[SOLVED] KDE's Power Manager Reports "Battery Not Present" But it's Definitely Present

jlacroix · 04-26-2011, 07:17 PM

Hello everyone, I have a weird problem. One out of every three boots or so (give or take) KDE's power manager widget (by the clock) shows a red x on it and reports "Battery: Not Present". Usually when I reboot it's fine, but every now and then when I start my laptop it reports my battery is not there, and also sometimes when resuming from standby.

While having this problem, if I run the command "cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state" I get:

Code:

present:                 yes
capacity state:          ok
charging state:          charged
present rate:            1 mA
remaining capacity:      8657 mAh
present voltage:         12764 mV

Even though that output says "present," KDE's power manager says it isn't and power management features are disabled. I know this problem might seem petty, but it's driving me nuts since I've spent a lot of time researching to try to fix it.

I am using KDE 4.6.2 on Arch Linux (64-bit). My laptop is a Dell Latitude E6410. Interestingly enough, when I tested Kubuntu on this laptop, I NEVER have this problem, even after rebooting twenty times, I cannot reproduce it. It only happens with Arch. With Arch, I went as far as testing the latest RC's of kernel 2.6.39 which have the same issue. I prefer to use Arch.

I have been Googling this for about a month and turned up nothing. I figured that if I don't have the problem in Kubuntu, there must have been a bug report that allowed them to fix it, but there isn't. Not even on KDE's bug tracker either, or at least none relevant to my laptop.

Has anyone else had this problem with KDE and solved it? (By the way, upower and dbus are running).

business_kid · 04-27-2011, 02:57 PM

acpi_battery makes a module. Is it compiled in or loaded?

jlacroix · 04-27-2011, 08:51 PM

I'm not sure, how do I find out?

I did some more testing, and for whatever reason, if I run the below command, the battery icon starts seeing the battery right away:

"cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state"

When the battery isn't detected, running that command makes it detected. I am not sure why simply running that command fixes it whenever I have this problem. I would rather not have to use that command to find the battery though.

business_kid · 04-28-2011, 02:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jlacroix

I'm not sure, how do I find out?

The lazy trick I use is to open a kernel configuration, find the option, read the help and it names the option. It saves me finding out a handier way :-).

jlacroix · 04-28-2011, 06:31 PM

Oddly enough I didn't even have acpi installed, so I installed it and will see how it goes. I have no idea how my system has functioned without acpi installed...

I will consider this solved for now, thank you for your reply

jlacroix · 09-11-2011, 08:10 PM

It looks like I was wrong about my earlier indication, this is still not solved and I never figured it out. I figured I would get around to trying to fix all the loose ends on this laptop, and thought I'd give this another chance to try and fix it.

Anyone know what may cause such a problem in KDE?