battery monitor shows "no battery" until first time AC power unplugged

[Triggonaut]

Binary package hint: kdebase-workspace

The battery monitor applet shipped with Kubuntu 9.10 shows "no battery" from startup on. The "flash"-icon indicating if the power supply is connected works well but it thinks that there is no battery connected. But if I disconnect the power, the flashs disappears immediately and after a few seconds, the "batter N/A"-icon disappears and gets replaced by the regular icon with four green bars indicating a fully loaded battery. Even if I reconnect the power source, the battery icon works properly, it seems like KDE doesn't notice the battery as long as it is connected to a power source.

Another user on the German ubuntuusers.org-Community reported, that regardless of what power state he is in, the icon keeps in "battery not avaiable" state. He uses the "Acer Aspire 7730g"-notebook as well as me, but as described above the bug disappears as soon as I once disconnect the power source.

[Triggonaut (andreas-weber)]

Additional information:
 - the other user says, that this only happens on Kubuntu; other distributions work well.
 - for the German readers, follow this link: http://forum.ubuntuusers.de/topic/probleme-mit-akkuanzeige-energieprofilen

[Tomas Gustavsson (tomplast)]

I can confirm that this problem still exists in Kubuntu (Lucid Lynx Alpha 2) 10.04. I'm using a Dell XPS M1530 laptop.

[Bruce McGovern (brucemcgovern)]

It works that way with Kubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Alpha 2 installed in a flash drive on my Dell Vostro A860. It shows no battery until I unplug and plug in the power charger. With 9.10 it works okay, that is, there is no problem on the same A860.

[toams (toams)]

for me the applet doesnt work correctly until i connect my power supply, after that it appears to be working correctly. I'm using a lenovo ideapad s10. It used to work before. If there is anything you want me to do to help debug this problem just add a comment.

[Philip Muškovac (yofel)]

For me this started somewhere in Lucid. It shows no Battery on login and to fix it I either have to un/plug my AC or run 'byobu' with enabled battery status to get it to work. Seems like the initial battery reading stopped working.

[Shorty365 (shorty365)]

The above mentioned problem does also apply to my machine, also an Acer TravelMate 7730. I noticed that starting a virtual machine in VirtualBox results in the appearance of the battery-monitor. On the other hand the Powermonitor is still not working like it should because when I disconnect the AC-current the computer does not switch to the Powersave profile, which is configured by default. The computers keeps running is the Performance profile even when the AC is disconnected. Both the 'acpi -V' output and the Powermonitor notice the disconnected AC but no further action is taken.

[jatstic (jatstic)]

I have an Acer Aspire 6930G and the problem is the same. But if you execute this command: cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT1/state, it shows you that the battery is connected and also makes the battery indicator to update itself and show the correct power state. But the power scheme does not change, so you must manually change it to powersave. I am using Kubuntu 9.10 as my primary desktop.

It also happens in Ubuntu 9.10 with the gnome battery indicator (same notebook), but in Ubuntu, the system changes automatically to the new power scheme.

Under Opensuse 11.2 (same kernel version and in the same notebook) the battery indicator and power schemes work correctly.

Maybe when you do the cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT1/state it makes an internal trigger to inform the applications about the real power state (it makes the battery indicator to show the state) but KDE does not change the power scheme.

[Paul de Man (pauldeman)]

Plugging in the power works to appear the indicator, also that cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT1/state did work. I think that this only happens because you started the computer without power supply?

[Fabrizio Romano (sfabriz)]

This affects me too. Both on my Acer Aspire One 751h and on my Acer Aspire 7730G.
It used to be the same problem with 10.04 as well.
Both of the computer BIOS have been updated, both run ubuntu without problem, but the battery indication doesn't work.
To make it work you have to plug in the cable and only then the battery gets recognized and as this is not always possible, it's really a major issue for me, actually, it is the reason I haven't switched to ubuntu completely. I just can't work on battery fearing a shutdown (with no alert, because the battery isn't recognized).

I really hope this issue gets solved on the natty edition. I tried everything I could find on forums, nothing solved it at 100%.

Kind regards,
Fabrizio