Hi all,
I have a four year old laptop that's running Fedora 27 Workstation. If I leave the thing switched off and unplugged after a day it will need recharging by varying degrees.
Have I missed something in the power settings or is my battery on it's way out?
Thanks for looking
On Wed, 11 Apr 2018 17:41:50 +0100 Danny Horne via users users@lists.fedoraproject.org wrote:
Hi all,
I have a four year old laptop that's running Fedora 27 Workstation. If I leave the thing switched off and unplugged after a day it will need recharging by varying degrees.
Have I missed something in the power settings or is my battery on it's way out?
Thanks for looking
if you pop the battery out for a day does the same thing happen?
d
users mailing list -- users@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org
On 11/04/18 17:48, Dave Stevens wrote:
On Wed, 11 Apr 2018 17:41:50 +0100 Danny Horne via users users@lists.fedoraproject.org wrote:
if you pop the battery out for a day does the same thing happen?
d
Just popped the battery, I'll report back in 24 hours
On 11/04/18 17:52, Danny Horne via users wrote:
On 11/04/18 17:48, Dave Stevens wrote:
On Wed, 11 Apr 2018 17:41:50 +0100 Danny Horne via users users@lists.fedoraproject.org wrote:
if you pop the battery out for a day does the same thing happen?
d
Just popped the battery, I'll report back in 24 hours _______________________________________________
Well the battery has been out for about 15 hours and the laptop claims it's fully charged, but also says it has less than an hour to run
How much of battery capacity percent you have right now? Try to check with this:
$ upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT0| grep --color=NEVER -E "present|state|to\ full|percentage|capacity|time\ to empty|time\ to full|technology"
paste down here, it would be interesting to take a look
On Thu, Apr 12, 2018 at 3:57 PM, Danny Horne via users users@lists.fedoraproject.org wrote:
On 11/04/18 17:52, Danny Horne via users wrote:
On 11/04/18 17:48, Dave Stevens wrote:
On Wed, 11 Apr 2018 17:41:50 +0100 Danny Horne via users users@lists.fedoraproject.org wrote:
if you pop the battery out for a day does the same thing happen?
d
Just popped the battery, I'll report back in 24 hours _______________________________________________
Well the battery has been out for about 15 hours and the laptop claims it's fully charged, but also says it has less than an hour to run _______________________________________________ users mailing list -- users@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org
On 12/04/18 09:18, Robbi Nespu wrote:
How much of battery capacity percent you have right now? Try to check with this:
$ upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT0| grep --color=NEVER -E "present|state|to\ full|percentage|capacity|time\ to empty|time\ to full|technology"
paste down here, it would be interesting to take a look
First reading, plugged in, fully charged. Second reading, on battery power. If I'm reading it right the battery has lost capacity over it's lifetime.
present: yes state: fully-charged percentage: 100% capacity: 45.6019% technology: lithium-ion
present: yes state: discharging percentage: 99% capacity: 45.6019% technology: lithium-ion
Well, I could be you battery is dying. This is mine output which has time to empty and my battery capacity are going down also (last time I check, it was more than 60%.
present: yes state: discharging time to empty: 2.0 hours percentage: 90% capacity: 54.4318% technology: lithium-ion
You might want to check /etc/UPower/UPower.conf file. Either using UsePercentageForPolicy=true or UsePercentageForPolicy=false
I once wrote a note about this to myself about this https://robbinespu.github.io/eng/2018/03/16/Setting_power_management_when_lo...
p/s : My laptop are 6 years old.
On 12/04/18 12:51, Robbi Nespu wrote:
Well, I could be you battery is dying. This is mine output which has time to empty and my battery capacity are going down also (last time I check, it was more than 60%.
present: yes state: discharging time to empty: 2.0 hours percentage: 90% capacity: 54.4318% technology: lithium-ion
Here's mine shortly after unplugging power after full recharge, not looking good for the battery :)
present: yes state: discharging time to empty: 1.2 hours percentage: 96% capacity: 45.6019% technology: lithium-ion
On 04/12/2018 12:57 AM, Danny Horne via users wrote:
Well the battery has been out for about 15 hours and the laptop claims it's fully charged, but also says it has less than an hour to run
It's also possible that a capacitor or resistor in that circuit has changed its value slightly. I have an old laptop that stopped admitting that the battery was ever fully charged, and a friend of mine who knows hardware told me that this was the most likely reason.
On 04/11/2018 09:41 AM, Danny Horne via users wrote:
I have a four year old laptop that's running Fedora 27 Workstation. If I leave the thing switched off and unplugged after a day it will need recharging by varying degrees.
