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mrc
Joined: 09 Oct 2012 Posts: 5
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Posted: Wed 10 Oct 2012, 16:00 Post subject:
Only one battery indicator in tray Subject description: IBM T21 laptop, Wary Puppy 5.3, extra battery in the Ultrabay slot, only one battery indicator |
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How can I get Wary Puppy 5.3 to recognize (and manage) a second battery installed in the Ultrabay of my IBM T21 laptop? I had Lubuntu 12.4 installed on this laptop briefly before switching to Wary, and Lubuntu recognized both batteries without any extra effort on my part.
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Monsie

Joined: 01 Dec 2011 Posts: 633 Location: Kamloops BC Canada
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Posted: Sat 13 Oct 2012, 22:23 Post subject:
Only one battery indicator in tray |
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Hi mrc,
While I run Wary 5.3 I use it on a desktop and not a laptop, so am not able to test this...
What do you get when you run this command:
and this command:
My thoughts are that the basic support for your second battery is there in Wary, but that you need to enable advanced configuration and power interface, since you have a Pentium 3 system. If you have a "full install" of Puppy on your hard drive you can try editing your menu.lst file to include the line: acpi=force in the section where the kernel is loading. Reboot, and see if this makes a difference.
hope this helps,
Monsie
_________________ My username is pronounced: "mun-see". Derived from my surname, it was my nickname throughout high school.
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mrc
Joined: 09 Oct 2012 Posts: 5
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Posted: Sat 03 Nov 2012, 18:02 Post subject:
Only one battery indicator in tray Subject description: Only one battery indicator in tray (frugal installation) |
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I did a frugal install. Here's the output of the commands you suggested:
# dmesg | grep batt
ACPI: Battery Slot [BAT0] (battery present)
ACPI: Battery Slot [BAT1] (battery present)
# dmesg | grep acpi
Switching to clocksource acpi_pm
thinkpad_acpi: ThinkPad ACPI Extras v0.23
thinkpad_acpi: http://ibm-acpi.sf.net/
thinkpad_acpi: ThinkPad BIOS KZET22WW (1.04a), EC unknown
thinkpad_acpi: WARNING: Outdated ThinkPad BIOS/EC firmware
thinkpad_acpi: WARNING: This firmware may be missing critical bug fixes and/or important features
Registered led device: tpacpi::thinklight
Registered led device: tpacpi::power
Registered led device: tpacpi::standby
input: ThinkPad Extra Buttons as /devices/platform/thinkpad_acpi/input/input5
Since the two batteries seem to be recognized, I'm going to add 'acpi=force' to menu.lst now and reboot.
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mrc
Joined: 09 Oct 2012 Posts: 5
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Posted: Sat 03 Nov 2012, 22:59 Post subject:
Only one battery indicator in tray Subject description: Only one battery indicator in tray (frugal installation) |
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There's still only one battery icon in the system tray, but when I click on it, I get a long list of battery info, and some of the statistics (such as "remaining capacity") are listed twice:
charging state: charged
charging state: discharging
[many other lines of info]
remaining capacity: 20981 mWh
remaining capacity: 37130 mWh
So this is good. It is possible that it was working all along, and I just didn't read the "report" very closely. I was expecting two battery icons (conditioned by other operating systems, I'm sure), but now that I know how to read the stats, this is fine.
Thanks for your suggestions since they helped me determine that the system is seeing both batteries. This definitely could be a beginner's issue more than anything else, though.
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mrc
Joined: 09 Oct 2012 Posts: 5
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Posted: Sun 04 Nov 2012, 10:46 Post subject:
Only one battery indicator in tray Subject description: Only one battery indicator in tray (frugal installation) |
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Further testing confirms that when one battery is depleted, the system switches over and runs on the other battery. I can also watch as the 'remaining capacity' number decreases over time. Thanks for the help.
I also updated the BIOS for this laptop after seeing the results of running the 'dmesg | grep acpi' command.
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mrc
Joined: 09 Oct 2012 Posts: 5
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Posted: Thu 08 Nov 2012, 22:29 Post subject:
Only one battery indicator in tray Subject description: One battery indicator, but 2 colors |
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After watching the battery icon a few more days, I now realize that the battery indicator is red in color when the extra battery is in use, and the battery indicator is blue in color when the main battery is being used. Live and learn!
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