[karmic] Battery fill level is off; system shutting down early

[Arne Caspari]

Binary package hint: gnome-power-manager

Ubuntu 9.10, Macbook 1,1

gnome-power-manager indicates a "Energy when fully charged" ( translated from German so the actual english label might differ ) of 1357,0 Wh ( which is incorrect, of course ) and a Design Energy of 50,2Wh ( which is probably right ).

The charge level is obviously calculated from the "Energy when fully charged" so gnome-power-manager always indicates a critical charge ( < 4 % ). Sometimes the systems shuts down because of a critical battery level ( even though it correctly indicates that there is > 1 hour of running time left ).

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Thu Nov 19 10:50:40 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release i386 (20091028.5)
Package: gnome-power-manager 2.28.1-0ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-14.48-generic
SourcePackage: gnome-power-manager
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-14-generic i686

[Amy Farrell (amykfarrell)]

I have been having a very similar problem. The percentage full reported by gnome-power-manager was around 6-7% while the time remaining would be at a reasonable 2-3 hours. I also noticed that "Energy when full" was reported at 643 Wh (with "Energy (design)" at 50.2 Wh).

I see a similar discrepancy in the DevkitPower.txt attached by the reporter:

    energy-full: 1357.04 Wh
    energy-full-design: 50.2 Wh

I found this: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=736347 -- david_edmundson advises the following for a similar symptom:

  "It's a known hardware bug. Affects OS X too.
   The fix is listed on Apples website somewhere.

   Shutdown, take the battery out, and disconnect the mains. Then press and hold the power
   button for a while. Reassemble, and all will be good."

I did this, and now the numbers reported by gnome-power-manager are reasonable. (energy-full at 51 Wh).

What I quoted above states that this is a hardware bug, but I haven't gone any further to verify that.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. A new version of GNOME Power Manager is available on Maverick and we are wondering if this bug is still an issue for you with that version? Could you please test and comment back? Thanks in advance.

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

We'd like to figure out what's causing this bug for you, but we haven't heard back from you in a while. Could you please provide the requested information? Thanks!

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!