Have I missed something in the power settings or is my battery on it's way out?
If it's turned right off, then Fedora has nothing to do with it. Check in the BIOS if you have wake-on-lan or wake-on-wlan enabled or anything else that might keep some hardware active. Four years is getting old for a laptop battery as well, so it could be that. Is the recharging amount related to the time spent unplugged? I think some laptops turn off charging when full until the battery goes down a certain amount as well.
On 04/11/2018 09:54 AM, Danny Horne via users wrote:
On 11/04/18 17:49, Samuel Sieb wrote:
If it's turned right off, then Fedora has nothing to do with it.
That's the thing, I'm not sure if I've missed something in the power settings and it's just going into standby or some other power saving mode
Are all the lights off? Did you just close the lid, or did you select "Turn Off" from the menu? If the latter, you should have had a black screen with a Fedora label, then completely black. When you start it back up, do you still have the applications running that you had before or do you have to start them again? When you turn it back on, do you have to click on your username or is it just asking for a password?
On 11/04/18 18:03, Samuel Sieb wrote:
On 04/11/2018 09:54 AM, Danny Horne via users wrote:
On 11/04/18 17:49, Samuel Sieb wrote:
If it's turned right off, then Fedora has nothing to do with it.
That's the thing, I'm not sure if I've missed something in the power settings and it's just going into standby or some other power saving mode
Are all the lights off? Did you just close the lid, or did you select "Turn Off" from the menu? If the latter, you should have had a black screen with a Fedora label, then completely black. When you start it back up, do you still have the applications running that you had before or do you have to start them again? When you turn it back on, do you have to click on your username or is it just asking for a password? _______________________________________________
Light appears to be off (looks dim in sunlight but I'm sure it's off). I select 'Shut Down' when switching off and when it's powered up again it goes through the whole boot process and I select my account and log in.
From comments received so far it's looking like a battery replacement.
On Wed, 11 Apr 2018 18:12:04 +0100 Danny Horne via users users@lists.fedoraproject.org wrote:
From comments received so far it's looking like a battery replacement.
why not do the test first and spend the money later?
d
On 11/04/18 18:26, Dave Stevens wrote:
On Wed, 11 Apr 2018 18:12:04 +0100 Danny Horne via users users@lists.fedoraproject.org wrote:
From comments received so far it's looking like a battery replacement.
why not do the test first and spend the money later?
d _______________________________________________
I have no intentions of spending any money just yet!! If it needs a new battery it's going to have to wait.
On Wed, 11 Apr 2018 18:30:58 +0100 Danny Horne via users users@lists.fedoraproject.org wrote:
On 11/04/18 18:26, Dave Stevens wrote:
On Wed, 11 Apr 2018 18:12:04 +0100 Danny Horne via users users@lists.fedoraproject.org wrote:
From comments received so far it's looking like a battery replacement.
why not do the test first and spend the money later?
d _______________________________________________
I have no intentions of spending any money just yet!! If it needs a new battery it's going to have to wait.
I like that approach ... :)
Plus: I don't trust the the battery values indicated by the OS too much: one example: I have a battery in a Dell notebook that the system says has a 100% capacity, but still the notebook drains down the device in a running system until ~ 54%, and then in the next minute or so, it's on 0%. That doesn't seem right.
You can still try to train the battery for longer run-time capabilities: basically I do that by running the computer on battery until the system says the battery is near zero or actually zero. Only then, and quickly, I re-plug the power cable to the machine. I've heard people saying that's the wrong approach, but it seems my batteries know better: for example I drained the mentioned battery in the last days a few times, and it seems the "time until empty" from full went from barely ~60 minutes to ~80 mins. And I probably will keep trying that ...
I try monitoring the battery status while draining the device with a command like this: watch -dc 'upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT1| grep -E "present|state|to\ full|percentage|capacity|time\ to empty|time\ to full|technology" (an edit of what Robbi Nespu was mentioning in this thread)
or this: watch 'grep -Ei "(capacit|charge)" /sys/class/power_supply/BAT1/uevent'
A safer way to do the drain might be while running the machine in BIOS: I have something like a hardware test in BIOS: I start that and unplug the machine: this test takes a lot of power, it seems, and it drains the battery fast.
And yes, I know: even 80 mins is a lousy run-time for a battery. But IIRC it wasn't even very good after I bought the computer ~4 yrs ago ...
