Gnome power manager default thresholds for critical hibernate/shutdown are too low

[GNUbee40]

Binary package hint: gnome-power-manager

Power manager 2.24.2-2ubuntu8 0
Ubuntu 9.04

Expected: battery level 8%: warning beep in regular intevals, battery level 5%: warning about auto shutdown due to low battery. A little later: Hibernation
Observed: 8%: Warning beep, 5% - Nothing, Close to 0% - Warning might be issued. Then system is interrupted by power failure.
Also remaining battery time is calculated vastly wrong - 50-70% longer than actual time left.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Could you please open a terminal and execute: apport-collect 496221 ? It will attach the necessary information to this report. Also you can submit more information for it by looking to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingGNOMEPowerManager , Thanks in advance.

[zsolt.ruszinyák (zsolt-ruszinyak)]

Exactly the same problem here. I've tried the last 3 generation of Ubuntu on my EeePC 1000H, but none of them has been able to run the action assigned to a critically low battery state successfully. I only remember some 2 or 3 times when it really happened. And my laptop has shut down unexpectedly for such power-cuts maybe 100 times already. That's the biggest trouble with Ubuntu on EeePCs. The problem is that:
IT DOESN'T GUESS THE REMAINING BATTERY LIFE CORRECTLY. It still shows some 5 minutes remaining, when the battery suddenly goes over, however it would run the action at 2 minutes remaining, I think. Interestingly, the KDE POWER MANAGER IN KUBUNTU WORKS PERFECTLY with my hardware.

It's the most dangerous bug for the hardware you can have. Really annoying!

[zsolt.ruszinyák (zsolt-ruszinyak)]

Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release i386 (20091028.5)
Package: gnome-power-manager 2.28.1-0ubuntu1
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-18.55-generic
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-18-generic i686
UserGroups: adm admin audio cdrom dialout dip fax fuse lpadmin netdev plugdev sambashare tape video

[zsolt.ruszinyák (zsolt-ruszinyak)]

Hi, GNUbee40, I've managed to partially solve the issue. Open Configuration editor and go: apps → gnome-power-manager → thresholds and change the time values. "time_action" is the time remaining in seconds when it hibernates (or anything else u set it to do). This works for me:
time_action = 600
time_critical = 900
time_low = 1200

Or, if u want it to work according to the battery percentage remaining, go: apps → gnome-power-manager → general and untick "use_time_for_policy" and then set the values for percentage again in "thresholds".

However, it still doesn't solve the bug itself, so I believe ubuntu should come with default values like this until they manage to solve the problem.

[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.

[zsolt.ruszinyák (zsolt-ruszinyak)]

I'd be very happy to try this out, however, I can't install Maverick: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/660841, it looks like your .iso image is faulty. As soon as it works I'll test this issue and report back...

[zsolt.ruszinyák (zsolt-ruszinyak)]

Sorry for the confusement, that was a mistake of course... So this is still notsolved here. I have 15% of my original battery capacity, but I believe it should work anyway. It still doesn't guess the remaining time correctly (which is the source of the whole problem), because when it says 10 min. left, I suddenly get a black screen...

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for gnome-power-manager (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[GNUbee40 (docnino)]

Hi! I chose to reactivate this error because it persists in 10.10.
Power manager seems not able to estimate the battery state. It keeps saying (Estimating...). The battery then runs down until red state without any kind of warning.
Also there are problems with the power management of my Ralink WLAN. It frequently is unable to connect if run on battery, or suddenly might disconnect.
The fix zsolt provided in #9 (never thanked you, man) worked with slight modifications under 9.04. Have not bothered to apply it to 10.10, because I mostly don't run my battery down more than 40 %.

[zsolt.ruszinyák (zsolt-ruszinyak)]

You're welcome. :)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for gnome-power-manager (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Maxim Levitsky (maximlevitsky)]

Why expired?