[gentoo-user] [Somewhat OT] Laptop battery not showing up in KDE, Smart Battery calibration

[gentoo-user] [Somewhat OT] Laptop battery not showing up in KDE, Smart Battery calibration

[Paul Hartman]

Hi,

I have a laptop running Gentoo (with dual-boot to Windows XP). It was
manufactured in 2004 and battery life have been consistent for all
those years. However, it sat dormant for almost a year, after which I
did a few days worth of updating to bring it up to current kernel and
~amd64 package levels. There are two issues that have arisen:

1) The smart battery is not so smart anymore. It only charges about
halfway, then the charging light turns green and it stops. Effective
battery capacity is about one-third of what it used to be. From what I
understand, while Li-ion don't have "memory" like old Ni-Cd batteries,
the "smart" circuitry cannot account for power drain that happens when
the battery is not in use. Say the battery lost half of its power
while it was in storage, so the chip thinks charge is at one level
when it is really much lower. When recharging, it stops when it is
"full" even though it's only halfway there.

Has anyone successfully re-calibrated one of these batteries to
recognize a larger capacity?

My understanding is that, to do this, I should discharge at a constant
rate until it is empty, then charge to full. Repeat ?? times. I've
drained the poor little battery after regular usage (not a constant
rate of discharge) a few times and haven't noticed any change so far.
So I'm probably doing it wrong (or completely misunderstanding...)

This is complicated by my second problem:

2) If I click on the Power Management in the KDE system settings, it
says "Number of CPUs 0" "Number of batteries 0" and battery-related
options are greyed out. Since battery monitoring does not work, I have
no idea how much battery life is left and have no warning when it
suddenly shuts down, causing filesystem corruption and who knows what
other problems.

Everything in /proc/acpi/battery/ seems normal and /proc/cpuinfo does as well:

$ cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT1/info
present:                 yes
design capacity:         4400 mAh
last full capacity:      1984 mAh
battery technology:      rechargeable
design voltage:          14800 mV
design capacity warning: 300 mAh
design capacity low:     100 mAh
cycle count:              0
capacity granularity 1:  32 mAh
capacity granularity 2:  32 mAh
model number:            01ZG
serial number:           1020
battery type:            LION
OEM info:                SMP

$ cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT1/state
present:                 yes
capacity state:          ok
charging state:          charged
present rate:            0 mA
remaining capacity:      1984 mAh
present voltage:         16384 mV

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor       : 0
vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
cpu family      : 15
model           : 28
model name      : Mobile AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3000+
stepping        : 0
cpu MHz         : 2000.000
cache size      : 512 KB
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 1
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge
mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx mmxext
fxsr_opt lm 3dnowext 3dnow rep_good
bogomips        : 4009.21
TLB size        : 1024 4K pages
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: ts fid vid ttp

That all seems to look normal to me, so I'm not sure if I'm missing
some setting somewhere else.

Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Paul

Re: [gentoo-user] [Somewhat OT] Laptop battery not showing up in KDE, Smart Battery calibration

[Maciej Grela]

2010/11/9 Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com>:
> Hi,
>
> I have a laptop running Gentoo (with dual-boot to Windows XP). It was
> manufactured in 2004 and battery life have been consistent for all
> those years. However, it sat dormant for almost a year, after which I
> did a few days worth of updating to bring it up to current kernel and
> ~amd64 package levels. There are two issues that have arisen:
>
> 1) The smart battery is not so smart anymore. It only charges about
> halfway, then the charging light turns green and it stops. Effective
> battery capacity is about one-third of what it used to be. From what I
> understand, while Li-ion don't have "memory" like old Ni-Cd batteries,
> the "smart" circuitry cannot account for power drain that happens when
> the battery is not in use. Say the battery lost half of its power
> while it was in storage, so the chip thinks charge is at one level
> when it is really much lower. When recharging, it stops when it is
> "full" even though it's only halfway there.
>

The inbuilt battery circuit can account for the self-discharge, the
charge on a lithium cell is proportional to it's voltage IIRC. The
problem is, that li-ion cells don't like being totaly discharged (for
example lying unused for a year). It's advised to charge them and only
then put them into storage (and recharge every once in a while). So
your battery may simply have 3 cells, 2 of which have been damaged by
self-discharge, therefore you are seeing only 30 % of the previous
capacity.

Br,
Maciej Grela

Re: [gentoo-user] [Somewhat OT] Laptop battery not showing up in KDE, Smart Battery calibration

[Fatih Tümen]

On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 23:52, Paul Hartman
<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a laptop running Gentoo (with dual-boot to Windows XP). It was
> manufactured in 2004 and battery life have been consistent for all
> those years. However, it sat dormant for almost a year, after which I
> did a few days worth of updating to bring it up to current kernel and
> ~amd64 package levels. There are two issues that have arisen:
>
> 1) The smart battery is not so smart anymore. It only charges about
> halfway, then the charging light turns green and it stops. Effective
> battery capacity is about one-third of what it used to be. From what I
> understand, while Li-ion don't have "memory" like old Ni-Cd batteries,
> the "smart" circuitry cannot account for power drain that happens when
> the battery is not in use. Say the battery lost half of its power
> while it was in storage, so the chip thinks charge is at one level
> when it is really much lower. When recharging, it stops when it is
> "full" even though it's only halfway there.
>
> Has anyone successfully re-calibrated one of these batteries to
> recognize a larger capacity?
>
> My understanding is that, to do this, I should discharge at a constant
> rate until it is empty, then charge to full. Repeat ?? times. I've
> drained the poor little battery after regular usage (not a constant
> rate of discharge) a few times and haven't noticed any change so far.
> So I'm probably doing it wrong (or completely misunderstanding...)
>

AFAIK, this is the advised way to dis/charge Li-ion batteries to keep
their performance up. But since you left it to sleep for a year, you
probably lost some of the cells to death. You can perhaps try keep
doing that not to loose any more of them.

