"Smart Battery" in Acer Aspire 1684WLMi not found

The same occurs with a Toshiba Satellite Pro L10, /proc/acpi/battery is empty
but I get lots of nifty details from dmidecode. I'll attach its output from that
computer.

Created an attachment (id=3419)
dmidecode output from a Toshiba Satellite Pro L10

Battery information is at the end.

The battery does work with some weird DSDT hack, but it breaks other things
(suspend, for example).

In Windows, there seems to be a separate driver for smart batteries ("Microsoft
Smart Battery Driver" as opposed to the ACPI Control Method Battery or whatever
it's called), maybe we need one of those for Linux too (maybe using lm-sensors,
as it seems to be SMBus stuff)

It seems I have the same problem with the smart battery of my Acer Aspire 1694
WLMi (1960 Series)

I upgraded the machine to the latest BIOS but I can't get any information about
battery state and the fun is always on.

I use Ubuntu Breezy Preview Updated.

root@astrid:/proc/acpi/battery# ls -R
.:
BAT1 BAT2

./BAT1:
alarm info state

./BAT2:
alarm info state
root@astrid:/proc/acpi/battery# cat BAT1/alarm
alarm: unsupported
root@astrid:/proc/acpi/battery# cat BAT1/info
present: yes
design capacity: 4300 mAh
last full capacity: 3980 mAh
battery technology: rechargeable
design voltage: 14800 mV
design capacity warning: 300 mAh
design capacity low: 132 mAh
capacity granularity 1: 32 mAh
capacity granularity 2: 32 mAh
model number: ZL08
serial number: 1111
battery type: LION
OEM info: SONY
root@astrid:/proc/acpi/battery# cat BAT1/state
present: yes
ERROR: Unable to read battery status
root@astrid:/proc/acpi/battery# cat BAT2/alarm
present: no
root@astrid:/proc/acpi/battery# cat BAT2/info
present: no
root@astrid:/proc/acpi/battery# cat BAT2/state
present: no

Created an attachment (id=4536)
dmidecode output from a Acer Aspire 1964 WLMi

If possible, please upgrade to Dapper's 2.6.15-9 kernel. If you do not want to
upgrade to Dapper, then you can also try the Dapper Flight 2 CD's:
http://cdimage.ubuntulinux.org/releases/dapper/flight-2/

Let me know if this bug still exists with this kernel.

Created an attachment (id=5479)
dmidecode output from an Acer 3003WLCi

(In reply to comment #6)
> If possible, please upgrade to Dapper's 2.6.15-9 kernel.
>
> Let me know if this bug still exists with this kernel.

i upgraded today to flight 2/kernel 2.6.15-9 and the problem still exists on a
toshiba l10-100
(see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaptopTestingTeam/ToshibaSatelliteProL10 for reference)

regards,
christian

I have the same problem: No battery status detected on Acer Travelmate 3000 (3004WTMi). The battery is (reported to be) smart battery, I am using 5.10 Breezy. My /var/log/syslog has rows like this:
ACPI-0362: *** Error: Looking up [Z00B] in namespace, AE_NOT_FOUND
search_node dffe2620 start_node dffe2620 return_node 00000000
ACPI-0508: *** Error: Method execution failed [\_SB_.BAT1._BST] (Node dffe2520), AE_NOT_FOUND

A DSDT exists that claims to fix this problem:
http://acpi.sourceforge.net/dsdt/view.php?id=387

Many Acers seem to have this problem. There are success reports with custom DSDTs:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupportMachinesLaptopsAcer

Fedora Core 4 RPMs and success report:
http://www.baycom.org/~tom/acertm3004wtmi/

Notes about my ongoing strugle with 3004WTMi:
http://www.iki.fi/karvinen/acer_travelmate_3004wtmi_with_linux.html

From all the reports and things I've read, the battery problems is strictly a broken DSDT. It's not something we can fix.

Only thing I can do is urge you to contact your hardware vendor for an updated BIOS.

It is not. The battery info can be requested over I2C (on the EC which _is_ listed correctly in the ACPI table). There just isn't a Linux driver for batteries like that yet.

Windows _does_ have this driver ('Microsoft Smart Battery Driver'), which is probably the reason why ACER disabled the ACPI Battery stuff in the DSDT (because everyone runs Windows).

There seem to be basic drivers for the ACPI EC I2C/SMBus and Smart Batteries:

http://www.poupinou.org/acpi/smartbatt/smartbatt/

It's a year old, but it might be worth contacting the author.

On Sun, 2006-01-29 at 17:30 +0000, Martijn van de Streek wrote:
> There seem to be basic drivers for the ACPI EC I2C/SMBus and Smart
> Batteries:
>
> http://www.poupinou.org/acpi/smartbatt/smartbatt/
>
> It's a year old, but it might be worth contacting the author.

ACPI-EC is already in the kernel. So you just need the program to read
this.

It's still not a kernel issue, since it's not "broken".

--
Ben Collins
Kernel Developer - Ubuntu Linux

As it is not a kernel bug, I filed it against gnome-applets (Battery Charge Monitor):
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/gnome-applets/+bug/30038