UNR Karmic, EeePC 701: notification on login that battery is at 1.9% and may be broken irrespective of actual charge of battery, as indicated by battery charge applet

Bug #518365 reported by Bruno Girin
58
This bug affects 12 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
gnome-power-manager (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
Low
Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: notify-osd

On login on an EeePC 701 running UNR Karmic, a notification bubble appears in the top right of the screen saying: "Battery may be broken: your battery has a very low capacity (1.9%), which means that it may be old or broken." This is contradicted by the battery load applet on the top panel that show the actual charge of the battery. The fact that the netbook happily runs several hours on battery confirms that the battery charge applet is correct while the notification is not. See attached PDF annotated screen shot that demonstrates the bug.

This behaviour only started in Karmic. It was working properly in Jaunty. The bogus notification always says "1.9%", irrespective of the actual battery charge.

Steps to reproduce:
1. Log in to Ubuntu Netwbook Remix 9.10

Actual behaviour:
A notification immediately appears saying "Battery may be broken: your battery has a very low capacity (1.9%), which means that it may be old or broken." The battery charge applet on the top panel shows the actual battery charge.

Expected behaviour:
No notification should appear as the battery is fully working as confirmed by the battery charge applet and the fact that the netbook can run on battery for as long as when it was new.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Sun Feb 7 11:56:40 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
GtkTheme: Dust
IconTheme: Humanity-Dark
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Netbook-Remix 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release i386 (20091028.4)
MachineType: ASUSTeK Computer INC. 701
Package: notify-osd 0.9.24-0ubuntu1
ProcCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-19-generic root=UUID=1a480d48-cd7c-45b8-a947-6af156302ce3 ro quiet splash
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-19.56-generic
RelatedPackageVersions:
 xserver-xorg 1:7.4+3ubuntu10
 libgl1-mesa-glx 7.6.0-1ubuntu4
 libdrm2 2.4.14-1ubuntu1
 xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.9.0-1ubuntu2.1
 xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:6.12.99+git20090929.7968e1fb-0ubuntu1
SourcePackage: notify-osd
Tags: ubuntu-unr
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-19-generic i686
WindowManager: gnome-wm
dmi.bios.date: 03/03/2008
dmi.bios.vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
dmi.bios.version: 0910
dmi.board.asset.tag: To Be Filled By O.E.M.
dmi.board.name: 701
dmi.board.vendor: ASUSTeK Computer INC.
dmi.board.version: x.xx
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: 0x00000000
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: ASUSTek Computer INC.
dmi.chassis.version: x.x
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnAmericanMegatrendsInc.:bvr0910:bd03/03/2008:svnASUSTeKComputerINC.:pn701:pvrx.x:rvnASUSTeKComputerINC.:rn701:rvrx.xx:cvnASUSTekComputerINC.:ct10:cvrx.x:
dmi.product.name: 701
dmi.product.version: x.x
dmi.sys.vendor: ASUSTeK Computer INC.

Revision history for this message
Bruno Girin (brunogirin) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Bandicoot (andrew-beals) wrote :

This also appears on the eeepc 900 model. Exact same behavior.

Revision history for this message
paultwibill@blueyonder.co.uk (paultwibill) wrote :

Put Karmic Netbook remix on 15 701's and 20 900's. problem seen on all builds.
irritating rather than real problem. no evidence of any other issues related to this. testing with students aged 11 to 18 years. Much better than supplied OS as able to join to schools active directory, and multi - user. Updating much better. Problem updating through schools proxy server.

Revision history for this message
Bruno Girin (brunogirin) wrote :

I am marking this bug as "confirmed" based on the comments above (#2 and #3) and the fact that 4 people have recorded that the bug affected them.

Changed in notify-osd (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

the notification is coming from gnome-power-manager, getting a --verbose log could be useful

affects: notify-osd (Ubuntu) → gnome-power-manager (Ubuntu)
Changed in gnome-power-manager (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → Low
Revision history for this message
Bruno Girin (brunogirin) wrote :

@Sebastien: I'll try to get you that tonight or tomorrow. Is it enough to kill the running gnome-power-manager process and restart it with the --verbose flag or should I add the flag in the application startup preferences, log out and log back in? Once I've done this, where do I find the logs?

Revision history for this message
Dan Smith (mrplowdan) wrote :

Same exact problem broken battery 1.9% on my eee 900 with the latest lucid updates
mrplow@mrplow-laptop:~$ uname -a
Linux mrplow-laptop 2.6.32-16-generic-pae #25-Ubuntu SMP Tue Mar 9 18:03:39 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux

attached is gnome-power-manager --verbose output

Revision history for this message
Dan Smith (mrplowdan) wrote :

it looks like this is the same as redhat https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=439460

mrplow@mrplow-laptop:~$ cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/*
alarm: unsupported
present: yes
design capacity: 5200 mAh
last full capacity: 100 mAh
battery technology: rechargeable
design voltage: 8400 mV
design capacity warning: 20 mAh
design capacity low: 10 mAh
capacity granularity 1: 52 mAh
capacity granularity 2: 52 mAh
model number: 900
serial number:
battery type: LION
OEM info: ASUS
present: yes
capacity state: ok
charging state: charged
present rate: unknown
remaining capacity: 100 mAh
present voltage: 8253 mV

I'm getting the same output as him two years ago

>Dave Jones 2008-03-28 14:45:14 EDT
>
>The eee uses some 'creative' way of reporting battery life.
>The capacity field is supposed to be measured as mAh, but the eee exports a
>percentage there instead of an absolute. The result of this is that a full
>battery reports a design capacity of 5200 mAh, and a remaining capacity of 100mAh
>
>This causes hal to freak out claiming that the battery is broken.

Revision history for this message
Bartosz Wucke (bwucke) wrote :

Interestingly, later on, battery applets and the like display percentage correctly (though "time remaining" tends to be totally bogus, like 19 hours with 20% charge remaining)

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