> This is complicated by my second problem:
>
> 2) If I click on the Power Management in the KDE system settings, it
> says "Number of CPUs 0" "Number of batteries 0" and battery-related
> options are greyed out. Since battery monitoring does not work, I have
> no idea how much battery life is left and have no warning when it
> suddenly shuts down, causing filesystem corruption and who knows what
> other problems.
>
> Everything in /proc/acpi/battery/ seems normal and /proc/cpuinfo does as well:
>
> $ cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT1/info
> present:                 yes
> design capacity:         4400 mAh
> last full capacity:      1984 mAh
[..]
> $ cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT1/state
> present:                 yes
> capacity state:          ok
> charging state:          charged
> present rate:            0 mA
> remaining capacity:      1984 mAh
> present voltage:         16384 mV

Only ~45% [1985/4400*100] of your battery seems to be alive. For
reference, I have 3062/4400*100 ~70% of a 5 year old battery here and
I have not paid attention to the above mentioned dis/charge advise.

I don't know why KDE cannot read. Try to check ~/.xsession-error for
some useful error. FYI the remaining battery level is calculated by
the following formula FYI:

remaining capacity / last full capacity * 100

If youre planning to use this battery, either try other battery
monitors or have a script to calculate above values periodically and
give a warning. Otherwise at some point your system will get as
corrupted as your battery. Good luck.

--
   Fatih

Re: [gentoo-user] [Somewhat OT] Laptop battery not showing up in KDE, Smart Battery calibration

[Petri Rosenström]

Hi,

On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 11:52 PM, Paul Hartman
<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a laptop running Gentoo (with dual-boot to Windows XP). It was
> manufactured in 2004 and battery life have been consistent for all
> those years. However, it sat dormant for almost a year, after which I
> did a few days worth of updating to bring it up to current kernel and
> ~amd64 package levels. There are two issues that have arisen:
>
> 1) The smart battery is not so smart anymore. It only charges about
> halfway, then the charging light turns green and it stops. Effective
> battery capacity is about one-third of what it used to be. From what I
> understand, while Li-ion don't have "memory" like old Ni-Cd batteries,
> the "smart" circuitry cannot account for power drain that happens when
> the battery is not in use. Say the battery lost half of its power
> while it was in storage, so the chip thinks charge is at one level
> when it is really much lower. When recharging, it stops when it is
> "full" even though it's only halfway there.
>
> Has anyone successfully re-calibrated one of these batteries to
> recognize a larger capacity?
>
> My understanding is that, to do this, I should discharge at a constant
> rate until it is empty, then charge to full. Repeat ?? times. I've
> drained the poor little battery after regular usage (not a constant
> rate of discharge) a few times and haven't noticed any change so far.
> So I'm probably doing it wrong (or completely misunderstanding...)
>
> This is complicated by my second problem:
>
> 2) If I click on the Power Management in the KDE system settings, it
> says "Number of CPUs 0" "Number of batteries 0" and battery-related
> options are greyed out. Since battery monitoring does not work, I have
> no idea how much battery life is left and have no warning when it
> suddenly shuts down, causing filesystem corruption and who knows what
> other problems.

I would guess that you are missing either hal or solid?

>
> Everything in /proc/acpi/battery/ seems normal and /proc/cpuinfo does as well:
>
> $ cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT1/info
> present:                 yes
> design capacity:         4400 mAh
> last full capacity:      1984 mAh
> battery technology:      rechargeable
> design voltage:          14800 mV
> design capacity warning: 300 mAh
> design capacity low:     100 mAh
> cycle count:              0
> capacity granularity 1:  32 mAh
> capacity granularity 2:  32 mAh
> model number:            01ZG
> serial number:           1020
> battery type:            LION
> OEM info:                SMP
>
> $ cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT1/state
> present:                 yes
> capacity state:          ok
> charging state:          charged
> present rate:            0 mA
> remaining capacity:      1984 mAh
> present voltage:         16384 mV
>
> $ cat /proc/cpuinfo
> processor       : 0
> vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
> cpu family      : 15
> model           : 28
> model name      : Mobile AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3000+
> stepping        : 0
> cpu MHz         : 2000.000
> cache size      : 512 KB
> fpu             : yes
> fpu_exception   : yes
> cpuid level     : 1
> wp              : yes
> flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge
> mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx mmxext
> fxsr_opt lm 3dnowext 3dnow rep_good
> bogomips        : 4009.21
> TLB size        : 1024 4K pages
> clflush size    : 64
> cache_alignment : 64
> address sizes   : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
> power management: ts fid vid ttp
>
> That all seems to look normal to me, so I'm not sure if I'm missing
> some setting somewhere else.
>
> Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
> Paul
>
>

