Im having a problem with ubuntu 14.04 on my Toshiba laptop. For awile, I knew the battery was dead and I was planning on buying a new one, however, ever sense I installed Ubuntu, the battery would report at 98-100% even though the battery was charged nearly that high. If I unplugged the cable, it would report that it was critically low and ubuntu would shut down even when the battery percentage was high.
Now that I have ordered a new battery, the problem still persists. I left it charging all night and when I was using the laptop earlier today, It was completely drained after about 20 minutes. Ubuntu was reporting a 78% or so charge on the battery. I knew it was COMPLETELY dead because the lights would not even blink when I pressed the power button.
Basically, it seems like Ubuntu thinks the battery is full and then it no longer charges. even though the battery is barely charged. I'm not entirely sure how its SUPPOSED to work but it seems like it needs to be calibrated somehow and i'm really struggling to find an answer online. If anyone has any insight into this issue let me know.
I ordered the battery and installed it. The problems persist even with the brand new battery. The battery is an anker. They are highly rated replacements. I havnt ruled out that the battery itself is crap, however, my problems started with the origional battery.
There was no problem with the original battery except it was dead. Ubuntu reported how much it had left. Since it couldn't hold any charge, it was 100% charged.
For your new battery you can run upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT0 it will give info on capacity, charge state, make, etc.
Yeah, the new battery is having the same issue - which is leading me to think it might be a hardware problem because it might not be registering that the battery is actually in the laptop. It doesn't have a battery, so has no capacity (so even when there's no charge it is theoretically as charged as much as possible (100%)).
I used this command as well as the acpitool -B command to view settings and they both seem to report the correct values.
I installed windows back on the laptop to see if it would be rectified. If not, i'm going to assume the battery is faulty and/or the battery connection some ware.
I also updated the bios to the latest version to see if that helps.
I have been running on battery power alone in windows 8.1 for about half an hour now and it hasn't shut off yet. Its reporting the same stats that were being reported in Ubuntu 14.04. About 3 hours total charge, 5200 mWh total capacity, etc..
If it stays on for the duration of its charge as its supposed to, I don't know where to go from there. If it doesn't, its probably hardware related.
Its defiantly registering the presence of the battery. Ubuntu, and windows, properly detect that a battery is inserted and properly detect when I run it on AC power only with the battery removed. They are both reporting the correct battery stats (total capacity, current capacity, current drain in Watts, etc..).
While using the old battery in windows, I would probably get a 30-40 minute charge out of it. I have installed windows 8.1 and the battery is reporting 78% after about 30 minutes on battery power only. I'm just sitting here waiting for it to shut off randomly but so far, its looking promising.
This would mean Ubuntu 14.04 is not communicating with the hardware properly and it THINKS the battery is fully charged, even when its not. Because it thinks its fully charged, it prevents the battery from taking more power. This is just my theory anyway. We'll see what happens after a couple hours on battery power. Will report back here.
So I have now installed Ubuntu 15.04 and the battery isn't having any issues anymore. I'm assuming the BIOS update allowed Ubuntu to talk to the hardware more accurately than it did before. I didn't have to play with anything in Ubuntu itself to make it work properly, but I don't have enough evidence to confirm that it was 100% the BIOS, simply from ignorance on how Ubuntu works with the laptop's hardware.
However, there is a bug with gnome that reports the incorrect time remaining. sometimes it'll just adjust and fix itself, but other times, it'll think there is such little time left that it will shutdown the computer by default. There are workarounds for this and its unrelated to the other battery issue I was experiencing.