Laptop turns of when secondary battery is empty while main battery is still charged.

[Christoph Grimmer-Dietrich]

I'm using a Lenovo T460s with two batteries running Ubuntu 17.10.

The indicator shows the combined charge of both batteries and I was at 40% when the laptop simply turned off. After the reboot I saw that the main battery was at 88% while the extra battery was at 0%. For some reason the OS deemed it necessary to perform an emergency shutdown without any warning.

I don't know whether this is a problem in gnome power management or the kernel but please, please find a fix for this! Or provide some workaround.

Best regards

Christoph Grimmer-Dietrich

[Ubuntu Kernel Bot (ubuntu-kernel-bot)]

This bug is missing log files that will aid in diagnosing the problem. While running an Ubuntu kernel (not a mainline or third-party kernel) please enter the following command in a terminal window:

apport-collect 1748747

and then change the status of the bug to 'Confirmed'.

If, due to the nature of the issue you have encountered, you are unable to run this command, please add a comment stating that fact and change the bug status to 'Confirmed'.

This change has been made by an automated script, maintained by the Ubuntu Kernel Team.

[Joseph Salisbury (jsalisbury)]

Did this issue start happening after an update/upgrade? Was there a prior kernel version where you were not having this particular problem?

Would it be possible for you to test the latest upstream kernel? Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Please test the latest v4.16 kernel[0].

If this bug is fixed in the mainline kernel, please add the following tag 'kernel-fixed-upstream'.

If the mainline kernel does not fix this bug, please add the tag: 'kernel-bug-exists-upstream'.

Once testing of the upstream kernel is complete, please mark this bug as "Confirmed".

Thanks in advance.

[0] http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.16-rc1/

[Christoph Grimmer-Dietrich (christoph-grimmer)]

Joseph, since I am using the laptop as main working device I am very reluctant to switch from the ubuntu custom kernel to mainline and let the machine die willingly. I got a pointer via AskUbuntu (https://askubuntu.com/questions/961278/how-to-prevent-shutdown-when-one-of-two-batteries-is-empty) that UPower is likely to be the real culprit (https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Linux-Discussion/How-to-get-dual-battery-to-switch-without-powering-off-in-Linux/td-p/3890605).

I will now tell UPower to warn instead of shutting down, turn on the gnome power management again and check whether the problem stays. If that is the case I will go ahead an run 4.16 :-)

[Christoph Grimmer-Dietrich (christoph-grimmer)]

Apparently it is known for quite a while (read 6 years) that UPower has some problem with dual battery systems: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=55278