Best regards
Petri Rosenström

Re: [gentoo-user] [Somewhat OT] Laptop battery not showing up in KDE, Smart Battery calibration

[Paul Hartman]

2010/11/10 Fatih Tümen <fthtmn+gentoo@gmail.com>:
> On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 23:52, Paul Hartman
> <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have a laptop running Gentoo (with dual-boot to Windows XP). It was
>> manufactured in 2004 and battery life have been consistent for all
>> those years. However, it sat dormant for almost a year, after which I
>> did a few days worth of updating to bring it up to current kernel and
>> ~amd64 package levels. There are two issues that have arisen:
>>
>> 1) The smart battery is not so smart anymore. It only charges about
>> halfway, then the charging light turns green and it stops. Effective
>> battery capacity is about one-third of what it used to be. From what I
>> understand, while Li-ion don't have "memory" like old Ni-Cd batteries,
>> the "smart" circuitry cannot account for power drain that happens when
>> the battery is not in use. Say the battery lost half of its power
>> while it was in storage, so the chip thinks charge is at one level
>> when it is really much lower. When recharging, it stops when it is
>> "full" even though it's only halfway there.
>>
>> Has anyone successfully re-calibrated one of these batteries to
>> recognize a larger capacity?
>>
>> My understanding is that, to do this, I should discharge at a constant
>> rate until it is empty, then charge to full. Repeat ?? times. I've
>> drained the poor little battery after regular usage (not a constant
>> rate of discharge) a few times and haven't noticed any change so far.
>> So I'm probably doing it wrong (or completely misunderstanding...)
>>
>
> AFAIK, this is the advised way to dis/charge Li-ion batteries to keep
> their performance up. But since you left it to sleep for a year, you
> probably lost some of the cells to death. You can perhaps try keep
> doing that not to loose any more of them.

After consulting my laptop manual, it recommends doing full
discharge/charge cycle once a month, to remove battery when operating
solely on AC power, and to remove battery when laptop is not in use. I
didn't do any of those things.

> If youre planning to use this battery, either try other battery
> monitors or have a script to calculate above values periodically and
> give a warning. Otherwise at some point your system will get as
> corrupted as your battery. Good luck.

Thanks, it seems my poor batteries may have been killed then. My
laptop used to last about 90 minutes in Linux or 2.5 hours in Windows
XP, at the beginning of this year. Under extreme load (frequency
scaling disabled) it would last about 30 minutes.

Last night I took it to full charge, put in memtest86+ boot CD and the
system lasted 9 minutes before battery was drained. So that matches
the 1/3 batter life I experienced under normal usage, too.

I just read somewhere on WWW that sometimes better calibration can be
achieved by leaving battery completely drained for some time (more
than 5 hours) before plugging the charger back in. So I'll try that as
one last desperate hope. If the cells are dead then I can't do any
more harm to them so why not try it? :)

Now, since this is an old laptop (6 years) I am skeptical about buying
a replacement battery that may have been sitting in a stockroom for
several years. Local battery store wants more than US$100 for a "name
brand" replacement (Rayovac). Online, I can find one for less than
half that price, but I am really suspicious about the quality. My past
experience of buying generic laptop batteries online has not been
good. Don't fit properly, poor lifespan, etc.

Of course Acer does not sell the batteries for my laptop anymore, so
getting an original battery is not an option.

Has anyone tried to replace the cells inside their own battery? I'm
reading this site:
http://www.electronics-lab.com/articles/Li_Ion_reconstruct/

Seems kind of dangerous... I can't price the cells because I haven't
opened my battery pack, so I don't know if it's really any cheaper
than buying a new one.

Re: [gentoo-user] [Somewhat OT] Laptop battery not showing up in KDE, Smart Battery calibration

[J. Roeleveld]

On Wednesday 10 November 2010 18:05:40 Paul Hartman wrote:
> 2010/11/10 Fatih Tümen <fthtmn+gentoo@gmail.com>:
> > On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 23:52, Paul Hartman
> > 
> > <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >> 

<snipped>
 
> Last night I took it to full charge, put in memtest86+ boot CD and the
> system lasted 9 minutes before battery was drained. So that matches
> the 1/3 batter life I experienced under normal usage, too.
> 
> I just read somewhere on WWW that sometimes better calibration can be
> achieved by leaving battery completely drained for some time (more
> than 5 hours) before plugging the charger back in. So I'll try that as
> one last desperate hope. If the cells are dead then I can't do any
> more harm to them so why not try it? :)

If these are discharged too far (The circuitry in the battery-pack should 
prevent this) the cells can get permanently damaged. This seems to have 
happened.
Best practices for batteries (any type, apart from Lead Acid ;) ) is to take 
them out of the laptop when running for long periods from the mains. This is 
to prevent the batteries from being constantly charged.

