Battery Monitoring + SUSE

lioncoeur · 02-04-2006, 12:15 PM

Hi All,

I've spent a few hours reading through some of the threads on here about people with laptop battery monitoring problems, but I didn't find anything pertaining to my problem (nor did I understand much of it, to be honest. I'm still very new at this...).

I'm confused. Quite confused!

I've tried several different distributions of Linux out in the past week since I got my laptop and I basically decided that I'd use the one that had the least amount of problems, mainly because I need to get some work done and wanted to spend the minimum amount of time configuring things. I'm currently running SUSE 10.0 and it detected everything, installed everything without a glitch.

There's still two things not right about it though and one of those is the battery monitoring (the other is the wireless, but it's not really a priority now, so I can look at it next week or something).

I just can't for the life of me understand why the monitoring of the battery would work "out of the box" for Ubuntu and Mandriva, but not for Fedora Core and SUSE. I've decided on SUSE, so I'd really like to ask for anybody's advice on where I could get started.

I've read a lot about "recompiling my kernel", however, this sounds a nightmarish situation that I don't really have time for. If there's no other way, then I suppose I'll get round to learning how to do that eventually, but ideally, I'd just like to be able to run a patch or install something, or find out where to put things in config files to make this work.

Anyone have any ideas specific for SUSE?

I've looked in /proc/acpi, but actually, no such directory exists on my system.

Where would I start to get some basic info and understanding of this?

Oh, also, I have the Gnome Battery Charge monitor in my system tray, which is showing a red exclamation mark next to the battery, a completely empty battery and 0:00 time next to it. This is while the laptop is plugged into the wall. Unplugging the laptop does nothing to change this monitor.

Any help to get me started would be greatly appreciated! I know I can do this stuff, since I have a sweet 1280x800 resolution now after reading a lot last night, but the battery is next

Cheers in advance,

Lioncoeur

justanothersteve · 02-04-2006, 01:06 PM

It sounds like SUSE didn't install with ACPI support. How did you come about with your SUSE disks? Did you burn them yourself, or did you get them from a friend, magazine, or book. I guess what I'm getting at is if you have a current version.

lioncoeur · 02-04-2006, 01:21 PM

I downloaded them a few days ago and burned them myself. Is there any way to check if I have ACPI support or not?

The ones I got were: SUSE 10.0 EVAL DVD i386 GM.

Also, I just checked the dvd and there is a program called acpid-1.04 in it.

justanothersteve · 02-04-2006, 01:27 PM

Perhaps its installed but the module isn't loaded. Can you post the output of lsmod

lioncoeur · 02-07-2006, 10:44 AM

Sorry I took a few days to respond to this thread, thanks for your offer to help. Here is my lsmod:

Code:

