upower reports "percentage: 0%" while laptop is AC-adapter-powered and battery is 100% charged

[Bob Bib]

When laptop is powered by AC-adapter (with fully charged battery attached), battery menu indicates "Battery (not present)", which is confusing;
when battery is discharging (or charging), it shows time left to full discharge (or full charge), and it's OK.

I propose to use some label like "Battery (not active)" when laptop is AC-adapter-powered (and battery isn't charging).
"Battery (not present)" should be used only when there's no battery detected.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: indicator-applet-complete 0.5.0-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-23.36-generic 3.2.14
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-23-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu2
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Apr 14 01:11:48 2012
SourcePackage: indicator-applet
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2012-03-07 (37 days ago)

[Bob Bib (bobbib)]

This is confusing: https://launchpadlibrarian.net/101765807/bat_ind01.png

[Charles Kerr (charlesk)]

Hmm, that's interesting... this string is coming from here: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~indicator-applet-developers/indicator-power/trunk.2.0/view/head:/src/indicator-power.c#L379

Most of the time when AC is plugged in and the battery is full, the indicator won't show text at all. Otherwise how much charge the device has, or "(not present)" if the charge level is 0.

So, indicator-power thinks that upower has told it your battery is not fully charged and has a 0% charge.

Bob, you might try running "upower --monitor-detail" in a terminal and see what upower thinks is going on in your system?

[Bob Bib (bobbib)]

charlesk,
yes, it strangely reports "percentage: 0%" while laptop is AC-adapter-powered and battery is 100% charged.

[Bilal Akhtar (bilalakhtar)]

Seems like a hardware/software problem, or something regarding the kernel, or with the way the BIOS reports battery stuff. Do you have this issue with another operating system like Windows? If so, then it's probably an issue with your BIOS.

[Bob Bib (bobbib)]

bilalakhtar,
I don't have this issue with MS Windows.

---

I'll attach some more files containing probably useful info (taken with 100% charged battery and AC power supply).

/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/uevent

[Bob Bib (bobbib)]

/proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/info

[Bob Bib (bobbib)]

/proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state

[Charles Kerr (charlesk)]

This isn't an indicator issuse since indicator-power is correctly reflecting the incorrect data being given to it by upower.

I'm reassigining this to "upower (Ubuntu)" for LP tracking, but Bob you should report this upstream to the upower developers at < https://bugs.freedesktop.org/enter_bug.cgi>. Their bug tracker has a couple of similar issues but I don't think this is a duplicate of any of them... <https://bugs.freedesktop.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=specific&order=relevance+desc&bug_status=__all__&product=upower&content=percentage> but none of them

[Bob Bib (bobbib)]

Created attachment 61510
upower --monitor-detail

upower strangely reports "percentage: 0%" while laptop is AC-adapter-powered and battery is 100% charged

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS / amd64
Linux kernel version: Ubuntu 3.2.0-24.37-generic 3.2.14
upower 0.9.15-3git1

[Bob Bib (bobbib)]

Created attachment 61511
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/uevent

[Bob Bib (bobbib)]

Created attachment 61512
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/uevent

[Bob Bib (bobbib)]

Created attachment 61513
/proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/info

[Bob Bib (bobbib)]

Created attachment 61514
/proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state

[Bob Bib (bobbib)]

All attached files were taken with 100% charged battery and AC power supply connected.

[Bugzilla-x (bugzilla-x)]

> energy: 0 Wh

What's the output of:
cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/energy_now
?

[Bob Bib (bobbib)]

Bastien Nocera:
> What's the output of:
> cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/energy_now
> ?

Unfortunately, nothing meaningful:
$ cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/energy_now
cat: /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/energy_now: No such file or directory

It's the same laptop, but now slightly different distro:
Debian testing "jessie" / amd64
Linux 3.10.7 (3.10.7-1)
upower 0.9.21 (0.9.21-2)

[Bugzilla-x (bugzilla-x)]

The ACPI for that laptop seems pretty broken:
POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_NOW=-1000

You should report this as a bug against the kernel at bugzilla.kernel.org. The laptop lacks energy_* information.

Reopen this bug if the kernel developers think that this is actually a bug in UPower.

[Mike-cloaked (mike-cloaked)]

It turns out that this was indeed a bug in upower and is resolved in arch linux package upower version 0.9.23-2

The upstream report for this is at https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=70952

So this I believe is now fully resolved with the latest upower version.