> Now, since this is an old laptop (6 years) I am skeptical about buying
> a replacement battery that may have been sitting in a stockroom for
> several years. Local battery store wants more than US$100 for a "name
> brand" replacement (Rayovac). Online, I can find one for less than
> half that price, but I am really suspicious about the quality. My past
> experience of buying generic laptop batteries online has not been
> good. Don't fit properly, poor lifespan, etc.

<snipped>

If these batteries have been charged to 70% before storage, they can last a 
while, but one should still top them up to 70% once every year or so.

> Has anyone tried to replace the cells inside their own battery? I'm
> reading this site:
> http://www.electronics-lab.com/articles/Li_Ion_reconstruct/
> 
> Seems kind of dangerous... I can't price the cells because I haven't
> opened my battery pack, so I don't know if it's really any cheaper
> than buying a new one.

Actually, it is dangerous and I wouldn't trust the batterypack anywhere near 
my laptop after a procedure like that.

If the soldering isn't done correctly, the battery-pack can literally explode 
when put under load.

--
Joost Roeleveld

Re: [gentoo-user] [Somewhat OT] Laptop battery not showing up in KDE, Smart Battery calibration

[Paul Hartman]

On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 11:00 AM, Petri Rosenström
<petri.rosenstrom@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 11:52 PM, Paul Hartman
>> 2) If I click on the Power Management in the KDE system settings, it
>> says "Number of CPUs 0" "Number of batteries 0" and battery-related
>> options are greyed out. Since battery monitoring does not work, I have
>> no idea how much battery life is left and have no warning when it
>> suddenly shuts down, causing filesystem corruption and who knows what
>> other problems.
>
> I would guess that you are missing either hal or solid?

Hi,

hal and solid both exist, hal is running and can see my battery.
Everything looks normal from there as far as I can tell.

My battery is BAT1, not BAT0. I wonder if that has anything to do with
it. Seems most things I found on Google reference BAT0.

Maybe I should try a KDE LiveCD to see if it can read battery. If it
can, I will know for sure it's a simple configuration problem
somewhere in my Gentoo installation.

Re: [gentoo-user] [Somewhat OT] Laptop battery not showing up in KDE, Smart Battery calibration

[Paul Hartman]

On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 12:05 PM, J. Roeleveld <joost@antarean.org> wrote:
>> Has anyone tried to replace the cells inside their own battery? I'm
>> reading this site:
>> http://www.electronics-lab.com/articles/Li_Ion_reconstruct/
>>
>> Seems kind of dangerous... I can't price the cells because I haven't
>> opened my battery pack, so I don't know if it's really any cheaper
>> than buying a new one.
>
> Actually, it is dangerous and I wouldn't trust the batterypack anywhere near
> my laptop after a procedure like that.
>
> If the soldering isn't done correctly, the battery-pack can literally explode
> when put under load.

Yeah, I don't think the savings would be big enough to justify the risk.

I found a replacement battery online for less than USD$30 so I ordered
it. Hopefully it fits and holds a charge. :)

Re: [gentoo-user] [Somewhat OT] Laptop battery not showing up in KDE, Smart Battery calibration

[J. Roeleveld]

On Thursday 11 November 2010 18:07:35 Paul Hartman wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 12:05 PM, J. Roeleveld <joost@antarean.org> wrote:
> > If the soldering isn't done correctly, the battery-pack can literally
> > explode when put under load.
> 
> Yeah, I don't think the savings would be big enough to justify the risk.
> 
> I found a replacement battery online for less than USD$30 so I ordered
> it. Hopefully it fits and holds a charge. :)

Good luck :)
If laptops would work with the same LIPO-packs that are used for Remote 
Control planes, then it would be cheaper and easier as the chargers used for 
those are better then the stuff they stick in laptops.

But that's wishfull thinking

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] [Somewhat OT] Laptop battery not showing up in KDE, Smart Battery calibration

[Paul Hartman]

On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 1:11 PM, J. Roeleveld <joost@antarean.org> wrote:
> On Thursday 11 November 2010 18:07:35 Paul Hartman wrote:
>> On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 12:05 PM, J. Roeleveld <joost@antarean.org> wrote:
>> > If the soldering isn't done correctly, the battery-pack can literally
>> > explode when put under load.
>>
>> Yeah, I don't think the savings would be big enough to justify the risk.
>>
>> I found a replacement battery online for less than USD$30 so I ordered
>> it. Hopefully it fits and holds a charge. :)
>
> Good luck :)
> If laptops would work with the same LIPO-packs that are used for Remote
> Control planes, then it would be cheaper and easier as the chargers used for
> those are better then the stuff they stick in laptops.
>
> But that's wishfull thinking

The replacement battery is good, it fits perfectly and holds over 90%
of maximum rated charge.

I booted from Sabayon KDE LiveCD and the battery meter works fine in
there, so there must be something wrong in my config. I will dig
deeper to try to identify the differences.

