I am using SuSE 8.2 on an old Dell Inspiron 3500 Laptop. I've been trying to set up my wireless with no luck, but that's an issue for another post. Well, while working on that problem it was suggested that I reinstall everything with the card inserted to get it to work. Well, that didn't work, but that's beside the point. My problem now is I can't get my battery monitor to work. I came across the solution on this forum before, but I don't remember what I did. I just remember it was real simple. Someone had posted the question and some technical responses were made. Then someone else responded and said it was much easier. No recompiling the kernel or any of that mess. I think it was something like just turn on acpi or apm from the command line or something like that. But a good example was used there and it worked. I'm a newbie. Simply saying "Turn on acpi and scramble the eggs on zero gravity corn husks," just doesn't make any sense to me. I need the commands to do it. Often the answers are too vague and I find myself searching through endless vagueness to no avail. So, I know this is long, but can someone just simply tell me how to turn whatever on to get my battery monitor and maybe the cpu fan if that is encompassed within this subject. Something like that. Then I can get back to that stupid wireless card. Thanks.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...attery+monitor
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...attery+monitor

Hope one of these will help. Sorry, I don't have a laptop. I just know how to search. Post if these are no help.

Good to go. Thanks.

I have acpid running on runlevel 5 like I was told in another forum. Initially it worked and there was a little battery that would say whether it was plugged in or not and how much power was left. Then the next time I started the computer, and everytime since, there is no battery icon. I have no idea what to do now. I didn't change anything. I just got the daemon running and made sure it starts in runlevel 5 on startup. The computer says it's running and the fan is coming on too. What now?

acpi battery support can be loaded as a module. try insmod battery . if it works after that, edit /etc/modules and add battery to the list of modules so it will be automatically loaded on startup.

oops! I did some checking on my system, and it looks like my previous post isn't accurate. Unfortunately for me the modules aren't loading on startup. I was working of another post and thought that solved the problem but I've since discovered it doesn't. Next time I'll check my info better before I post.

It doesn't matter. I'm an idiot. I figured out later that for some reason the battery display for klaptop was turned off. Now I can see it so it's good to go.