[gentoo-user] Battery knock out

[gentoo-user] Battery knock out

[Mick]

Hi All,

It seems that my laptop battery is about to give up the ghost.  It
used to run all the way down to 2% before the machine shut down (well,
it actually never shut down - just crashed).  Now it is knocked out
with as much as 10-11% left.  Is there some setting I can configure to
control this, or is it a matter of battery strength/health?

PS.  When I run /etc/init.d/cpufreqd I get:

Apr 16 16:33:47 lappy cpufreqd: cpufreqd_set_profile     : Couldn't
set profile "Performance Low" set for cpu0

What's missing there?
-- 
Regards,
Mick

Re: [gentoo-user] Battery knock out

[Paul Hartman]

On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 10:35 AM, Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> It seems that my laptop battery is about to give up the ghost.  It
> used to run all the way down to 2% before the machine shut down (well,
> it actually never shut down - just crashed).  Now it is knocked out
> with as much as 10-11% left.  Is there some setting I can configure to
> control this, or is it a matter of battery strength/health?
>
> PS.  When I run /etc/init.d/cpufreqd I get:
>
> Apr 16 16:33:47 lappy cpufreqd: cpufreqd_set_profile     : Couldn't
> set profile "Performance Low" set for cpu0
>
> What's missing there?

I'm not an expert and this is just a guess. If the battery/computer
has some "time remaining" calculation that it uses, 10% power
remaining now might give the same amount of usable time as 2% used to,
if the battery is discharging faster than before.

Re: [gentoo-user] Battery knock out

[Mick]

On Thursday 16 April 2009, Paul Hartman wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 10:35 AM, Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi All,
> >
> > It seems that my laptop battery is about to give up the ghost.  It
> > used to run all the way down to 2% before the machine shut down (well,
> > it actually never shut down - just crashed).  Now it is knocked out
> > with as much as 10-11% left.  Is there some setting I can configure to
> > control this, or is it a matter of battery strength/health?
> >
> > PS.  When I run /etc/init.d/cpufreqd I get:
> >
> > Apr 16 16:33:47 lappy cpufreqd: cpufreqd_set_profile     : Couldn't
> > set profile "Performance Low" set for cpu0
> >
> > What's missing there?
>
> I'm not an expert and this is just a guess. If the battery/computer
> has some "time remaining" calculation that it uses, 10% power
> remaining now might give the same amount of usable time as 2% used to,
> if the battery is discharging faster than before.

Right, that's what I thought too.  The battery cannot 'keep its charge' when 
under load.  Is cpufreqd and cpufrequtils enough to gracefully shutdown the 
laptop, or is there some additional configuration required (fancy runlevels 
and what have you)?

-- 
Regards,
Mick

Re: [gentoo-user] Battery knock out

[W.Kenworthy]

If using gnome look for gnome-power-manager (it sucks so i usually kill
it), otherwise "laptopmode" may be installed (configurable shutdown
levels I think).  Can also be a bios setting on some laptops - on my old
dell it was independent to the OS.  I actually run a perl daemon to do
it - seems more reliable :)

BillK



On Thu, 2009-04-16 at 11:06 -0500, Paul Hartman wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 10:35 AM, Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi All,
> >
> > It seems that my laptop battery is about to give up the ghost.  It
> > used to run all the way down to 2% before the machine shut down (well,
> > it actually never shut down - just crashed).  Now it is knocked out
> > with as much as 10-11% left.  Is there some setting I can configure to
> > control this, or is it a matter of battery strength/health?
> >
> > PS.  When I run /etc/init.d/cpufreqd I get:
> >
> > Apr 16 16:33:47 lappy cpufreqd: cpufreqd_set_profile     : Couldn't
> > set profile "Performance Low" set for cpu0
> >
> > What's missing there?
> 
> I'm not an expert and this is just a guess. If the battery/computer
> has some "time remaining" calculation that it uses, 10% power
> remaining now might give the same amount of usable time as 2% used to,
> if the battery is discharging faster than before.
> 

Re: [gentoo-user] Battery knock out

[Mick]

On Friday 17 April 2009, W.Kenworthy wrote:
> If using gnome look for gnome-power-manager (it sucks so i usually kill
> it), otherwise "laptopmode" may be installed (configurable shutdown
> levels I think).  Can also be a bios setting on some laptops - on my old
> dell it was independent to the OS.  I actually run a perl daemon to do
> it - seems more reliable :)

Thanks Bill, it seems that the BIOS does not contain any such setting.  I am 
using Fluxbox which does not have all this functionality of Gnome/KDE.  With 
laptopmode, do you mean: "app-laptop/laptop-mode-tools"?
-- 
Regards,
Mick

Re: [gentoo-user] Battery knock out

[W.Kenworthy]

Yes, try "equery f app-laptop/laptop-mode-tools" to find all the files
involved - its quite extensive.

BillK




On Fri, 2009-04-17 at 06:54 +0100, Mick wrote:
> laptop-mode-tools

Re: [gentoo-user] Battery knock out

[Mick]

On Friday 17 April 2009, W.Kenworthy wrote:
> Yes, try "equery f app-laptop/laptop-mode-tools" to find all the files
> involved - its quite extensive.

Ha!  I remember ... I had to uninstall this package because it kept spinning 
my hard drive down.  mplayer will pause momentarily (very annoying) and the 
life of the hard drive would probably be reduced considerably.  Given that 
this is a rather old laptop I decided not to risk it.
-- 
Regards,
Mick