Thanks for all suggestions. :)

Re: [gentoo-user] [Somewhat OT] Laptop battery not showing up in KDE, Smart Battery calibration

[Paul Hartman]

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 12:03 AM, Paul Hartman
<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 1:11 PM, J. Roeleveld <joost@antarean.org> wrote:
>> On Thursday 11 November 2010 18:07:35 Paul Hartman wrote:
>>> On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 12:05 PM, J. Roeleveld <joost@antarean.org> wrote:
>>> > If the soldering isn't done correctly, the battery-pack can literally
>>> > explode when put under load.
>>>
>>> Yeah, I don't think the savings would be big enough to justify the risk.
>>>
>>> I found a replacement battery online for less than USD$30 so I ordered
>>> it. Hopefully it fits and holds a charge. :)
>>
>> Good luck :)
>> If laptops would work with the same LIPO-packs that are used for Remote
>> Control planes, then it would be cheaper and easier as the chargers used for
>> those are better then the stuff they stick in laptops.
>>
>> But that's wishfull thinking
>
> The replacement battery is good, it fits perfectly and holds over 90%
> of maximum rated charge.
>
> I booted from Sabayon KDE LiveCD and the battery meter works fine in
> there, so there must be something wrong in my config. I will dig
> deeper to try to identify the differences.
>
> Thanks for all suggestions. :)

After a combination of kernel upgrade, BIOS downgrade (to fix an
unrelated bug with resuming from suspend), KDE upgrades, and of course
general "messing with stuff", now it is working most of the time. I
have an actual battery meter and power management works and I am
happy.

I sometimes get ACPI/DSDT errors in dmesg from boot time, about
infinite loops in 3 places, and when this happens the battery is
either "not present" to ACPI or is present but the state never changes
(for example remaining capacity at boot time is 2048 and this will
remain to be the value even as battery is dying). This properly seems
to happen randomly, or maybe affected somehow by dual-booting into MS
Windows. I didn't think DSDT/ACPI changes by the OS were persistent?
Perhaps it's something to do with warm rebooting vs powering off and
back on. I will have to experiment with it some more to see if I can
break it :)

A long time ago I tried to extract and repair my broken DSDT but it
was over my head. I don't understand why it doesn't always work but
for now things seem to be functioning properly when ACPI is okay at
boot time.

Re: [gentoo-user] [Somewhat OT] Laptop battery not showing up in KDE, Smart Battery calibration

[Paul Hartman]

On Sun, Nov 21, 2010 at 12:43 AM, Paul Hartman
<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 12:03 AM, Paul Hartman
> <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 1:11 PM, J. Roeleveld <joost@antarean.org> wrote:
>>> On Thursday 11 November 2010 18:07:35 Paul Hartman wrote:
>>>> On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 12:05 PM, J. Roeleveld <joost@antarean.org> wrote:
>>>> > If the soldering isn't done correctly, the battery-pack can literally
>>>> > explode when put under load.
>>>>
>>>> Yeah, I don't think the savings would be big enough to justify the risk.
>>>>
>>>> I found a replacement battery online for less than USD$30 so I ordered
>>>> it. Hopefully it fits and holds a charge. :)
>>>
>>> Good luck :)
>>> If laptops would work with the same LIPO-packs that are used for Remote
>>> Control planes, then it would be cheaper and easier as the chargers used for
>>> those are better then the stuff they stick in laptops.
>>>
>>> But that's wishfull thinking
>>
>> The replacement battery is good, it fits perfectly and holds over 90%
>> of maximum rated charge.
>>
>> I booted from Sabayon KDE LiveCD and the battery meter works fine in
>> there, so there must be something wrong in my config. I will dig
>> deeper to try to identify the differences.
>>
>> Thanks for all suggestions. :)
>
> After a combination of kernel upgrade, BIOS downgrade (to fix an
> unrelated bug with resuming from suspend), KDE upgrades, and of course
> general "messing with stuff", now it is working most of the time. I
> have an actual battery meter and power management works and I am
> happy.
>
> I sometimes get ACPI/DSDT errors in dmesg from boot time, about
> infinite loops in 3 places, and when this happens the battery is
> either "not present" to ACPI or is present but the state never changes
> (for example remaining capacity at boot time is 2048 and this will
> remain to be the value even as battery is dying). This properly seems
> to happen randomly, or maybe affected somehow by dual-booting into MS
> Windows. I didn't think DSDT/ACPI changes by the OS were persistent?
> Perhaps it's something to do with warm rebooting vs powering off and
> back on. I will have to experiment with it some more to see if I can
> break it :)
>
> A long time ago I tried to extract and repair my broken DSDT but it
> was over my head. I don't understand why it doesn't always work but
> for now things seem to be functioning properly when ACPI is okay at
> boot time.

Another follow-up. It seems to work normally until it gets this error,
at which point batter monitor stops working. Sometimes this error
happens right away, other times it works for hours and then breaks. I
guess it's a DSDT problem:

ACPI Error (psparse-0537): Method parse/execution failed
[\_SB_.PCI0.PIB_.EC0_.SMRD] (Node ffff88007f826320),
AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP
ACPI Error (psparse-0537): Method parse/execution failed
[\_SB_.BAT1.CHBP] (Node ffff88007f81d0f0), AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP
ACPI Error (psparse-0537): Method parse/execution failed
[\_SB_.PCI0.PIB_.EC0_.SMSL] (Node ffff88007f826398),
AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP
ACPI Error (psparse-0537): Method parse/execution failed
[\_SB_.PCI0.PIB_.EC0_._Q09] (Node ffff88007f826438),
AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP

Does anyone here know about this kind of thing? I am not really sure
what it means. I've decompiled my DSDT but really don't know anything
about how to fix it. Maybe I need to find some ACPI mailing list.
Thanks.

