Arch Linux

twistedcubic

Member

Registered: 2012-03-01

Posts: 22

battery acting strange under arch recently

Under the powertop bug I have never been given a power usage Watt output ever since I got a new laptop (sandybridge i5). I have gone through the kernel parameter edits, I have been using LMT and have gone through the laptop page on the wiki.

While my battery life seems to be fine for the most part, the readout doesn't seem to be too accurate (using acpi -b or acpi -i or even the monitor on my gnome taskbar).

I was having the problem where my computer would restart after I chose shutdown as mentioned in some threads, and the fixes provided there seemed to work fine for me. (I edited my /etc/rc.local)

I am, however, noticing that if I turn off my computer when it say has 30% battery life left (my battery is rated at ~8 hours), if I don't turn it on for a day the battery life is down to ~20%  and if I turn it off for 2 days my laptop won't boot because the battery is empty. Why would so much battery be draining if my computer is not turned on?

None of these problems exist running on windows, so I know it is not my battery.

Has anyone noticed similar issues? Or, does anyone have any recommendations on getting possibly more accurate battery readouts?

Prior to this laptop, my previous computer's battery was dead and it was no issue as I always was plugged in anyway, so I don't know how well the linux kernel handled battery usage in the past. Did issues arise with battery usage readouts/powertop wattage readouts after a certain kernel so that it would make sense to revert back?

hadrons123

Member

From: chennai

Registered: 2011-10-07

Posts: 1,249

Re: battery acting strange under arch recently

if I turn it off for 2 days my laptop won't boot because the battery is empty. Why would so much battery be draining if my computer is not turned on?

Why do you think its related to Arch, after you have switched off?
One possible explanation is your battery meter in Linux may not be good.Your laptop might benefit from ASPM fix in 3.3 kernel.

ri

Member

Registered: 2008-10-09

Posts: 73

Re: battery acting strange under arch recently

I'm having troubble with my battery meter aswell. It says everything is alright but somewhere between 20 and 30% charge left the computer dies. From what I've seen the logs doesnt provide anything useful either. Don't have much time to look at it at the moment tho

By the way, I'm using [testing].