(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Greetings,
I'm running lucid 5.2.5 on an HP laptop and the battery icon in the systray doesn't show battery level of consumption and stays grey all the time.
Curiously, if I left-click the battery icon, a window pops up and gives me a whole bunch of information regarding the battery including it's current level of consumption.
Anyone else experiencing the same.
TIA
Cheers

I haven't had this problem, what is the model of your HP laptop?

Type this in the console.
Show what you get.

cat /proc/acpi/battery/*/info

darkcity wrote:I haven't had this problem, what is the model of your HP laptop?

Compaq nx6310

bigpup wrote:Type this in the console.
Show what you get.

cat /proc/acpi/battery/*/info

Basically it shows me the same values that I get when I double-click the status bar battery icon:
present: no
present: yes
design capacity: 4436 mAh
last full capacity: 4436 mAh
battery technology: rechargeable
design voltage: 11100 mV
design capacity warning: 222 mAh
design capacity low: 45 mAh
capacity granularity 1: 100 mAh
capacity granularity 2: 100 mAh
model number: Primary
serial number: 42739 2009/12/16
battery type: LIon
OEM info: Hewlett-Packard


On one hand, Puppy seems to know what's going on with the battery, on the other hand it won't show me what's going on with it.
And it's sad because, only this week, I've had the laptop die on me more than 20 times already because of it running out of battery.
On my wife's Asus netbook, the icon works properly.
TIA
Cheers

EDIT:
Here's a printscreen of the window that shows up when I double click the status bar battery icon.
Please note the "remaining capacity" figure. It is actually working.
Also please note the status bar battery icon. It's always like that regardless of if I am using the battery charger or if I'm only on battery. Always grey.

Try this,
Download and install this version of power applet
http://bkhome.org/blog/?viewDetailed=01837

bigpup wrote:Try this,
Download and install this version of power applet
http://bkhome.org/blog/?viewDetailed=01837

Done.
Installed and restarted the notebook and yet the problem remains.
I wouldn't have to click anything/where for it to start working with this power applet, right?
TIA
Cheers

Until you find a solution ,In the mean time, install pwidgets from package manager and use the battery widget. Good luck!

Hi sjsrikanth,
I appreciate your help but i'm not going to be using pwidgets.
I just need to sort the battery applet issue.
Anyone other ideas?
Any tips for debugging?
TIA
Cheers

I'm having the same problem with Lupu 5.2.5 on an Asus Eeepc 900. I'm running it off a USB stick. My problem is that the battery indicator in the system tray is always blinking and showing 1%, unless it is being charged.

I installed pwidgits and that gave me a properly working battery indicator. The problem is the system tray indicator is still there and blinking. Since that is very distracting, I would like to get rid of it. Any ideas on how to do that?

BTW, I haven't had that problem with older versions of Puppy or Puppeee.

Thanks, Ken

**UPDATE**
I got rid of it. Found it in: Menu> Setup> Remove builtin packages> powerapplet_tray

Hi Kehn,
This is issue is very strange.
If you look at this printscreen from my laptop running Lucid you will see that my laptop knows that it is charging and it know the remaining capacity and it knows the battery's full capacity.
So, I can't understand why the icon on the systray doesn't work.
Doesn't make any sense to me.
Could someone more literate on Linux/Puppy help me understand this?
Apart from this everything else bundled with the OS works perfectly.
Though, I would add Suspend to RAM and a Bluetooth backend to Lucid, both maybe as optional SFS?
I guess nowadays every OS should have Suspend/Hibernate features and Bluetooth is also a must have for laptops.
So, can someone help me out?
TIA
Cheers

I think that is how the indicator looks when charging.
It is suppose to change when running from battery only.

I had the same issue and probably wasted days to find out how to find some solution... Just to note I have Lucid Puppy 5.2.5 running on HP Compaq Evo N600c, and it was really bugging me as I totally forgot about battery few times (there was no warning so there was some nice surprises when computer died )

Anyway, I am also interested if there is a way to fix this problem.
In the meantime I used pbatt monitor from here: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=36492
It also had 2 problems, first one was discussed in topic that your battery name can be different that bat0 or bat1 (in my case it was C19F) so I had to change line 34 in bevent (you will see this in topic). Second problem was that I didn't have apm icons in my /usr/local/lib/x11/mini-icons so I made them myself.

Also, if you use JWM, you can add this one as it worked for me
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=25812

Anyway, it was major hassle as this is my first linux experience, and I think this is just some glitch and it wasn't supposed to be like this. If anyone have some regular solution I would love to hear it.

Those people blessed with a 22"+ screen can benefit from conky things.
But when one has a 14" screen, system tray icons are the way to do it.

Maybe vattery-ibam tray then. To replace the existing powerapplet. It will give verbose warnings also and those warnings - battery warning levels are configurable.

Thanks for the pet pemasu.
But I getI am in spup 311

Beem. Delete from the /root/Startup/1vattery script everything else but leave exec vattery-acpitool. It might help.

There is no vattery-acpitool in StartUp.
When executed in a terminal, i see acpitool is missing.
Apparently not included in spup 311.
I installed and vattery-acpitool gives the icon in the tray and blue as the battery is charged.
Strange that Micko didn't include the correct battery tool.

Beem. I meaned script 1vattery in /root//Startup. Inside that script leave only exec vattery-acpitool, delete everything else. Vattery-ibam is not usable to all.
There was in my pet vattery-acpitool and vattery-ibam binaries which were installed in /usr/local/bin.

But installling acpitool seems to fix your problem also. I didnt know that. I have acpitool installed in all my builds and I install it firsthand when I test other Puppies.
My machine probably uses vattery-ibam for battery status and I havent noticed the dependency to acpitool based on above reasons.
That was good tip. Thank you Beem

So my pet needs acpitool and maybe that script editing if it does not work straight. Vattery-ibam (if it works), does not need acpitool.

You're welcome pemasu.
Also, your 'cold'puppy's are nice pieces of work.
I like them.