Re: [gentoo-user] [Somewhat OT] Laptop battery not showing up in KDE, Smart Battery calibration

[Fatih Tümen]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 4160 bytes --]

On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 22:51, Paul Hartman
<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com<paul.hartman%2Bgentoo@gmail.com>
> wrote:

> On Sun, Nov 21, 2010 at 12:43 AM, Paul Hartman
> <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com <paul.hartman%2Bgentoo@gmail.com>> wrote:
> > On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 12:03 AM, Paul Hartman
> > <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com <paul.hartman%2Bgentoo@gmail.com>> wrote:
> >> On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 1:11 PM, J. Roeleveld <joost@antarean.org>
> wrote:
> >>> On Thursday 11 November 2010 18:07:35 Paul Hartman wrote:
> >>>> On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 12:05 PM, J. Roeleveld <joost@antarean.org>
> wrote:
> >>>> > If the soldering isn't done correctly, the battery-pack can
> literally
> >>>> > explode when put under load.
> >>>>
> >>>> Yeah, I don't think the savings would be big enough to justify the
> risk.
> >>>>
> >>>> I found a replacement battery online for less than USD$30 so I ordered
> >>>> it. Hopefully it fits and holds a charge. :)
> >>>
> >>> Good luck :)
> >>> If laptops would work with the same LIPO-packs that are used for Remote
> >>> Control planes, then it would be cheaper and easier as the chargers
> used for
> >>> those are better then the stuff they stick in laptops.
> >>>
> >>> But that's wishfull thinking
> >>
> >> The replacement battery is good, it fits perfectly and holds over 90%
> >> of maximum rated charge.
> >>
> >> I booted from Sabayon KDE LiveCD and the battery meter works fine in
> >> there, so there must be something wrong in my config. I will dig
> >> deeper to try to identify the differences.
> >>
> >> Thanks for all suggestions. :)
> >
> > After a combination of kernel upgrade, BIOS downgrade (to fix an
> > unrelated bug with resuming from suspend), KDE upgrades, and of course
> > general "messing with stuff", now it is working most of the time. I
> > have an actual battery meter and power management works and I am
> > happy.
> >
> > I sometimes get ACPI/DSDT errors in dmesg from boot time, about
> > infinite loops in 3 places, and when this happens the battery is
> > either "not present" to ACPI or is present but the state never changes
> > (for example remaining capacity at boot time is 2048 and this will
> > remain to be the value even as battery is dying). This properly seems
> > to happen randomly, or maybe affected somehow by dual-booting into MS
> > Windows. I didn't think DSDT/ACPI changes by the OS were persistent?
> > Perhaps it's something to do with warm rebooting vs powering off and
> > back on. I will have to experiment with it some more to see if I can
> > break it :)
> >
> > A long time ago I tried to extract and repair my broken DSDT but it
> > was over my head. I don't understand why it doesn't always work but
> > for now things seem to be functioning properly when ACPI is okay at
> > boot time.
>
> Another follow-up. It seems to work normally until it gets this error,
> at which point batter monitor stops working. Sometimes this error
> happens right away, other times it works for hours and then breaks. I
> guess it's a DSDT problem:
>
> ACPI Error (psparse-0537): Method parse/execution failed
> [\_SB_.PCI0.PIB_.EC0_.SMRD] (Node ffff88007f826320),
> AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP
> ACPI Error (psparse-0537): Method parse/execution failed
> [\_SB_.BAT1.CHBP] (Node ffff88007f81d0f0), AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP
> ACPI Error (psparse-0537): Method parse/execution failed
> [\_SB_.PCI0.PIB_.EC0_.SMSL] (Node ffff88007f826398),
> AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP
> ACPI Error (psparse-0537): Method parse/execution failed
> [\_SB_.PCI0.PIB_.EC0_._Q09] (Node ffff88007f826438),
> AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP
>
> Does anyone here know about this kind of thing? I am not really sure
> what it means. I've decompiled my DSDT but really don't know anything
> about how to fix it. Maybe I need to find some ACPI mailing list.
> Thanks.
>
>
Usually a BIOS update will do it or a kernel update. You can also try to
disable acpi and see if you can keep it working.

kernel parameters come to mind are acpi=off and pci=noacpi. The first one
completely disables acpi and the latter AFAIR just disables acpi routing for
pci subsystem. Look at kernel-parameters in linux Doc for more
combinations.

