Power Issues, vanilla ubuntu kernel, (acpi etc) acpi -V outputs etc

jamescondron · 01-19-2009, 09:30 PM

Sorry if this has been asked/answered (The 'Click Here to Find..' button didn't pick any up, neither did a quick search)

I'm using a Dell Inspiron 6000, vanilla hardware setup, vanilla Ubuntu environment and kernel, standard ACPI and battery. The battery, however, wont charge, I know the battery is more or less sound (capacity is somewhat diminished, 90% or so of factory) because I have tested it in other boxes.

I have followed advice elsewhere such as 'unplug it whilst on AC' or 'let it run flat'. I have also checked the laptop it's self is having no problem by getting the batteyr stats in BIOS, which confims everythign I have said.

The output from

Code:

acpi -V

and

Code:

acpitool

(to compare outputs) give me

Code:

jc@jcmain:~$ acpi -V
     Battery 1: charged, 50%
     Thermal 1: ok, 41.0 degrees C
  AC Adapter 1: on-line
jc@jcmain:~$ acpitool
  Battery #1     : charged, 50.61%, 1176:00:00
  AC adapter     : on-line
  Thermal zone 1 : ok, 41 C

The alarm bells for me go off at 'charged' as opposed to 'charging'. The more vebose output:

Code:

jc@jcmain:~$ acpitool -B
  Battery #1     : present
    Remaining capacity : 1205 mAh, 50.61%, 1176:00:00
    Design capacity    : 4800 mAh
    Last full capacity : 2381 mAh, 49.60% of design capacity
    Capacity loss      : 50.40%
    Present rate       : 1 mA
    Charging state     : charged
    Battery type       : rechargeable, LION
    Model number       : DELL UY4367
    Serial number      : 30072

Which is patently wrong. I have grepped dmesg for 'acpi', and compared the tail of the output before and after battery removal, since acpi is kernel based yadda yadda; nothing there of interest- certainly nothing outside of boot.

Can anybody suggest anything? Could maybe modprobing apm and looking at a different set of data help perhaps? Maybe my BIOS is wrong and charging on another box is merely putting it to this level and reporting as 100% because it sees it as 100% of available capacity?

(I'm sceptical over the latter, I have had this before and it has 'fixed its self' without charging elsewhere)

drjoewebb · 02-16-2009, 10:48 AM

I have a Dell Mini Inspiron 1210 and had the battery charging problem. I spoke with Dell tech support and learned that Airplane Mode (under System - Preferences) TURNS OFF charging capabilities. (Yeah, I know... dumb)

As soon as I turned that off, charging started immediately.

The person claimed that this was in process of being documented soon.

She also said to turn off updates because some software were putting computers into airplane mode and that I should check now and then if it had accidentally been turned on.