Laptop with dual batteries reads both but only uses one

[Sean-O]

Ubuntu 8.10 32bit desktop

My laptop (dell insprion 600M) has a primary battery and a secondary media bay battery. Both can be seen in the power mangement icon, as well as their charge state. The problem is that in Ibex once the secondary battery is drained the system goes into shutdown/sleep mode rather than using the primary battery.

  I know that in Hardy it was the case that secondary batt was drained, and then the primary, but only when both were empty did the system go into critical power state.

[Magnus S (magnuss)]

(this is probably kernel related)

[chazchaz101 (chazchaz101)]

I seem to be having a similar problem on my T61p. When I boot with the secondary battery empty but the secondary still charged, I get a battery critical warning as soon as I get in to Gnome followed by an immediate shutdown. Removing the secondary battery during boot or plugging into the AC prevents the warning/shutdown and once I'm started, I can reinsert the secondary battery and charge/discharge it without problems.

I'm not sure, but this may have started when I began getting warnings along the lines of "Your battery is now holding only 49% of it's original charge capacity."

If any logs/extra info would help, I would be happy to provide them.

[Sean-O (kain000)]

I still dont know how to get into ACPI code to reverse the bat0 and bat1
identities, but you can work around the auto shutdown in the power
management tab. rightclick on batt icon> prefs or under
system>admin>power

On Fri, 2009-01-16 at 21:20 +0000, chazchaz101 wrote:
> I seem to be having a similar problem on my T61p. When I boot with the
> secondary battery empty but the secondary still charged, I get a battery
> critical warning as soon as I get in to Gnome followed by an immediate
> shutdown. Removing the secondary battery during boot or plugging into
> the AC prevents the warning/shutdown and once I'm started, I can
> reinsert the secondary battery and charge/discharge it without problems.
>
> I'm not sure, but this may have started when I began getting warnings
> along the lines of "Your battery is now holding only 49% of it's
> original charge capacity."
>
> If any logs/extra info would help, I would be happy to provide them.
>

[John_B (mclmfmf)]

Ok - this behavior really blows. I have an HP NC8000 laptop with 2 batteries and the behavior is the same as mentioned above. Here is how I can reproduce the problem using Ubuntu 8.10 32 bit (Intrepid):

1.) Charge both batteries to 100%
2.) Unplug AC and double-click on battery icon. Both batteries show 100%.
3.) Observe for 5 minutes and double-click on battery icon again.
4.) Internal battery still shows 100% but secondary (removable battery) shows 95%
5.) Observe for over an hour and secondary battery continues to discharge until critical battery warning is triggered.
6.) Unless I change the Power Management preferences to disable Turn Off action when battery level is critically low, the laptop will power-off with little to no warning.
7.) If I unplug the secondary (removable) battery, Ubuntu will automatically switch to the primary battery.

This "workaround" is not desirable - Ubuntu should either draw from both batteries at the same time or use one and then switch to the second automatically, this would be preferable.

Note:
I also tested this behavior with 2.6.28 with the 2.6.29-rc7 patch applied to the kernel. The behavior is the same. Please let me know what logs I should attach to help isolate/identify the source of this problem.

Thank you!

[Sean-O (kain000)]

yes i realize that the "workarround" is not exactly the best but it keeps the system from going into auto shutdown. You will still be notified before the bat dies completely. Other than that this bug has been open for quite a while and I have been troling the ubuntu forums for an answer or even a direction but I've got nothing.

I can spectulate that if you were to go into the acpi code and reverse the bat0 and bat1 id's with their hardware id's the system should operate in the reverse order like it did in hardy ie: drain primary then switch to secondary, thus allowing you to swap out the dead primary w/o having to shutdown.

[John_B (mclmfmf)]

Ok - well, I may just go ahead and look into this with the ACPI code. Did
you do this before with Hardy? I don't like the idea of having
swap/move/push etc. any batteries in my laptop unless it is absolutely
necessary. My machine (HP NC8000) has two dedicated battery bays that should
draw down power simultaneously or sequentially in Ubuntu. I just need to
figure out a way to manipulate ACPI to do this until a permanent fix is
released. The problem is when the primary battery runs low, Ubuntu won't
switch over to the other in-bay battery until I remove the primary and so I
just slightly pull out the primary battery until I can plug in the laptop to
run on AC power.

On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 9:35 AM, Sean-O <email address hidden> wrote:

> yes i realize that the "workarround" is not exactly the best but it
> keeps the system from going into auto shutdown. You will still be
> notified before the bat dies completely. Other than that this bug has
> been open for quite a while and I have been troling the ubuntu forums
> for an answer or even a direction but I've got nothing.
>
> I can spectulate that if you were to go into the acpi code and reverse
> the bat0 and bat1 id's with their hardware id's the system should
> operate in the reverse order like it did in hardy ie: drain primary then
> switch to secondary, thus allowing you to swap out the dead primary w/o
> having to shutdown.
>
> --
> Laptop with dual batteries reads both but only uses one
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/294021
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in “linux” source package in Ubuntu: New
>
> Bug description:
> Ubuntu 8.10 32bit desktop
>
> My laptop (dell insprion 600M) has a primary battery and a secondary media
> bay battery. Both can be seen in the power mangement icon, as well as
> their charge state. The problem is that in Ibex once the secondary
> battery is drained the system goes into shutdown/sleep mode rather than
> using the primary battery.
>
> I know that in Hardy it was the case that secondary batt was drained, and
> then the primary, but only when both were empty did the system go into
> critical power state.
>

[m4cph1sto (dlreid)]

I confirm this problem exists in Jaunty, latest kernel (as of July 2, 2009) 2.6.28-13-generic.