--
   Fatih

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Re: [gentoo-user] [Somewhat OT] Laptop battery not showing up in KDE, Smart Battery calibration

[Paul Hartman]

2010/11/24 Fatih Tümen <fthtmn+gentoo@gmail.com>:
>
> On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 22:51, Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, Nov 21, 2010 at 12:43 AM, Paul Hartman
>> <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 12:03 AM, Paul Hartman
>> > <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 1:11 PM, J. Roeleveld <joost@antarean.org>
>> >> wrote:
>> >>> On Thursday 11 November 2010 18:07:35 Paul Hartman wrote:
>> >>>> On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 12:05 PM, J. Roeleveld <joost@antarean.org>
>> >>>> wrote:
>> >>>> > If the soldering isn't done correctly, the battery-pack can
>> >>>> > literally
>> >>>> > explode when put under load.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Yeah, I don't think the savings would be big enough to justify the
>> >>>> risk.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> I found a replacement battery online for less than USD$30 so I
>> >>>> ordered
>> >>>> it. Hopefully it fits and holds a charge. :)
>> >>>
>> >>> Good luck :)
>> >>> If laptops would work with the same LIPO-packs that are used for
>> >>> Remote
>> >>> Control planes, then it would be cheaper and easier as the chargers
>> >>> used for
>> >>> those are better then the stuff they stick in laptops.
>> >>>
>> >>> But that's wishfull thinking
>> >>
>> >> The replacement battery is good, it fits perfectly and holds over 90%
>> >> of maximum rated charge.
>> >>
>> >> I booted from Sabayon KDE LiveCD and the battery meter works fine in
>> >> there, so there must be something wrong in my config. I will dig
>> >> deeper to try to identify the differences.
>> >>
>> >> Thanks for all suggestions. :)
>> >
>> > After a combination of kernel upgrade, BIOS downgrade (to fix an
>> > unrelated bug with resuming from suspend), KDE upgrades, and of course
>> > general "messing with stuff", now it is working most of the time. I
>> > have an actual battery meter and power management works and I am
>> > happy.
>> >
>> > I sometimes get ACPI/DSDT errors in dmesg from boot time, about
>> > infinite loops in 3 places, and when this happens the battery is
>> > either "not present" to ACPI or is present but the state never changes
>> > (for example remaining capacity at boot time is 2048 and this will
>> > remain to be the value even as battery is dying). This properly seems
>> > to happen randomly, or maybe affected somehow by dual-booting into MS
>> > Windows. I didn't think DSDT/ACPI changes by the OS were persistent?
>> > Perhaps it's something to do with warm rebooting vs powering off and
>> > back on. I will have to experiment with it some more to see if I can
>> > break it :)
>> >
>> > A long time ago I tried to extract and repair my broken DSDT but it
>> > was over my head. I don't understand why it doesn't always work but
>> > for now things seem to be functioning properly when ACPI is okay at
>> > boot time.
>>
>> Another follow-up. It seems to work normally until it gets this error,
>> at which point batter monitor stops working. Sometimes this error
>> happens right away, other times it works for hours and then breaks. I
>> guess it's a DSDT problem:
>>
>> ACPI Error (psparse-0537): Method parse/execution failed
>> [\_SB_.PCI0.PIB_.EC0_.SMRD] (Node ffff88007f826320),
>> AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP
>> ACPI Error (psparse-0537): Method parse/execution failed
>> [\_SB_.BAT1.CHBP] (Node ffff88007f81d0f0), AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP
>> ACPI Error (psparse-0537): Method parse/execution failed
>> [\_SB_.PCI0.PIB_.EC0_.SMSL] (Node ffff88007f826398),
>> AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP
>> ACPI Error (psparse-0537): Method parse/execution failed
>> [\_SB_.PCI0.PIB_.EC0_._Q09] (Node ffff88007f826438),
>> AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP
>>
>> Does anyone here know about this kind of thing? I am not really sure
>> what it means. I've decompiled my DSDT but really don't know anything
>> about how to fix it. Maybe I need to find some ACPI mailing list.
>> Thanks.
>>
>
> Usually a BIOS update will do it or a kernel update. You can also try to
> disable acpi and see if you can keep it working.
> kernel parameters come to mind are acpi=off and pci=noacpi. The first one
> completely disables acpi and the latter AFAIR just disables acpi routing for
> pci subsystem. Look at kernel-parameters in linux Doc for more
> combinations.

Thanks, unfortunately it is an old computer (from 2004), the newest
BIOS, which is several years old, breaks suspend (it does not resume
from suspend, not even Windows XP works...), so I'm using the
penultimate BIOS. It's an Acer Ferrari 3400, back in the time when I
bought it, the internet was full of people who have to edit their DSDT
on Acer laptops in order to fix it, many people had no battery support
at all.

I know I used some "magic" kernel parameters at some point, I'm not
sure if it was ACPI related, though. I will look into them to see if
there's anything new in the past 5 years of kernel development that
might help me. :)

Re: [gentoo-user] [Somewhat OT] Laptop battery not showing up in KDE, Smart Battery calibration

[Fatih Tümen]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 5737 bytes --]

On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 06:49, Paul Hartman
<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com<paul.hartman%2Bgentoo@gmail.com>
> wrote:

