Only one battery indicator in tray

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mrc
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed 10 Oct 2012, 01:21

Only one battery indicator in tray

#1 Post by mrc »

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
Posts: 631
Joined: Thu 01 Dec 2011, 07:37
Location: Kamloops BC Canada

Only one battery indicator in tray

#2 Post by Monsie »

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:

Code: Select all

dmesg | grep batt
and this command:

Code: Select all

dmesg | grep acpi
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 [u]username[/u] is pronounced: "mun-see". Derived from my surname, it was my nickname throughout high school.

mrc
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed 10 Oct 2012, 01:21

Only one battery indicator in tray

#3 Post by mrc »

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thinkpad_acpi: WARNING: Outdated ThinkPad BIOS/EC firmware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
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed 10 Oct 2012, 01:21

Only one battery indicator in tray

#4 Post by mrc »

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
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed 10 Oct 2012, 01:21

Only one battery indicator in tray

#5 Post by mrc »

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
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed 10 Oct 2012, 01:21

Only one battery indicator in tray

#6 Post by mrc »

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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