[ltp] Battery memory issue

[John Jason Jordan]

On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 08:47:22 +0100
David Bremner <bremner@unb.ca> dijo:

> >>>>> "John" == John Jason Jordan <johnxj@comcast.net> writes:
>     John> battery. Today I tested it for the first time. After about
>     John> three hours right-clicking on the battery icon in my gnome
>     John> panel said I had about 1:15 left. About five minutes later I
>     John> was suddenly staring at a black screen. No warning. And it
>     John> would not restart. I reseated the battery, but it was
>     John> totally dead. So my new 9-cell battery gives me about 3:05
>     John> hours, roughly the same as the original 6-cell battery.
> 
> Hopefully someone with a T61 will chime with better advice; I have an
> x61 and get roughly 6 hours (running debian unstable) from a nine
> cell.
> 
> I don't know why your 9-cell is behaving strangely; new batteries
> should be problem free as far as I understand it.
> 
> Did the little battery light (below the screen) go orange and blink
> before the machine shut down? I think (although I'm no expert) that
> this controlled at the hardware level, and should happen whatever
> Ubuntu does.
> 
> Can you install powertop (should be in ubuntu repositories) and see
> what it says? It might tell you about some power-killing services.
> 
> To eliminate the possibility of bugs in the gnome panel, can you run
> "acpi" from the command line, and see if it reports the same time
> remaining?

Thanks to you and Ted Frater for the responses.

Regarding the battery light, I don't remember that it appeared any differently just before it shut down. I do note that when I got home and plugged it into the mini-dock the battery light was orange and cycled on and off for quite a while. I just did not notice what it looked like right before the shutdown.

Regarding powertop, I installed it, and below is what it says. However, this is now that I am back home again and the battery is fully charged up. (Or so the Gnome panel icon says.)

Cn                Avg residency       P-states (frequencies)
C0 (cpu running)        ( 5.2%)         2.01 Ghz     6.5%
C1                0.0ms ( 0.0%)         2.00 Ghz     0.0%
C2                1.4ms ( 8.0%)         1200 Mhz     1.2%
C3                1.7ms (86.8%)          800 Mhz    92.3%

Wakeups-from-idle per second : 559.6    interval: 10.0s
no ACPI power usage estimate available

Top causes for wakeups:
  41.1% (211.8)       <interrupt> : extra timer interrupt 
  19.7% (101.5)       <interrupt> : uhci_hcd:usb1, eth0 
  12.6% ( 64.8)       <interrupt> : uhci_hcd:usb3, ahci, yenta, nvidia 
   9.6% ( 49.4)       <interrupt> : ehci_hcd:usb6 
   2.7% ( 14.1)          trackerd : schedule_timeout (process_timeout) 
   2.6% ( 13.6)              Xorg : do_setitimer (it_real_fn) 
   2.4% ( 12.5)      S20powernowd : queue_delayed_work_on (delayed_work_timer_fn) 
   2.1% ( 11.0)       <interrupt> : libata 
   1.9% ( 10.0)     <kernel core> : ehci_work (ehci_watchdog) 
   0.9% (  4.6)   gnome-screensav : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
   0.8% (  4.0)   <kernel module> : usb_hcd_poll_rh_status (rh_timer_func)
   0.4% (  2.0)   gnome-netstatus : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
   0.4% (  2.0)     <kernel core> : queue_delayed_work_on (delayed_work_timer_fn)
   0.3% (  1.4)       firefox-bin : futex_wait (hrtimer_wakeup)
   0.2% (  1.1)    gnome-terminal : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
   0.2% (  1.0)              Xorg : nv_start_rc_timer (nv_kern_rc_timer)
   0.2% (  1.0)    cpufreq-applet : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
   0.2% (  1.0)            dhcdbd : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
   0.2% (  1.0)         nm-applet : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
   0.2% (  0.9)          sylpheed : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
   0.1% (  0.7)   update-notifier : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
   0.1% (  0.7)             cupsd : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
   0.1% (  0.6)     <kernel core> : neigh_table_init_no_netlink (neigh_periodic_timer)
   0.1% (  0.5)    NetworkManager : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
   0.1% (  0.5)     <kernel core> : e1000_intr (e1000_watchdog)
   0.1% (  0.5)   hald-addon-stor : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
   0.1% (  0.5)       gnome-panel : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
   0.1% (  0.4)              Xorg : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
   0.1% (  0.3)   gnome-power-man : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
   0.0% (  0.2)     <kernel core> : page_writeback_init (wb_timer_fn)
   0.0% (  0.2)     <kernel core> : __netdev_watchdog_up (dev_watchdog)
   0.0% (  0.2)       firefox-bin : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
   0.0% (  0.2)   <kernel module> : neigh_table_init_no_netlink (neigh_periodic_timer)
   0.0% (  0.1)         ssh-agent : do_setitimer (it_real_fn)
   0.0% (  0.1)         ssh-agent : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
   0.0% (  0.1)         iwl4965/1 : sta_info_start (sta_info_cleanup)
   0.0% (  0.1)           pdflush : blk_plug_device (blk_unplug_timeout)
   0.0% (  0.1)              nmbd : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
   0.0% (  0.1)          metacity : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
   0.0% (  0.1)                sh : start_this_handle (commit_timeout)

I don't know what any of the above means.