> 2010/11/24 Fatih Tümen <fthtmn+gentoo@gmail.com<fthtmn%2Bgentoo@gmail.com>
> >:
> >
> > On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 22:51, Paul Hartman <
> paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com <paul.hartman%2Bgentoo@gmail.com>>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> On Sun, Nov 21, 2010 at 12:43 AM, Paul Hartman
> >> <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com <paul.hartman%2Bgentoo@gmail.com>>
> wrote:
> >> > On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 12:03 AM, Paul Hartman
> >> > <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com <paul.hartman%2Bgentoo@gmail.com>>
> wrote:
> >> >> On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 1:11 PM, J. Roeleveld <joost@antarean.org>
> >> >> wrote:
> >> >>> On Thursday 11 November 2010 18:07:35 Paul Hartman wrote:
> >> >>>> On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 12:05 PM, J. Roeleveld <joost@antarean.org
> >
> >> >>>> wrote:
> >> >>>> > If the soldering isn't done correctly, the battery-pack can
> >> >>>> > literally
> >> >>>> > explode when put under load.
> >> >>>>
> >> >>>> Yeah, I don't think the savings would be big enough to justify the
> >> >>>> risk.
> >> >>>>
> >> >>>> I found a replacement battery online for less than USD$30 so I
> >> >>>> ordered
> >> >>>> it. Hopefully it fits and holds a charge. :)
> >> >>>
> >> >>> Good luck :)
> >> >>> If laptops would work with the same LIPO-packs that are used for
> >> >>> Remote
> >> >>> Control planes, then it would be cheaper and easier as the chargers
> >> >>> used for
> >> >>> those are better then the stuff they stick in laptops.
> >> >>>
> >> >>> But that's wishfull thinking
> >> >>
> >> >> The replacement battery is good, it fits perfectly and holds over 90%
> >> >> of maximum rated charge.
> >> >>
> >> >> I booted from Sabayon KDE LiveCD and the battery meter works fine in
> >> >> there, so there must be something wrong in my config. I will dig
> >> >> deeper to try to identify the differences.
> >> >>
> >> >> Thanks for all suggestions. :)
> >> >
> >> > After a combination of kernel upgrade, BIOS downgrade (to fix an
> >> > unrelated bug with resuming from suspend), KDE upgrades, and of course
> >> > general "messing with stuff", now it is working most of the time. I
> >> > have an actual battery meter and power management works and I am
> >> > happy.
> >> >
> >> > I sometimes get ACPI/DSDT errors in dmesg from boot time, about
> >> > infinite loops in 3 places, and when this happens the battery is
> >> > either "not present" to ACPI or is present but the state never changes
> >> > (for example remaining capacity at boot time is 2048 and this will
> >> > remain to be the value even as battery is dying). This properly seems
> >> > to happen randomly, or maybe affected somehow by dual-booting into MS
> >> > Windows. I didn't think DSDT/ACPI changes by the OS were persistent?
> >> > Perhaps it's something to do with warm rebooting vs powering off and
> >> > back on. I will have to experiment with it some more to see if I can
> >> > break it :)
> >> >
> >> > A long time ago I tried to extract and repair my broken DSDT but it
> >> > was over my head. I don't understand why it doesn't always work but
> >> > for now things seem to be functioning properly when ACPI is okay at
> >> > boot time.
> >>
> >> Another follow-up. It seems to work normally until it gets this error,
> >> at which point batter monitor stops working. Sometimes this error
> >> happens right away, other times it works for hours and then breaks. I
> >> guess it's a DSDT problem:
> >>
> >> ACPI Error (psparse-0537): Method parse/execution failed
> >> [\_SB_.PCI0.PIB_.EC0_.SMRD] (Node ffff88007f826320),
> >> AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP
> >> ACPI Error (psparse-0537): Method parse/execution failed
> >> [\_SB_.BAT1.CHBP] (Node ffff88007f81d0f0), AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP
> >> ACPI Error (psparse-0537): Method parse/execution failed
> >> [\_SB_.PCI0.PIB_.EC0_.SMSL] (Node ffff88007f826398),
> >> AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP
> >> ACPI Error (psparse-0537): Method parse/execution failed
> >> [\_SB_.PCI0.PIB_.EC0_._Q09] (Node ffff88007f826438),
> >> AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP
> >>
> >> Does anyone here know about this kind of thing? I am not really sure
> >> what it means. I've decompiled my DSDT but really don't know anything
> >> about how to fix it. Maybe I need to find some ACPI mailing list.
> >> Thanks.
> >>
> >
> > Usually a BIOS update will do it or a kernel update. You can also try to
> > disable acpi and see if you can keep it working.
> > kernel parameters come to mind are acpi=off and pci=noacpi. The first one
> > completely disables acpi and the latter AFAIR just disables acpi routing
> for
> > pci subsystem. Look at kernel-parameters in linux Doc for more
> > combinations.
>
> Thanks, unfortunately it is an old computer (from 2004), the newest
> BIOS, which is several years old, breaks suspend (it does not resume
> from suspend, not even Windows XP works...), so I'm using the
> penultimate BIOS. It's an Acer Ferrari 3400, back in the time when I
> bought it, the internet was full of people who have to edit their DSDT
> on Acer laptops in order to fix it, many people had no battery support
> at all.
>
> I know I used some "magic" kernel parameters at some point, I'm not
> sure if it was ACPI related, though. I will look into them to see if
> there's anything new in the past 5 years of kernel development that
> might help me. :)
>
>

Have a look at this bug affecting acer laptops. there is a solution proposed
in its duplicate

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi/+bug/535643
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/578506/comments/24

Hope it helps
--
   Fatih

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