Why has my Battery Icon stopped updating in Linux?

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I noticed something funky happening over the past week. My battery icon stopped updating. For a more specific definition, here's the expected and current behavior in detail:

Expected Behavior

  • Change to "Charging" icon when plugged in and charging - and display the appropriate tooltip.
  • While charging, show a gradually increasing indicator of battery level - and show up-to-date percentage in the tooltip.
  • Change to "Discharging icon when plugged in and discharging - and display the appropriate tooltip.
  • While discharging, show a gradually decreasing indicator of battery level - and show up-to-date percentage in tooltip.

Current Behavior

  • Get the current state and percentage when Xorg starts.
  • Never change anything.
    • If it was plugged in when X started, it will show the "Charging" icon even if I unplug it, etc.

On the plus side, infinite battery life! On the minus side, it's all a lie. I've spent some time troubleshooting this and trying to figure out what the heck is going on. Here's a list of the assumptions I've made, steps I've taken to test them, and the results.

The troubleshooting steps are in a wacky order because I wasn't directly troubleshooting the battery icon, but doing other stuff too.

  1. "Is the system reporting the power state incorrectly...?"
    • Run acpi
      • Results from acpi are correct - not stuck.
  2. "Must be some weird config setting or conflict causing the weirdness!"
    • Installed fresh Arch Linux on an unused drive.
      • Battery icon is still stuck.
    • Try a different Desktop Environment.
      • Same problem in LXDE, Xfce, and Enlightenment.
  3. "Maybe there was a kernel update that broke something."
    • install 3.10 LTS kernel.
      • Still broken.

So yeah, I'm not sure what the problem is. Does anyone know?

Basic information about my default setup:

  • OS: Arch Linux
  • Kernel Version: 3.14.1 / 3.10.47
  • Desktop Environment: Xfce
  • Notebook: Acer Aspire S7

dotVezz

Posted 2014-04-19T20:16:27.010

Reputation: 529

Answers

1

Same here (OS, desktop env, kernel). Seems related to upower in combination with systemd issue: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/39893

Possible fix (did not try yet): https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/xfce4-power-manager-git/

Alternative: Use package and plugin xfce4-battery-plugin from xfce4-goodies

user318104

Posted 2014-04-19T20:16:27.010

Reputation: 26

using xfce4-power-manager-git from the AUR does fix the problem described, but has its own issues (The icon doesn't display properly, shows a generic placeholder icon) – dotVezz – 2014-04-25T15:18:15.293

Asked: 2014-04-19T20:16:27.010

Viewed: 3 414 times

Active: 2014-09-27T17:10:51.537