karmic: battery left time estimation is wrong and randomly changing

[Ketil Wendelbo Aanensen]

Binary package hint: gnome-power-manager

Clean install of Karmic alpha 6.
My battery has on the last versions of Ubuntu lasted for around 2 hours.
Right now, the power manager reads: 15 minutes remaining (35,0%) which means either
1) Karmic drains battery
2) Gnome-power-manager has a serious bug in how it reports remaining power.

Let me know what info you need, and I'll give it.

I've also noticed that on startup with the power cable plugged in, I'm told that the battery could be broken or empty, and something about it being at 42 point something %, even though it is fully charged. Previous versions of Ubuntu has not reported anything like this.

[Ketil Wendelbo Aanensen (ketilwaa-deactivatedaccount)]

Update to this:

I noticed when I unplugged the power cable, notification-osd told me I have 8 hrs 10 mins left of battery, at 99,7% That's waaay too much. Then, 2 minutes later, it's reporting 1 hr 15 mins, now 1 hr 45 secs (95,9%)

With previous version of Ubuntu I had roughly 2 hours with a fully charged battery. (That is reported. I have never timed actual battery life)

[Nico_argentina (ferrettinico)]

I seem to have the same problem, the "Update to this" message you've sent I think it's because the system has to learn how long your battery lasts before giving accurate results.
But as for the bug you posted I'm running with the same problem. I have a Dell XPS M1530. When I unplug the AC it goes from 100% to around 50% in one minute and then start dropping normally, until 5% when I plug it again, so I have half of the battery I had on Jaunty.

[Nico_argentina (ferrettinico)]

Maybe it has to do with the "Capacity": I right-click on the battery icon, go to "Power History" and it gives me a "Capacity" of 53%. But I'm pretty sure in Jaunty the battery had much more duration

[istfekete (ist-fekete-deactivatedaccount)]

My problem is (with karmic final installed), that
1. the battery does not last nearly as long as it did with jaunty a week before
2. every time i sign in a pop-up tells me that the battery's capacity is low, so it is either old or broken (it shows some sort of percentage, which is declining from day to day, so it has to be getting worse)

[Lionel Dricot (ploum-deactivatedaccount)]

I confirm that estimations given by the power-manager applet are pure non-sense and changing all the time.

Worst : yesterday, it was telling me that there was 35minutes battery left then, suddenly, it hibernated without even asking me or warning me.

[the_madman (marcus-harrisonland)]

This is unrelated to the gnome power applet: I suffer this problem in Kubuntu jaunty. Oddly, the battery plasmoid reports in a somewhat normal fashion until it reaches about 35%, at which point it drops immediately to 3% and goes to sleep. I suspect it has something to do with HAL/udev.

Strange: on my system, HAL is installed, but the module for DeviceKit storage disk management is also installed. I was under the impression that HAL is being replaced with udev. Then again, if memory serves KDE doesn't have a Solid plug-in for udev/DeviceKit, so it may just be that HAL is installed in Kubuntu and not in standard Ubuntu due to this limitation.

[Lionel Dricot (ploum-deactivatedaccount)]

added the bug to devicekit_power as it seems to happen on Kubuntu too.

[Lionel Dricot (ploum-deactivatedaccount)]

I must also add that I didn't had that problem with Alpha6. It looks like the problem happened between alpha6 and the final release.

[Lightbreeze (nedhoy-gmail)]

"Battery may be broken or empty" notification is reported as Bug #437745

[psychoelf (psychoelfx)]

Just did a clean install with updates of Karmic today and I am having the same issue.

[Frantique (undernetangel)]

I can confirm this as well. Funny that it appears just with EEE Pc 900, but not with a HP notebook. I recommend to investigate from this part as well.

[timosha (timosha)]

Exactly the same message on Suse 11.2 Gnome, but not on Suse 11.2 KDE (I didn't try Kubuntu).

[David Tombs (dgtombs)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please execute the following command, as it will automatically gather debugging information, in a terminal:

apport-collect 434251

This will help us to find and resolve the problem. Bear in mind that you may need to install the python-launchpadlib package from the universe repository. Additionally, when prompted to give apport-collect permissions for Launchpad you will need to give it at least the ability to "Change Non-Private" data as it will be adding information to your bug report. Thanks in advance!

When reporting bugs in the future please use apport, either via the appropriate application's "Help -> Report a Problem" menu or using 'ubuntu-bug' and the name of the package affected. You can learn more about this functionality at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs.

[Brock Tice (brock)]

Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release amd64 (20091027)
Package: gnome-power-manager 2.28.1-0ubuntu1
PackageArchitecture: amd64
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-17.54-generic
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-17-generic x86_64
UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare

[David Tombs (dgtombs)]

Thanks for the apport-collect, Brock. Due to the similar symptoms I'm marking this as a duplicate of Bug #120258. Please note that I think some of you have issues beyond a bad time estimate. For issues regarding battery /percentage/ you should file a different report.

Please direct future comments to the other bug.

[Virginia Brilhante (vbrilhante)]

Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
Package: gnome-power-manager 2.28.1-0ubuntu1
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 LANGUAGE=en_GB.UTF-8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-16.53-generic
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-16-generic i686
UserGroups: adm admin audio cdrom dialout dip fax fuse lpadmin netdev plugdev sambashare tape users video
XsessionErrors:
 (gnome-settings-daemon:2466): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_propagate_error: assertion `src != NULL' failed
 (gnome-settings-daemon:2466): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_propagate_error: assertion `src != NULL' failed
 (nautilus:2552): Eel-CRITICAL **: eel_preferences_get_boolean: assertion `preferences_is_initialized ()' failed
 (polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1:2564): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_once_init_leave: assertion `initialization_value != 0' failed

[Joxe Rojas (joxerg)]

Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Netbook-Remix 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release i386 (20091028.4)
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
Package: gnome-power-manager 2.28.1-0ubuntu1.3
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 LANG=eu_ES.UTF-8
 LANGUAGE=eu_ES.UTF-8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-14.48-generic
Tags: ubuntu-unr ubuntu-unr
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-14-generic i686
UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare

[l-x-l (labouie)]

Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release i386 (20091028.5)
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: gnome-power-manager 2.28.1-0ubuntu1.3
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-19.56-generic
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-19-generic i686
UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare