintain this package would help, first, before we start throwing around more emails :)

Anyone? ...Anyone?...

[RodGer (rodger)]

I have the same problem. I want to upload more information about my system since it seems (as said before) to be a hardware specific problem. What exactly will happen if I give 'apport-collect 444881' ? Will the apport program collect information for the certain package and my system and attach it to the already given information above?

[Jonathan Ramos (jonathanramos)]

Same problem here. Battery is ok, i have tried in winblows. When the battery charging, it does not fully charge and i get a message about battery discharging, i unplugged the laptop and the icons changes to 0% battery or fully charged but not going down. And a red light on my battery comes up. It have never come red before so its must be bad. So i take the battery out and put it back in then plug the battery and loads windows and the battery its functional again with 100% charge.
I had a gateway mc7801.

[Jonathan Ramos (jonathanramos)]

I forgot to write that the battery handler does not support hibernation and when the battery is empty it just turn off like a forced shutdown. I have* a gateway mc7801.

[mattibal (mattibal)]

I confirm the problem in my HP dv5-1030el laptop.
In jaunty everything works fine, it stopped working when I upgraded to karmic.
It shows the battery percentage but not remaining time.

[Trev (r-admin-accg-de)]

I can confirm this bug on my Fujitsu Siemens Esprimo Mobile V5535 running Karmic Koala with all current updates. When I unplug the power adapter, gnome-power-manager says that the battery is fully charged and the power adapter is plugged in which is of course not true. Note that it says fully charged even though it gives me the correct percentage when clicking once on the icon. It never updates and after a while I get a hard shutdown without any warnings. However when the power-adapter is plugged in everything is being displayed correctly: the icon then shows the correct charging status and the time-remaining-until-fully-charged value is also correct. This is really annoying!

Greetings,

Trev

[Petter Eklund (denbevingadebaevern)]

@Dylan McCall: I believe there is a workaround for your problem that the computer will not shut down/suspend/hibernate as it should on low battery. You can set the gconf-option /apps/gnome-power-manager/general/use_time_for_policy to false (use gconf-editor or something) to have it use the percentage of remaining energy in the battery to determine when the battery is critically low.

[Alberto Goldoni (alberto-goldoni)]

Quite same problem on my HP Pavillion DV3550ev.
The problem comes with ubuntu 9.10 and not with 9.04.
If i disconnect the power cable from the computer the battery icon works good, but if i restart the computer or i switch on without the power cable the icon give to me:"the battery is fully charged", but if i clic on the battery it gives to me perhaps 23% and no idication regarding the discharge time.
Is the same for the video backlight that witout the power cable during reboot starts the computer with 100% of luminosity but if i connect the power cable and then disconnect it works good chainging the backlights from 100% to 60%.
So it seems that the gnome power manager doesn't start alone during a reboot (with battery) but only if you disconnect the power cable.
Best regards.

[cascagrossa (cascagrossa-cascao)]

Same problem on my HP Pavillion DV2240BR. Furthermore gnome-power-manager doesn't work as expected in shutdown and/or the computer at the correct batery state as configured in gconf-editor.

Ubuntu Karmic fully updated.

[garrett (garrett-stoupe)]

Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Netbook-Remix 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release i386 (20091028.4)
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
Package: gnome-power-manager 2.28.1-0ubuntu1
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 LANG=en_NZ.UTF-8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-16.53-generic
Tags: ubuntu-unr ubuntu-unr
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-16-generic i686
UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare

[Joe Kraxner (kraxner)]

Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release amd64 (20091027)
Package: gnome-power-manager 2.28.1-0ubuntu1.1
PackageArchitecture: amd64
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-18.55-generic
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-18-generic x86_64
UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare

[d0pp (d0pp)]

I still got the same problem as Trev reported in November 09 on the Lucid Alpha 3. When power is unplugged the applet shows the battery as fully charged and it's only when i look at the Power Statistics that I can see the battery percentage.
When I plug in the laptop I can see a "Laptop battery discharging" pop-up for a brief moment and the applet shows how long time until the battery is fully charged.

My computer is a Fujitsu Siemens Esprimo Mobile U9200

Earlier in gnome (in gnome 2.26 or something) one could add a separate battery applet outside the notification are that would show the correct remaining status, but this has been removed in the latest releases. I had hoped that this would be fixed in Lucid but I am loosing faith at the moment.