There are a few guides made by Apple on how to train batteries - they're not active anymore on apple.com it seems - the archived versions still are:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140729195527/http://www.apple.com/batteries/no... http://web.archive.org/web/20141018162218/http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1490
Good luck, and Regards!
On Thu, 12 Apr 2018 16:23:52 +0200 Wolfgang Pfeiffer roto@gmx.net wrote:
I try monitoring the battery status while draining the device with a command like this: watch -dc 'upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT1| grep -E "present|state|to\ full|percentage|capacity|time\ to empty|time\ to full|technology"
Single quote was missing. The correct line, hopefully: watch -dc 'upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT1| grep -E "present|state|to\ full|percentage|capacity|time\ to empty|time\ to full|technology"'
Sorry!
On Thu, 12 Apr 2018 16:23:52 +0200 Wolfgang Pfeiffer roto@gmx.net wrote:
You can still try to train the battery for longer run-time capabilities: basically I do that by running the computer on battery until the system says the battery is near zero or actually zero.
'Battery' here means Li-ion ones ...
Hello Danny,
On Wed, 11 Apr 2018 17:54:51 +0100 Danny Horne via users users@lists.fedoraproject.org wrote:
On 11/04/18 17:49, Samuel Sieb wrote:
If it's turned right off, then Fedora has nothing to do with it.
That's the thing, I'm not sure if I've missed something in the power settings and it's just going into standby or some other power saving mode
What? Do you mean you're not sure if the laptop is in standby mode, hibernating or switched off? Sleeping (standby) will eat battery (usually w/ a LED indicator still up or flashing, but not always). Hibernation and switch off won't (all leds off anyway).
Regards,
Hello Danny,
On Wed, 11 Apr 2018 17:41:50 +0100 Danny Horne via users users@lists.fedoraproject.org wrote:
Hi all,
I have a four year old laptop that's running Fedora 27 Workstation. If I leave the thing switched off and unplugged after a day it will need recharging by varying degrees.
Have I missed something in the power settings or is my battery on it's way out?
Of course you don't have any USB device still plugged in and draining? Some laptops are configured to keep some of the USB plugs powered even if computer is switched off.
Regards,
On Wed, Apr 11, 2018 at 05:41:50PM +0100, Danny Horne via users wrote:
Hi all,
I have a four year old laptop that's running Fedora 27 Workstation. If I leave the thing switched off and unplugged after a day it will need recharging by varying degrees.
Have I missed something in the power settings or is my battery on it's way out?
Thanks for looking
There should be a battery-monitor applet somewhere. I am not running Gnome, so I don't know where it hides the battery applet, but on Mate its right there on the upper toolbar. In my case I can right- click on it and one of the options there (sorry, I'm not at the laptop right now, so this is kinda vague) one of the options there will show you some battery stats. It will include things such as the full capacity of the battery (when new), current capacity, current charge, and a lot of other things. The names of those items are a bit cryptic, but it is possible to figure them out with a little thinking.
So, if the new capacity was (say) 78, and current capacity is (say) 15, then you know your battery is pretty much useless.
My laptop's battery (3rd-party replacement, now 3 or so years old) still shows current max capacity at around 2/3 (or maybe 5/8) of the new capacity, so though I miss the longer lifetime, it is still useful.
One thought, get out of the habit of leaving it plugged in all the time, that eats lithium batteries, i.e., wears them down faster than charging when needed.
alternatives are: 1. run on battery, plug in when discharged 2. remove battery when working at a stationary location (some laptops are sealed and you can't do this), charge it then remove it, put it back in when mobile.
On Wed, Apr 11, 2018 at 03:10:53PM -0400, Fred Smith wrote:
There should be a battery-monitor applet somewhere. I am not running Gnome, so I don't know where it hides the battery applet, but on Mate its right there on the upper toolbar. In my case I can right-
Actually, the battery applet in GNOME doesn't show detailed information. However, there is GNOME Power Statistics -- install it from Software, of course -- which both shows detailed information and can track usage and provide deeper info.
do you got a setting "calibrate battery" or simular named in your BIOS (seen in samsung's) ? maybe, try it before buying a new battery.
powertop (last TAB): what's draining
Allegedly, on or about 12 April 2018, sixpack13 sent:
do you got a setting "calibrate battery" or simular named in your BIOS (seen in samsung's) ? maybe, try it before buying a new battery.
On one device, that was the end of my battery. It immediately went from being not too good, to just lasting a few seconds.
Whether it was really the death of the battery, or just that the battery monitoring circuit radically changed its threshold, I'll never know. It was a one-way trip.