10
2
I need a way to kill my battery in my Ubuntu laptop. Is there any mind numbing tasks I can Ubuntu do that will eat up the battery? I have already shut off the power management options.
The battery is giving my issues and and someone said I should discharge it fully an recharge it from 0.
ianc1215
Posted 2011-07-16T20:23:36.243
Reputation: 2 884
12
apt-get install stress - a utility specifically designed for testing CPU and other functions. You can use it to peg your CPU at 100% usage until the battery dies.
I'm not sure what options exist to peg GPU usage at 100%.
You should drop to runlevel 1 and dismount all volumes possible since your system will not shutdown smoothly.
LawrenceC
Posted 2011-07-16T20:23:36.243
Reputation: 63 487
7
Another option would be to use a livecd such as http://www.stresslinux.org/
– Nifle – 2011-07-16T20:33:40.7731i like the idea of a live cd because the machine will just stop and wont hurt the drives. – ianc1215 – 2011-07-16T21:40:16.220
1I could not get the stresslinux to start on the laptop, so I just ran memtest 86+. That worked fine, I am interested in trying out that stress linux though. Thanks – ianc1215 – 2011-07-18T00:29:22.453
3
Run lots of Virtual Machines
Do a full ls -Rlath /
Try to find a string of text within every file on the disk
Fun full screen games
Canadian Luke
Posted 2011-07-16T20:23:36.243
Reputation: 22 162
0
Simply run:
while :; do done
In a terminal. That is an infinite do-nothing loop that will increase CPU usage to ~100% for one core. You could repeat this 4 times in parallel if you have a quad-core processor, but on the few laptops I've tested this on, it hasn't increased battery drain.
In addition: Increase screen brightness to full, blast music at max volume, ensure WiFi is on, and plug in as many power draining USB devices as you can: Phones, hard drives, etc.
This should kill most laptops in under 2 hours.
Zaz
Posted 2011-07-16T20:23:36.243
Reputation: 1 843
-1
Try fork bomb in shell:
:(){ :|: & };:
however you've big changes to crash your laptop instead, so run at your own risk. I'm sure it'll keep your laptop busy until the battery is dead.
kenorb
Posted 2011-07-16T20:23:36.243
Reputation: 16 795
Wastes memory, not CPU. – Zaz – 2017-06-06T08:45:16.733
5As an aside, it is possible that this someone has no idea what they are talking about. You can't really "reboot" a battery, and while I'm no HW expert, discharging a battery to 0 sound kind of unhealthy for it, to be frank. – Williham Totland – 2011-07-16T20:54:01.433
@Williham is correct. Laptop batteries should never be brought below approximately 40% charge. It's very bad for them. Some people say you can have a complete discharge cycle every 100-300 charge cycles, though. – Reid – 2011-07-16T21:44:36.050
@Reid: Surely that's can, and not should? – Williham Totland – 2011-07-16T21:48:43.760
Well the battery is not working correctly to begin with, so fully discharging it and recharging it can't do anymore harm than has been done by the previous owner. – ianc1215 – 2011-07-16T22:15:54.170
Something is messed up with the battery, it charged 25% is 5 mins. – ianc1215 – 2011-07-16T22:18:06.493
Is there anything speaking against leaving it turned on and just waiting for it to die? – poke – 2011-07-17T00:11:31.300
@Williham: Ah, yes, I meant should instead of can. :P – Reid – 2011-07-17T01:12:25.287
1
I've heard of this related to "recalibrating" the battery. E.g., http://www.tech-no-media.com/2009/07/how-to-extend-lithium-ion-laptop.html
– LawrenceC – 2011-07-17T03:09:42.740Here's another interesting article on Li-Ion life: http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries - the takeaway is pretty much 1. battery life will degrade over time and 2. " Partial discharge on Li-ion is fine; there is no memory and the battery does not need periodic full discharge cycles other than to calibrate the fuel gauge on a smart battery"
– Kris C – 2011-07-17T08:47:59.110