My laptop - Toshiba Tecra M4 - with primary battery and media bay 2nd battery. Both batteries are detected at first. After running on battery for some time, one battery gets drained until total battery life is ~40-50% remaining. Then suddenly it jumps to 2% remaining and shuts down. Then when I restart, only one battery is detected. I must physically remove and re-insert the other battery before it is detected again. It seems to be the secondary (media bay) battery that drains first, and the primary battery is never used, and often becomes undetected, although I can't be sure this is always the case.

Either way, this is a serious problem for anyone with dual batteries. It cuts my battery life in half or worse. I don't know what other information I can supply to diagnose the issue, but I'm willing to do what I can.

[m4cph1sto (dlreid)]

I should add, when the battery is going undetected by Ubuntu, it is also undetected as far as the battery indicator light on the laptop itself is off. The light indicates battery status: yellow = charging, green = charged, off = not present.

[kernel-janitor (kernel-janitor)]

Hi Sean-O,

Please be sure to confirm this issue exists with the latest development release of Ubuntu. ISO CD images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/karmic . If the issue remains, please run the following command from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal). It will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report.

apport-collect -p linux 294021

Also, if you could test the latest upstream kernel available that would be great. It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text. Please let us know your results.

Thanks in advance.

[This is an automated message. Apologies if it has reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[Anders Logg (logg)]

I can confirm this bug on my Lenovo X301 running Karmic Koala.

I recently installed a secondary battery. Both batteries are visible but only the second battery seems to be used. My primary battery stays at 100% but Ubuntu shuts down when the secondary has been drained.

Let me know what information I should send to help with debugging.

[Jeremy Foshee (jeremyfoshee)]

This bug report was marked as Incomplete and has not had any updated comments for quite some time. As a result this bug is being closed. Please reopen if this is still an issue in the current Ubuntu release http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download . Also, please be sure to provide any requested information that may have been missing. To reopen the bug, click on the current status under the Status column and change the status back to "New". Thanks.

[This is an automated message. Apologies if it has reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[Carl Leitner (litlfred)]

I think that this still is an issue for me (HP Envy 13) with Ubuntu 11.10. Please let me know what debugging information you need.

[AlexanderWaitZaranek (awaitz)]

This is broken in the released version of Ubuntu 11.10. There is no workaround possible AFAIK from "power settings". My only option is "Shutdown" or "Hibernate" "When Power is critically low" but, of course, I actually have a fully charged battery.

Happy to help, if possible.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Michael (michaeljt)]

Bug 531190 (see also as of my comment 133) and the linked bug 882160 might be relevant. I am trying to solve that and it looks to me like gnome-settings-deamon automatically forces a suspend when it detects an empty battery - in my case I don't even have a second battery, but the system sends an ACPI message that the not-present battery is empty and g-s-d duely forces a suspend. So g-s-d should probably be fixed to check whether all batteries in the system are empty before sending that message. (What I don't know though is whether the switch from the empty to the non-empty battery will be handled correctly, as I don't have a second one to test.)

[H.-Dirk Schmitt (dirk-computer42)]

Bug is still in precise reproducible on multiple machines, e.g. HP 2760o and Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Sean-O, thank you for reporting this and helping make Ubuntu better. Intrepid reached EOL on April 30, 2010.
Please see this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

We were wondering if this is still an issue on a supported release? If so, can you try with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO CD images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/ .

If it remains an issue, could you run the following command in a supported release from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal). It will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report.

apport-collect -p linux <replace-with-bug-number>

Also, if you could test the latest upstream kernel available that would be great. It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text. Please let us know your results.

Thanks in advance.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for linux (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Ben Gamari, if you have a bug in Ubuntu, could you please file a new report by executing the following in a terminal:
ubuntu-bug linux

For more on this, please see the Ubuntu Kernel team article:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeam/KernelTeamBugPolicies#Filing_Kernel_Bug_reports

the Ubuntu Bug Control and Ubuntu Bug Squad article:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/BestPractices#X.2BAC8-Reporting.Focus_on_One_Issue

and Ubuntu Community article:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs#Bug_reporting_etiquette

When opening up the new report, please feel free to subscribe me to it.

Please note, not filing a new report may delay your problem being addressed as quickly as possible.

Thank you for your understanding.

[Martin Linden (linden)]

I have a Fujitsu lifebook (P771) running Ubuntu 12.10, and did not experience any problems when inserting en extra battery.
The new battery was indicated as empty for quite a long time though (hence my browsing this bug and several others), but after being plugged in for a few hours it now seems to be charging as expected.