Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

mrc · Joined: 09 Oct 2012 Posts: 5

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.

Monsie · Joined: 01 Dec 2011 Posts: 623 Location: Kamloops BC Canada

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:

mrc · Joined: 09 Oct 2012 Posts: 5

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thinkpad_acpi: WARNING: Outdated ThinkPad BIOS/EC firmware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.

mrc · Joined: 09 Oct 2012 Posts: 5

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.

mrc · Joined: 09 Oct 2012 Posts: 5

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.

mrc · Joined: 09 Oct 2012 Posts: 5

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!