Module                  Size  Used by
nls_iso8859_1           4096  0 
nls_cp437               5760  0 
vfat                   12800  0 
fat                    49692  1 vfat
subfs                   7552  0 
sg                     35744  0 
sd_mod                 18576  0 
usb_storage            72512  0 
scsi_mod              131304  3 sg,sd_mod,usb_storage
joydev                  9408  0 
ndiswrapper           170068  0 
ipt_pkttype             1664  1 
ipt_LOG                 6912  7 
ipt_limit               2304  7 
cpufreq_ondemand        6044  1 
cpufreq_powersave       1792  0 
i915                   18944  1 
drm                    61844  2 i915
snd_seq_dummy           3716  0 
cpufreq_userspace       4444  0 
p4_clockmod             4872  0 
snd_pcm_oss            59168  0 
snd_mixer_oss          18944  1 snd_pcm_oss
speedstep_lib           4228  1 p4_clockmod
snd_seq                51984  2 snd_seq_dummy
snd_seq_device          8588  2 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq
freq_table              4612  1 p4_clockmod
edd                     9824  0 
ip6t_REJECT             5504  3 
ipt_REJECT              5632  3 
ipt_state               1920  12 
iptable_mangle          2688  0 
iptable_nat            22228  0 
iptable_filter          2816  1 
ip6table_mangle         2304  0 
ip_conntrack           42168  2 ipt_state,iptable_nat
ip_tables              19456  8 ipt_pkttype,ipt_LOG,ipt_limit,ipt_REJECT,ipt_state,iptable_mangle,iptable_nat,iptable_filter
ehci_hcd               32136  0 
uhci_hcd               32016  0 
generic                 4484  0 [permanent]
usbcore               112640  5 usb_storage,ndiswrapper,ehci_hcd,uhci_hcd
pci_hotplug            26164  0 
intel_agp              22044  1 
agpgart                33096  3 drm,intel_agp
ip6table_filter         2688  1 
ip6_tables             18176  3 ip6t_REJECT,ip6table_mangle,ip6table_filter
snd_hda_intel          17792  1 
snd_hda_codec          87552  1 snd_hda_intel
snd_pcm                93064  3 snd_pcm_oss,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec
snd_timer              24452  2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd                    60420  12 snd_seq_dummy,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore               9184  1 snd
snd_page_alloc         10632  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
ipv6                  242752  11 ip6t_REJECT
subdomain              78872  1 
parport_pc             38980  0 
lp                     11460  0 
parport                33864  2 parport_pc,lp
dm_mod                 54972  0 
ext3                  130440  2 
jbd                    59940  1 ext3
ide_cd                 39684  0 
cdrom                  36896  1 ide_cd
processor              24252  0 
piix                    9988  0 [permanent]
ide_disk               17152  4 
ide_core              122380  5 usb_storage,generic,ide_cd,piix,ide_disk

lioncoeur · 02-07-2006, 10:49 AM

Also, would this all be solved if I simply reinstalled my system with ACPI support? How do I go about doing that? On a related note, I noticed that the SUSE installation doesn't do some things automatically, like other installations do. For instance, I spent about 10 minutes scratching my head completely boggled at why the CD-Rom was reading so slowly. I then checked hdparm to see if dma wasn't enabled, and noticed that indeed it wasn't. I rebooted, started installation from the beginning, and was able to Alt+F2 into a shell where I could enable dma on the drive before I started installing things.

What else should I do while I'm in this shell?

Thanks in advance.

lioncoeur · 02-07-2006, 01:30 PM

Hi, I've been doing some playing around and I've got some results!

If I pass 'apm=off acpi=force' to the kernel at boot, I can get the module loaded and working. If I try 'apm=off acpi=on', then it doesn't work at all.

Here are relevant lines from dmesg:

Code:

ACPI: Subsystem revision 20050408
ACPI: Interpreter disabled.
pnp: PnP ACPI: disabled
    ACPI-0768: *** Warning: Thread BA6 could not acquire Mutex [<NULL>] AE_BAD_PARAMETER
    ACPI-0768: *** Warning: Thread BA7 could not acquire Mutex [<NULL>] AE_BAD_PARAMETER

And error message from 'modprobe acpi'

Code:

FATAL: Error inserting acpi_cpufreq (lib/modules/2.6.13-blah blah): Device or resource busy

Where do I put 'apm=off acpi=force' to make it automatically do that at boot?

What is the difference between acpi=force and acpi=on and should I care?

Thanks

seelenbild28 · 02-08-2006, 11:50 AM

your problem is most probably caused by a non-functioning acpi dsdt-table in your bios (which is the case for the most bios versions I know). since windoofs e.g. is not a really exact guy usually this problem doesn't matter for this kind of operating system. linux on the other hand is very exact and does not like corrupted dsdt-tables. search the web (google) for your laptop (which kind of laptop do you have?) and "dsdt table". I am sorry, but I forgot the exact link to a site in the net which has thousands of dsdt tables for several laptops (I got mine also from there and it worked!). Follow the instructions (as far as I remember you have to compile the dsdt for your specific laptop with the Intel acpi driver (which you also get in the net). then you have to put your compiled "dsdt.aml" (or something like that) in your /boot directory and tell linux, that it has to load it during the boot process (in /etc/sysconfig). That's it!